Ahead of Split, HP Executives Veghte and Gilliland Depart Company

Hewlett-Packard, the soon-to-split computing giant, today announced an executive shake-up under which Bill Veghte, a former Microsoft exec who briefly served as both COO and chief strategy officer, will be leaving the company.

Veghte’s current title is executive VP and head of the Enterprise Group, the sprawling $28 billion business unit that is responsible for HP’s sales of servers and networking gear. It will constitute a little more than half of the new company, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, that is set to emerge after the split on Nov. 1. He had most recently been assigned by CEO Meg Whitman to a role related to prepping the company for its split.

HP said in a statement that Veghte (pictured above) will be “pursuing another opportunity,” but it wasn’t immediately clear where that might be. Sources said he had also been approached for an unspecified job at IBM but turned it down. Veghte joined HP in 2010 after 20 years at Microsoft, where he managed the $15 billion Windows business and oversaw the launch of Windows 7. He sits on the board of Xero, an accounting software startup, and on the advisory board of VMTurbo, a cloud software startup.

Antonio Neri, who has been running HP’s enterprise group while Veghte was working on the split, will take over as head of the enterprise group as executive VP and general manager. Neri is a 20-year HP veteran who most recently ran its server business.

Veghte is not the only HP executive leaving. Sources familiar with the matter say that Art Gilliland, an HP senior VP and head of its security software business (pictured at right), is also leaving the company to run a new software startup. He spent three years at HP, and six before that at the security software company Symantec.

Gilliland’s departure was announced in an internal memo from Robert Youngjohns, executive VP and head of HP’s software business unit which circulated to HP employees Monday and obtained by Re/code.

Robert Youngjohns
Executive Vice President
HP Software

HP Restricted – For Internal Use Only

Organizational announcement

To: All HP Software employees

It is with sincere regret that I announce Art Gilliland, currently SVP of Software’s Enterprise Security Products, is leaving HP in mid-July to pursue his dream of bringing a new software company into being.

For the last three years, Art has worked tirelessly to bring together several organizations to create one cohesive Security business unit within HP. His business and security acumen combined with his passion for building great teams and leading through change have made him an integral part of the HP Software leadership team. Personally, I am happy for Art and am excited for this next step in his career. However, we will miss him very much. I am grateful for his many contributions to the team.

We are actively working to identify an internal replacement for Art and hope to make an announcement soon. In the meantime, I will work closely with the ESP leadership team to ensure a smooth transition and a strong finish to Q3.

Please join me in thanking Art for his leadership and wishing him well on his next step.

Best regards,
Robert

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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