New Exec Appointments at Lenovo Proves Vendor Is All In with DCG

**Editor’s Note: Click here to see which channel people were on the move in February.**

First comes confirmation of the April 1^st kickoff of Lenovo’s data center-focused partner program. Now come new leadership appointments for several new business units that align with Lenovo’s goal to accelerate its data-center business.

Lenovo is forming business units in five market segments: data-center infrastructure; the software-defined data center; high-performance computing and artificial intelligence; hyperscale systems; and data-center services.

General managers were appointed to head each of the new units. Kim Stevenson was brought in as senior vice president and general manager for the Data Center Infrastructure business segment. The only outsider in the group of new appointments, Stevenson was the CIO at Intel for four years but worked there for eight in positions that included leading the company’s client, Internet of Things and system architecture group. Prior to that she worked at the former EDS and IBM.

Joining Stevenson in the data-center group (DCG) is current Lenovo exec Laura Latrello, vice president and general manager of the data-center services segment.

Other current Lenovo employees moved into new positions include: Paul Ju, vice president and general manager, Hyperscale; Madhu Matta, vice president and general manager, high performance computing and AI; Radhika Krishna, executive director and general manager, software-defined data center.{ad}

The newly appointed business-segment executive leaders will report to Kirk Skaugen, executive vice president and president, DCG.

In an recent interview with Channel Partners, Lenovo North American Channel Chief Sammy Kinlaw noted that the biggest opportunity for partners is with DCG and he encouraged them to sign up for Lenovo’s new sales and technical certifications.

Lenovo also made changes to its global data center sales force led by Roderick Lappin, senior vice president, Worldwide Sales & Marketing, Data Center Group. The company is building an end-to-end global data center sales in order to respond more quickly to customers.

The move is also designed to accelerate growth of the company’s x86 servers.