Paul Hunter, managing director, HPE North AmericaPaul Hunter will serve as the new managing director for Hewlett Packard Enterprise North America, according to a statement from Heiko Meyer, HPE’s chief sales officer. Most recently, Hunter was worldwide head of partner sales at HPE.Hunter essentially succeeds Dan Belanger, a 30-year company executive who is exiting HPE. Belanger headed HPE’s North America business for the last three years, overseeing 3,500 employees with full profit and loss responsibility.“Dan has been instrumental in accelerating our mission as a company, and his leadership, dedication to customers, and passion for winning will be missed,” Meyer said in the statement.
HPE: Who Is Paul Hunter?
Hunter served as former HPE CEO Meg Whitman’s chief of staff before moving to the worldwide head of partner sales in October 2017. He started his career at Hewlett-Packard Co. (prior to the company split into HP Inc. and HPE) as a district manager for financial services in October 2002, and served for a time as a business unit leader in the United Kingdom for the personal systems and printer group of HP.On Hunter’s new role, Meyer said, “With more than 25 years of experience at the company, Paul has consistently demonstrated a keen awareness of customer needs, effective leadership skills, and the drive to push for better. Most recently, he served as the Worldwide Head of Partner Sales, embracing our values of ‘partner first,’ exemplifying our culture, and helping our partners see the opportunity in our edge-to-cloud strategy.”
HPE's Pivot, Remaining Challenges
Hunter was instrumental driving HPE’s pivot to becoming the edge-to-cloud platform-as-a-service company, Meyer said in the statement.“With more than 700 partners now selling HPE GreenLake, he has shown strong leadership and brought a fresh perspective to the organization. His experience in moving partners from a transactional to a more strategic business outcome model is our future. He is well-prepared to drive value for our customers, partners, and sales teams, and I am confident in his ability to drive our business forward,” Meyer said.Still, HPE faces a range of ongoing challenges related to its heavy dependence on hardware. Indeed, the company is cutting some headcount in its weaker-performing businesses, but also bulking up for some faster-growth opportunities like SD-WANs.
Sharon is a master technology storyteller and editor with omnichannel experience: books and print magazines, digital, webcast, blogging, podcast, live events and video and associated brand-specific social media content. From 1999 to 2003, she acquired and edited technology books and certification exam prep guides.
After a year spent in publicity and editorial at mass-market book publishers, she returned to tech publishing and, since 2004, explored B2C and B2B news, issues and trends in consumer, lifestyle, software, software development, AI, ML, networks, big data, hardware, security, storage, cloud, equity, inclusion, diversity, women in tech, career development, IT management, H-1B visa issues and immigration, education, training and learning.
Her previous role was as the managing editor at Techstrong Group in charge of Cloud Native Now, DevOps.com, Security Boulevard and Techstrong ITSM and their brand-specific social media. She currently serves as editorial director for CyberRisk Alliance’s channel brands, ChannelE2E and MSSP Alert and acting editorial director for SC Media UK. Drop me a note and let’s talk!
