Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. Wednesday announced that it has appointed longtime HP executive Antonio Neri as its new president.

The executive had served as the company’s enterprise group executive vice president and general manager for the last two years. The role of president is a newly created position that comes as HPE attempts to reorganize itself into a smaller, more profitable company.

Neri will now be responsible for leading HPE’s efforts to transform its business following the merger of its enterprise services and software divisions. The company’s strategy is to focus on driving growth and profitability to ensure it’s well-positioned to lead the markets in which it competes, it said in a statement.

In his former position, Neri was responsible for the development and delivery of information technology infrastructure solutions, such as server, storage, networking, technology services, converged data center infrastructure, telecommunications and cloud solutions.

HPE Chief Executive Officer Meg Whitman said in a statement that Neri’s promotion reflects the importance of his contributions to the company as leader of its enterprise group, which accounts for more than 80 percent of its revenue. “From overseeing the reinvention of our technology services business and the divestiture of our H3C business in China, to the integration of critical acquisitions like Aruba, SGI, SimpliVity and Nimble [Storage], Antonio has been invaluable to me as we have worked to establish the new Hewlett Packard Enterprise,” she said.

Neri has spent more than 22 years at what is now HPE, having joined as a customer service engineer in its Europe, Middle East and Africa call center back in the 1990s. Before becoming enterprise group executive vice president and general manager, Neri spent three years serving as the senior vice president and general manager for the HP servers and HP networking business units, where he was tasked with leading its research and development efforts and sales strategy. He also played a prominent role during the company’s split into two separate entities – HPE and HP Inc., which sells hardware such as printers and PCs.

Neri’s promotion comes after HPE spun out most of its IT services businesses last year to an entity it jointly owns with Computer Science Corp. HPE also divested much of its software portfolio to the German Linux company SUSE.

As part of its restructuring efforts, HPE has also made a number of acquisitions in recent months, buying up companies like Nimble Storage Inc. and SimpliVity Inc. Neri, who helped negotiate those deals, also recently hinted at plans for further acquisitions, saying that HPE partners can expect to see an even broader portfolio selection in the future.

They could prove necessary, as the company recently reported a disappointing second quarter that saw server revenues fall by 14 percent.

Photo: SiliconANGLE