The 15 Biggest Technology Executive Moves Of 2019 (So Far)

Big leadership changes at Intel, Accenture, Symantec and Cloudera are among this year's largest technology executive moves of the year so far.

Seismic Shifts At Intel, Accenture, Alphabet

It's only halfway through the year, and there have already been seismic leadership changes at some of the world's largest technology companies.

That includes Intel, which named top finance executive Bob Swan as its permanent CEO in January after serving the role in an interim capacity for several months. There was also Accenture, whose beloved leader, Pierre Nanterme, stepped down in January shortly before succumbing to colon cancer.

2019 also saw major board departures, including Eric Schmidt, who left Alphabet's board, and Meg Whitman, who HPE's board. Other companies that had major leadership changes so far this year included Apple, Symantec, Snowflake Computing, Cisco, Cloudera and Docker.

What follows are the 15 biggest technology executive moves of 2019 so far.

Bob Swan

Intel named interim leader Bob Swan as its permanent CEO in January, making him the seventh person to lead the company in its 50-year history. Swan had been serving as the company's interim CEO since last June following the sudden resignation of Brian Krzanich.

Swan, who joined Intel as CFO in 2016, was also elected to the company's board of directors. In April, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company announced that former Qualcomm executive George S. Davis would succeed Swan as its new CFO.

Prior to joining Intel in 2016, Swan was an operating partner at growth equity firm General Atlantic. Previously, he was CFO at eBay for more than nine years. He has served as CFO at other companies, including GE Lighting. He also once served as CEO of an online grocery startup called Webvan that was among the companies to shut down during the dot-com crash in the late 2000s.

Pierre Nanterme

Accenture CEO Pierre Nanterme, who had led the company since 2011 and had been board chairman since 2013, stepped down from both roles in early January, citing health problems, before he died from colon cancer at the end of the month.

In July 2016, Nanterme revealed he was battling colon cancer and had undergone surgery but stated he was recovering and still leading the company's day-to-day operations. That changed with the early January announcement that he would step aside.

The global systems integrator in July of this year announced that Julie Sweet, Accenture's North America leader, had been named the company's new CEO while David Rowland, who was serving as interim CEO, had been appointed executive chairman.

Eric Schmidt

Alphabet announced in April that Eric Schmidt, Google's former CEO and executive chairman, and Diane Greene, Google Cloud's former CEO, were stepping down from the board of directors.

Schmidt first joined Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet, as its CEO in 2001. He served in that role until April 2011, when he became executive chairman, a position he held until January 2018. Schmidt was expected to remain with Alphabet as a technical advisor when his board term ends in June.

Greene first joined Alphabet's board in 2012 before the holding company was created and Google was the primary umbrella under which all of Alphabet's businesses exist. She then became CEO of Google Cloud in December 2015, a role she held until January 2019.

Alphabet said Robin L. Washington, CFO of Gilead Sciences, had been appointed to Alphabet's board and will serve on its leadership development and compensation committees.

Meg Whitman

Former Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman, who worked closely with current HPE CEO Antonio Neri to develop the company's intelligent edge-hybrid IT strategy, stepped down from the company's board of directors in January.

Whitman, who served as CEO of Hewlett Packard from 2011 to 2015 and HPE from 2015 to 2018, is widely credited by partners with saving the legendary Silicon Valley company, which had $12.5 billion in debt and a demoralized partner network when she took over as CEO.

HPE said Whitman, who took a position last March as CEO of Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg's mobile media startup Quibi, would not stand for re-election to the HPE Board of Directors "as her other professional commitments grow." Whitman's departure from the board comes on Neri's one-year anniversary as CEO.

Jony Ive

Apple announced in June that Chief Design Officer Jony Ive is leaving the company later this year to launch an independent design firm that will serve the iPhone maker as a client.

Credit with playing a central role in designing the iPhone and other Apple products, Ive had been the head of Apple's design team since 1996 and was a close collaborator with Steve Jobs when the co-founder returned to the Cupertino, Calif.-based company in 1997.

"Apple will continue to benefit from Jony’s talents by working directly with him on exclusive projects, and through the ongoing work of the brilliant and passionate design team he has built," Apple CEO Tim Cook said in the news release.

Frank Vitagliano

Frank Vitagliano, a 30-year-plus channel veteran and an IT Industry Hall of Fame recipient, was named CEO of the Global Technology Distribution Council in April.

Vitagliano, a passionate advocate for distribution as a channel chief for IBM, Dell EMC and Juniper Networks, is chartered with helping the world’s top technology distributors “define” and “promote” technology distribution in the cloud services era.

Vitigliano was mostly recently president and CEO of Computex Technology Solutions — a role he stepped down from in April 2018.

Greg Clark

Symantec president, CEO and board member Greg Clark stepped down from all roles in May following an internal accounting probe, activist investor unrest and enterprise sales struggles.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based platform security vendor said former Novellus Systems Chairman and CEO Richard Hill will take over immediately as interim president and CEO. Symantec is currently conducting a search for a permanent CEO.

Clark started as CEO of Blue Coat Systems in 2011 and assumed the same role at Symantec in August 2016 when the company's acquisition of Blue Coat closed. Clark's departure continues the executive brain drain atop Symantec, with President and COO Michael Fey leaving in December and EVP and CFO Nicholas Noviello announcing plans to depart Symantec in January.

