Report: Dell Hires Ex-AMD Boss Read, Ex-Cisco VP Perez for Enterprise Sales Push

Dell reportedly has hired Rory Read, the former AMD (AMD) chief executive, as its new global sales president and chief operating officer (COO), and landed Paul Perez, Cisco’s (CSCO) former Computing Systems Product Group vice president and general manager, as its new Enterprise Group chief technology officer (CTO).

Bloomberg reported Read’s and Perez’s hiring but Dell has yet to confirm the report, although the company is expected to announce the moves today. Read and Perez are expected to report to Marius Haas, Dell chief commercial officer.

Both of the new Dell executives likely will be tasked with helping the vendor to boost its position among enterprise accounts and partners selling to large businesses, leveraging Read’s array of contacts from his days not only at AMD but also at IBM (IBM) and Lenovo, and Perez’s strong server background.

AMD hired Read for its top slot in 2011 to fix its financial bleeding and locate new sources of revenue, but last October he stepped aside in favor of Dr. Lisa Su, who took the company’s reins from her prior post as COO handling its business groups, sales and global operations.

Read’s AMD legacy includes redirecting the company to build chips for game consoles and mobile devices, a strategy that gained the chip maker a market stalwart it previously lacked. On Read’s watch, AMD reduced operating expenditures by approximately 30 percent from 2012 – 2014 and maintained its $1 billion cash storehouse. He currently serves as an executive advisor to the company.

Prior to his AMD tenure, Read ran Lenovo’s North America PC business and previously served 23 mostly PC-centric years at IBM prior to the vendor’s sale of its PC unit to the Chinese company in 2005.

Perez’s responsibilities at Cisco spanned its $3 billion Unified Computing Systems (UCS) portfolio, including UCS servers, the UCS Central and Cloupia portfolio and the partner ecosystems for the vendor’s Data Center Group.

Perez, who also served as Cisco’s Data Center Group chief technology officer (CTO), had a 27-year tenure at Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) before joining Cisco in 2011. At HP, Perez was CTO for HP’s ProLiant and BladeSystem lineups and held a similar title for HP’s enterprise storage business.