James Vanderstice, one of IBM’s top executives and chief architect of
IBM’s computer data storage business, has resigned from his post after 30
years of service and will join Dell Computer as vice chairman.
Currently, Vanderslice is IBM senior vice president and heads IBM’s
Technology Group. He will replace Dell Vice Chairman Mort Topfer, who plans to
retire from Dell at the end of 2001. IBM downplayed the loss of one of its top
leaders saying Vanderslice's departure came as part of a plan to reshuffle
several senior executive positions. The company has quickly appointed Linda
Sanford, the chief of IBM's sales force, to focus solely on the IBM storage
business, which Vanderslice headed. Nick Donofrio, head of IBM's research
division, was named to replace Vanderslice as head of the technology components
unit.
Vanderslice was responsible for several of the $30 billion worth of
multi-billion component supply deals IBM has signed this past year with major
computer makers, including a 7-year, $16 billion component supply pact with
Dell. Vanderslice rebuilt IBM's hard disk drive business by aggressively
incorporating new technology, developed at IBM's San Jose-based Almaden Research
Laboratory, into new storage products and by focusing on making selective
components rather than commodity drives themselves.
Vanderslice will join Dell Chairman and Chief Executive Michael Dell and
Kevin Rollins, another company vice chairman, in the company's three-man Office
of the Chief Executive. Dell also announced this week that it had named Sam
Nunn, the former U.S. senator from Georgia and one-time head of the Senate Armed
Services Committee, to join Dell's board of directors.