Frank Slootman

Snowflake Computing appointed former ServiceNow CEO Frank Slootman as Snowflake's new CEO in May and announced the immediate departure of former CEO Bob Muglia, who led the supplier of cloud data warehouse services through five years of rapid growth.

Slootman, who was also appointed as Snowflake's chairman, served as chairman and CEO of ServiceNow between 2011 and 2017, taking the company from under $100 million in revenue to $1.4 billion in sales and leading the company through a successful IPO, according to the Snowflake statement. Prior to ServiceNow, Slootman was chairman and CEO of Data Domain.

Muglia worked at Microsoft between 1988 and 2011, including as president and senior vice president of the company's Server & Tools business for the last four years. He was then an executive vice president at Juniper Networks for two years before joining Snowflake as CEO in June 2014.

Greg Hoogerland

CompuCom, the IT services business unit of Office Depot, replaced President Greg Hoogerland with former Conduent executive Mick Slattery in June.

Hoogerland's departure comes after the CompuCom disclosed poor financial performance. He became president of the company roughly a year ago after his predecessor, Dan Stone, resigned. Hoogerland is the sixth CompuCom leader to resign in as many years.

Slattery was most recently CEO of Conduent Transportation.

Kenneth Asbury

CACI President and CEO Kenneth Asbury announced his resignation in June and said that COO John Mengucci would take over the company's top leadership post in July.

Asbury joined CACI in 2013 from Arctic Slope Regional Corporation-Federal, where he was president and CEO. Prior to that, Asbury built a track record of superior enterprise growth and customer value at Lockheed Martin, CACI said on its corporate leadership page.

Mengucci had served the Arlington, Va.-based company as COO since 2012. Prior to that, he was the president of Lockheed Martin's Information Systems and Global Solutions-Civil Product Line.

Tom Reilly

Cloudera announced in June that CEO Tom Reilly would retire at the end of July.

Martin Cole, Cloudera's board chairman and a former Accenture executive, is filling the top job in an interim capacity until a new, permanent CEO is hired.

Reilly, who has been with the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company since 2013, was previously an executive at IBM and Hewlett-Packard before taking the CEO position at Cloudera. He came to IBM in 2004 to lead an information management solutions division after Big Blue acquired Trigo Technologies, an early data management software company at which he served as CEO.

Rob Bearden

Docker CEO Steve Singh announced in May that he would step down and hand the leadership role to former Hortonworks CEO Rob Bearden, who began in June.

Singh, who remains the company's board chairman, joined the San Francisco-based company as CEO in 2017, when he left his previous job as chairman and CEO of Concur. Singh has held chairman roles at other companies, including Modumetal and Talend.

Bearden served as CEO of Hortonworks from 2012 to the beginning of 2019, when the company completed its merger with Hadoop competitor Cloudera.

Maciej Kranz

Cisco's top innovation executive, Maciej Kranz, departed the company in June after working at the networking giant for 20 years.

Kranz was most recently vice president and general manager of the San Jose, Calif.-based company's corporate strategic innovation group, according to his LinkedIn profile. He had served in several executive roles over the years, leading divisions such as the Connected Industries Group, the Wireless Networking Business Unit and Ethernet Switching Technology Group.

Kranz began working in July for KONE Corporation, an Espoo, Finland-based engineering company, as executive vice president and chief technology officer. He was also appointed to the company's board.

Amit Zavery

Amit Zavery, the top executive at Oracle's cloud division since the departure of former boss Thomas Kurian, followed Kurian in March to Google Cloud, where he is leading the Apigee team.

Zavery had spent the past 24 years at the Redwood Shores, Calif.-based software giant and ran the Oracle Cloud Platform business for more than a year.

As a vice president for engineering at Google, Zavery is again working under Kurian as he looks to build out capabilities and customers for the API management business Google acquired in 2016 for $625 million.

Tim Weller

Datto appointed Tim Weller as its new CEO in January to replace founder Austin McChord, who in October 2018 said he was stepping down from that role.

Weller joined Norwalk, Conn.-based Datto in mid-2017 as CFO and was then promoted to company president and chief operating officer. He took over the company as the MSP-focused storage and operations platform developer has seen strong growth, both organically and via key acquisitions, including the late 2017 acquisition of professional services automation platform provider Autotask.

In his new role, Weller combined the functions of CEO and president. McChord still remains on Datto's board of directors and will advise Weller.

Arnie Bellini

ConnectWise announced in February that Arnie Bellini was stepping down as CEO as part of the company's agreement to be acquired by private equity giant Thoma Bravo.

The IT visionary, who has been using technology to solve business problems since 1982, handed the job of CEO to ConnectWise President and COO Jason Magee. Bellini said Magee was one of three internal candidates he groomed for CEO. He said of them, Magee was the “clear and obvious choice.”

Magee, who has been at ConnectWise for eight years, has a deep channel pedigree. Before joining, Magee held director-level positions at CA Technologies, managing teams, and channel partners. Prior to that, he spent five years gaining industry and channel experience at reseller companies Interactive Futures and Global Computers, where he held sales, marketing, and product management positions.