Kevin Hooper, a well-known sales and channel executive and most recently vice president and general manager for HP Networking, has left HP, CRN has learned.
Reached by CRN, Hooper confirmed his departure and that he will pursue other interests, declining to provide further details. An HP spokesperson also confirmed Hooper's exit when queried by CRN. Phil Castillo, most recently director of midmarket sales for HP Networking U.S., has taken over Hooper's role on an acting basis.
Hooper became vice president and general manager, HP Networking Sales, ESSN Americas, in February, then had the modified title of vice president and general manager, HP Networking, Enterprise Group U.S. following HP's enterprise team restructuring. Before that, he was vice president, emerging growth accounts for enterprise business sales.
[Related: 30 Notable IT Executive Moves: September 2012]
Hooper joined HP in 2007 following a number of years in vice president-level sales and channel roles at IBM, including as vice president, worldwide business partner strategy.
Stepping into Hooper's role is Castillo, who's been with HP since August 2010. A networking industry veteran of more than two decades, Castillo, according to his LinkedIn profile, was previously vice president of sales for the western U.S. for Siemens Enterprise Communications, western sales vice president for Meru Networks, and a sales vice president at Avaya. He also spent nine years at Cisco as a channel operations manager.
Castillo reports, as Hooper did, to Randy Seidl, senior vice president and general manager, HP Enterprise Group U.S.
HP Networking, which was at Interop New York this month touting HP's software-defined networking strategy, was one of the HP Enterprise segment's strongest growth categories in 2011. The Enterprise division, whose overall revenue fell 4 percent in HP's fiscal third quarter, still posted 6 percent year-over-year growth in networking, even as servers, business-critical systems and storage revenue all dropped.
Another former HP Networking executive, Armughan Ahmad, vice president of Americas channel sales, left HP for a top networking sales post at Dell back in May. Marius Haas, the former senior vice president and general manager of HP Networking, is now at Dell as president, Enterprise Services.
PUBLISHED OCT. 11, 2012
