From call centre to boardroom: Meet HPE's new leader

Maintaining something of a low profile as HPE's president, we scrutinise new CEO Antonio Neri

After leading HP through what is frequently referred to as the largest corporate break-up in history, Meg Whitman announced that she will step down as CEO of HPE to be replaced by Antonio Neri as of 1 February.

Whitman will be leaving a legacy at HPE stretching over six years, orchestrating the divestment of HPE's software business including an $8.8bn (£6.6bn) spin-merger of non-core software assets with Micro Focus and flogging its Enterprise Services business to CSC in May 2016.

In September, reports emerged that Whitman planned to go ahead with axing 10 per cent of HPE's workforce, resulting in 5,000 lost jobs as part of its HPE Next programme, which plans to "reduce the layers" of the company and save $1.5bn over the next three years.

Overseeing its "streamlining" process has been down to Antonio Neri, who will take the reins of HPE next year.

But who is Antonio Neri?

The new CEO was promoted to a newly created position as president of HPE on 21 June, from his previous post as executive vice president of the company. Neri has been with HP and HPE since 1995 when he joined as an EMEA customer services engineer.

He quickly climbed the ranks of HP, becoming worldwide director of Imaging and Print services in 1997, then vice president of HP personal systems and customer services in 2004, then headed up the firm's services business unit in 2013 before moving to servers and networking in 2014 until 2015.

So what's the main difference between Whitman and Neri? While Whitman comes from a sales and business background, obtaining a bachelors in economics at Princeton University then an MBA at Harvard Business School, it is clear that Neri's roots are in engineering.

Neri spent four years studying computer science at the Universidad Technológia Nacional in Buenos Aires between 1986 and 1990 after completing a bachelors in electronics at an Argentinian technical university called ENET.

Steinar Sønsteby, CEO of one of Europe's largest resellers Atea pointed out a recent trend among technology vendor giants in opting for technical - rather than sales - oriented personnel as chief executives.

HP certainly hasn't had a technology-led CEO for the last two decades. Former CEOs Leó Apotheker, Cathie Lesjak, Mark Hurd and Carly Fiorina all had their roots in sales or finance. The last HP CEO to come from an engineering background was Lewis Platt, who held the chief executive role from 1992 until 1999.

Sønsteby pointed to tech giants IBM, Microsoft, Cisco VMware and, to some degree, Apple, which have all seen a change of CEO in the last five years, and have each gone for a chief executive with engineering rather than sales experience.

"Antonio knows the company well and he is well suited for the task," he said. "As the tempo of development increases [at HPE] I think this makes sense."

The Atea chief also said he was surprised the CEO change has been announced now, rather than when HP split the company last year.

HPE's new CEO announcement draws attention to another trend among the industry's IT giants: hiring from within.

Tim Cook, Apple's current CEO, joined the company in 1998, and was picked for the chief executive post 13 years later in 2011.

Similarly, Microsoft chose Satya Nadella as CEO in 2014 following on from Steve Ballmer. Nadella joined Microsoft in 1992 and climbed the corporate ladder to become EVP of its Cloud and Enterprise group.

Now HPE is the latest vendor to reward personnel who have stuck with the company for more than a decade. Neri will have to plough on with Whitman's hard-line de-layering programme as the vendor's new CEO. And with HPE shares tumbling by eight per cent after the CEO change was announced, and a recent Q4 that saw earnings drop considerably, the 50-year-old will surely have his work cut out for him.