Western Digital's new CIO Sesh Tirumala
On April 10, Sesh Tirumala joined Western Digital as the Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer. In that role, he leads all of information technology, security, and enterprise data and analytics. Tirumala joins the nearly $19 billion revenue computer drive manufacturer and data storage company after multiple stints at leading software as a service companies. He was the CIO at both PagerDuty and at Anaplan.
When asked about his rationale for the change, he noted, “I wanted a global role, with a focus on transformation, sustainability and bridging operations technology with Information technology . This role offers the opportunity to be responsible for IT, data & analytics, and security at a larger global enterprise with a complex supply chain and manufacturing leveraging digital twins.”
Tirumala further noted that he was attracted to the company’s stated goal to pivot toward becoming a data company, powering cloud providers, enterprises, and consumers.
This represents a return to scale for Tirumala, who spent more than 23 years with Cisco prior to his two recent stints with SaaS companies. He will be reunited with his former colleague from Cisco, Irving Tan, the company’s Executive Vice President, Global Operations to whom Tirumala will report. Tan noted that he hired Tirumala to be a change agent, to elevate business partnerships and to drive better business outcomes.
Peter High is President of Metis Strategy, a business and IT advisory firm. He has written three bestselling books, including his latest Getting to Nimble. He also moderates the Technovation podcast series and speaks at conferences around the world. Follow him on Twitter @PeterAHigh.
