HP Data Storage Boss Scott, 3Par Utility Engineering VP Slocum Retiring

Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) data storage boss and former 3Par chief executive David Scott will retire as of March 6, 2015, and Peter Slocum, HP storage utility development vice president, will retire effective February 28, 2015, according to an internal memo from Antonio Neri, HP Enterprise senior vice president and general manager.

Scott first joined HP in 1983, leaving the company in 2001 to helm startup 3Par as its chief executive only to return nine years later when HP bought 3Par after a protracted, contentious bidding war with Dell.

According to the memo obtained by Re/code, Neri characterized Scott as developing a “trademark for thinking big and aiming even bigger,” crediting him with leading “a revolution in how customers store, secure, archive and retrieve data, which catapulted 3Par to over $1B in annual product sales.”

Bill Philbin, and HP vice president of Storage Engineering for the Virtual Development Unit and a former NetApp (NTAP) executive, will head the HP storage business as acting general manager until the vendor finds a permanent replacement for Scott. Philbin’s current responsibilities extend to Entry-level Storage, Object Storage, Network Attached Storage, Data Protection, and Software-defined products.

Philip Tamer, currently HP Converged Systems engineering vice president and a former EMC (EMC) executive, will assume Slocum’s post once he departs. Tamer is credited with leading the development and release of HP’s CloudSystem 8, OneView and its ConvergedSystems solutions.

For those needed a refresher on HP’s odd battle to win 3Par in 2010, the vendor ultimately won a back-and-forth bidding war with Dell when the little-known $200 million storage vendor accepted HP’s latest $33 a share, or $2.4 billion, offer and rejected a last ditch $32 per share revised proposal from Dell.

At the time, more than a few observers questioned both Dell’s and HP’s sanity in fighting so hard for 3Par. HP outbid Dell four times over the three-week long tussle for 3Par, which began when Dell tendered a friendly $18 bid and HP surprisingly entered the fray with a substantially higher $24 a share offer. At the time, HP said adding 3Par’s enterprise-class storage virtualization technology would augment its converged infrastructure architecture strategy.