Dell CTO Parts Ways With Company

A Dell spokesman told CNET that the departure has been in the works for months and said Kettler wants to spend more time with his family and outside interests such running a restaurant he owns in Austin, Texas.

In his current position, Kettler oversees the design, development and performance analysis of core architectures for Dell's product portfolio, including client, server, storage, imaging and consumer products.

In a prior position, Kettler helped build and manage the Dell Precision Workstation architecture and development teams and more recently Dell's Client Architecture and Technology Group. Before he joined Dell, Kettler worked at IBM for 12 years in the development of PCs.

The spokesman also told CNET that Kettler's departure is unrelated to Round Rock, Texas-based Dell's current financial woes.

In April, Dell said it expected to cut more than 8,900 jobs due to slowing business but in August ended up eliminating 8,500 positions.

Just last week, CEO Michael Dell sent an e-mail to employees asking them to take five days off without pay in a cost-cutting effort. The No. 2 computer maker is also offering some employees severance packages and has instituted a hiring freeze.