EMC Execs Regroup

EMC has lost an executive some thought might succeed Joe Tucci -- that is, if Tucci ever retires. (See EMC Shuffles Execs.)

David DeWalt, 42, EMC's president of customer operations and content management software, will start April 2 as the CEO of security software company McAfee Inc., which lost its CEO George Samenuk in October 2006 in a stock options investigation.

DeWalt, the ex-CEO of Documentum, stayed on after EMC took over the company in 2003. (See EMC Cops Documentum.) He was often mentioned, along with EMC vice chairman Bill Teuber, as a potential successor to Joe Tucci. (See EMC Execs Jockey for Position.)

To replace DeWalt, EMC has expanded Teuber's job, making him head of customer operations. The other half of DeWalt's job, heading up EMC's Content Management (Documentum, etc.) and Archive (Legato, etc.) division, will be taken over jointly by Balaji Yelamanchili and Mike DeCesare, who both will answer directly to Tucci.

The shuffling adds to the current lineup of division execs provided when EMC announced its "one EMC" initiative and year-end 2006 results. (See Tucci Aims for 'One EMC'.) Any one of these could be considered as a potential Tucci successor. The updated list includes:

No one seems to think this is a big deal. "Although we believe Mr. DeWalt was well received by the investment community, we view these moves as having little impact to our fundamental thesis on EMC," wrote analyst Aaron Rakers of A.G. Edwards in a note yesterday. "We continue to believe that EMC has one of the deepest and broadest executive management teams in the storage industry."

Despite this kind of blas thinking, there could be at least a couple of potentially interesting aspects to the latest executive shuffle at EMC. First, it puts the focus on Teuber, who was also EMC's CFO from 1997 to 2006, after joining EMC from Coopers & Lybrand in 1995. If and when Tucci retires, Teuber's name is likely to surface as the top replacement candidate -- but don't hold your breath here. "Joe is a long way off from that," says an EMC spokesman.

It's also not out of the question that DeWalt's leadership could bring McAfee to EMC's doorstep, if not for acquisition then as a major customer or partner. And DeWalt's been down the merger road before.

A deck shuffling also usually leaves someone out of joint. Further, it remains to be seen how two individuals will fare in heading up a single division, even if they split responsibilities -- in this case, Yelamanchili taking product management and DeCesare field operations.

In the meantime, it appears that EMC is maintaining status quo at the top of the storage heap. In the latest Gartner figures, EMC ranks first among external controller-based disk storage devices, with 24.8 percent market share. (See ECB Disk Storage Mkt Grows.)— Mary Jander, Site Editor, Byte and Switch