EMC Corp. has unveiled veteran executive and former theCUBE guest Chad Sakac as the new president of VCE, its converged infrastructure business that combines compute, storage and networking into a single product.

Sakac has been a stalwart of EMC for the past 11 years, most recently serving as its president of global systems engineering. He’ll continue to fulfill that role in addition to his new job, the company said.

The executive replaced Praveen Akkiraju, who had led VCE since 2012, helping the business to achieve a $2 billion run rate during its fiscal 2015. Akkiraju steps down but will stay on at EMC as an adviser to David Goulden, who is CEO of EMC’s Information Infrastructure unit. Sakac will report directly to Goulden, while VCE will be renamed as the EMC Converged Platform Division.

“In the past year, VCE has evolved from having a single product to having one of the industry’s broadest portfolios of converged infrastructure and solutions with blocks, racks and appliances,” Sakac said in a statement, adding that he was “ecstatic” about his new role.

By tightening EMC’s relationship with VCE, Goulden said he believes they can help the company to simplify its technology roadmap and development cycles, making it even more competitive in the converged and hyper-converged markets. VCE’s main rivals in the segment include Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Oracle and Cisco Systems Ltd., as well as rising stars like Nutanix Inc. and SimpliVity Corp.

“Going forward, having the VCE team more deeply integrated within EMC allows us to leverage synergies, simplify our go-to-market and improve time to market for our customers,” Goulden said. “EMC has never been better positioned to capture the huge opportunity that exists for converged infrastructure and solutions.”

That may be so, but Sakac’s appointment comes at a sensitive time for EMC and VCE, as the storage giant prepares for a round of layoffs aimed at easing the logistical burden of its coming merger with Dell Inc.

The layoffs are set to affect VCE too, The Register reports. It quotes unnamed sources as saying that up to 250 VCE staff could be shown the door this week, representing 12 percent of its total workforce.

EMC confirmed the round of layoffs in an 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) earlier this week, though it refused to provide any details on numbers and locations. The filing reveals EMC is setting aside $250 million for severance pay and related costs.

“The plan consists of a reduction in force which will be substantially completed by the end of the first quarter of 2016 and fully completed by the end of 2016,” EMC said in its filing. “The total charge resulting from this plan is expected to be approximately $250 million, with total cash payments associated with the plan expected to be $220 million.”

Sakac’s most recent appearance on theCUBE came during EMC World 2015 last May, where he discussed how EMC was adjusting to the changing IT landscape: