Kim Stevenson Joins NetApp as SVP and GM of NetApp’s Largest Product Group 

Jan. 16, 2020 -- NetApp announced the addition of Kim Stevenson as SVP and GM of the company's Foundational Data Services Business Unit (FDSBU) in a blog by Brad Anderson, SVP and GM at NetApp for its Cloud Infrastructure business unit. The full announcement posted below notes that Stevenson previously served as a senior executive at Lenovo and will now be helping NetApp lead the charge into a new era.

At NetApp, our mission is to help our customers change the world with data. As we kick off a new decade, it’s clear that data, and the technologies to manage it, are at an inflection point: AI is seeing real use-cases; the advent of 5G is poised to revolutionize edge computing; hybrid multicloud is giving organizations more control and flexibility over their data than ever before.

In other words, the potential of data to change the world has never been more evident than it is today.

That’s why I’m excited to be welcoming Kim Stevenson to the NetApp team. As SVP and GM of our Foundational Data Services Business Unit (FDSBU), Kim, most recently a senior executive with Lenovo, will be managing our largest business unit and helping to lead the charge into a new era for NetApp.

"I joined NetApp because the company’s potential is clearly enormous," said Kim Stevenson. "From my experience working with enterprise tech leaders, only NetApp is so deeply embedded across every stack that companies are relying on to power digital transformation and better harness data for today’s world. The company’s partnerships with the biggest public cloud providers, its engaged ecosystem, and diverse portfolio across storage solutions and data services, give it a great position. I’m excited to help realize this potential and keep NetApp ahead of the market."

Kim most recently served as Senior Vice President and General Manager of Data Center Products and Solutions at Lenovo. During her time at the company, she grew the business by more than $2 billion. Additionally, Kim was also COO of the Client, IoT and System Architecture Group, and earlier, CIO at Intel.

With diverse experience spanning finance, services, and marketing, COO and CIO leadership roles at IBM, EDS, and HPE, and having served on numerous boards of directors for leading tech innovators, Kim brings a truly unique and well-rounded perspective to NetApp. She will use this diverse experience to tackle the business challenges customers care about most and simplify the overall IT experience for a world that is growing only more complex.

Kim continued, "I believe that the world makes decisions on infrastructure based on the application workload. With use-cases like AI-powered video surveillance, as an example, drastically changing the game when it comes to storing and managing data, our opportunity at NetApp is to think from the workload down to the infrastructure – but ultimately, delver value propositions on workloads themselves. And we have an incredible arsenal to do that."

IT professionals today are serving as change agents for their entire organizations – which increasingly means they need a more holistic approach from vendors, one which acknowledges their larger role and business scenarios they are solving for. Kim brings a unique understanding of these scenarios and will use this perspective, alongside her deep experience in data centers, to deliver a product experience that adds value throughout the business.

Welcome Kim, and welcome to a new era for NetApp!