Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Co. is realigning itself under a new organizational structure that Chief Executive Antonio Neri says will better position the company in the post-pandemic era.

The reshuffle came about as the company announced that Chief Technology Officer Mark Potter is retiring. Neri (pictured) explained in a blog post today that the reorganization is linked to the company’s ongoing transformation into an “as-a-service” company for all of its products.

The company aims to deliver information technology-as-a-service, move all of its products to a subscription model and become an optimization layer for multicloud deployments. The transition will be complex, but Neri said the company needs to accelerate its shift and optimize to execute on its innovation agenda.

“Over recent weeks, I have evaluated our organizational structure to determine the model that will best enable our execution and transformation,” Neri said in the post. “The time is right for an organization where each one of our business groups, aligned to market trends and our own financial segmentation, directly reports to me.”

CTO Mark Potter, who also runs Hewlett-Packard Labs, will be replaced this summer by Kumar Sreekanti, who will also take on the role of HPE’s new head ofsSoftware. Neri said this new, dual role will help to align the company’s innovation and technology roadmaps.

“Software plays a foundational strategic role in enabling our edge-to-cloud platform-as-a-service strategy and I am excited to have Kumar drive the innovation agenda and technology roadmap for HPE that integrates the strategy, design and development for the HPE software defined portfolio,” Neri wrote.

Elsewhere, Neri said the leaders of HPE’s seven biggest business groups will report directly to him going forward. They include Tom Black, head of HPE’s storage business; Pradeep Kumar, head of Pointnext Technology Services; Neil MacDonald, head of the compute business; Keerti Melkote, head of the Intelligent Edge group; Irv Rothman, head of HPE Financial Services; Pete Ungaro, head of High Performance Computing; and Keith White, head of the new Greenlake Cloud Services group.

“Given the synergies and incredible collaboration of our labs and the HPC teams that deliver breakthrough innovations, Hewlett Packard Labs will now report to Pete Ungaro,” Neri explained. “This alignment will enable even greater focus and innovation in areas that are critical to advancing our HPC offerings.”

Neri said some of the company’s sales teams leaders will also report directly to him following today’s reshuffle.

Holger Mueller, a principal analyst and vice president at Constellation Research Inc., told SiliconANGLE that HPE’s new business structure seems to make sense given the transformational changes that lie ahead for the wider information technology industry. However, he said that with seven business units and another 11 sales teams leaders now reporting directly to Neri, that’s probably too many, which suggests the new structure is only likely to be temporary.

“It all would look a little more organic if former executive Phil Davis had not left earlier this month,” Mueller said. “The available talent and bench strength is a key factor and this reorganization comesa bit  too soon after Davis’s departure not to have the talent perspective neglected. But for now it’s congrats to Neri, to whom we wish ‘in bocca al lupo'”.

Photo: World Economic Forum/Flickr