‘It’s a big coup for HPE to get someone with Sheila [Rohra’s] storage industry experience and track record,’ says PKA Technologies CTO Patrick Shelley. “You don’t often see a CEO taking a position like this.’
HPE is stepping up its hybrid cloud storage game with the hiring of former Hitachi Vantara CEO Sheila Rohra, a 32-year industry veteran with deep storage expertise, as COO of its $5.75 billion hybrid cloud business.
Rohra resigned as Hitachi Vantara CEO in April after two years and 10 months at the helm overseeing a transformation that the company cited as sharpening its strategic focus, improving profitability and delivering revenue growth.
The new job marks a return to HPE for Rohra, who left as senior vice president and general manager of the HPE data infrastructure business in February 2023 to join Hitachi Vantara as chief business strategy officer, then taking the CEO role there in July 2023.
Rohra, who was recognized during her tenure at Hitachi Vantara as a channel advocate who emphasized partner-led growth, was ranked ninth on CRN’s Top 25 Innovator list in 2025. She was also recognized on CRN’s Top 25 Disrupter list in 2024 for her focus driving innovation in enterprise storage, AI and hybrid cloud.
“It’s a big coup for HPE to get someone with Sheila’s storage industry experience and track record,” said Patrick Shelley, CTO at PKA Technologies, a Montvale, N.J.-based top HPE partner. “You don’t often see a CEO taking a position like this. She knows the storage landscape, the technology and the competitive challenges HPE faces in the hybrid cloud market.”
Shelley said he is looking forward to Rohra, also a 10-year veteran of storage standout NetApp, sharpening HPE’s competitive storage edge in the hybrid storage market with more solutions combining spinning drives with solid state drives (SSDs), especially in the wake of soaring memory prices and memory shortages.
“Some customers don’t need an all-SSD storage solution when a hybrid solution with spinning drives is more cost-effective,” he said. “Customers don’t want to pay $2 million for an SSD solution when a $400,000 hybrid storage solution will get the job done.”
Shelley said he is looking forward to meeting with Rohra to drive stronger collaboration between the HPE storage reps and PKA Technologies.
“HPE’s storage portfolio is in a good spot at this point with HPE Alletra MP as a unified block, file and object platform,” he said. “What Sheila needs to do is to accelerate the go-to-market with solution providers to educate customers and drive it further into the market.”
C.R. Howdyshell, CEO of Independence, Ohio-based Advizex, a Myriad360 company, said he sees Rohra’s appointment as a notable executive addition given her experience with a decade at NetApp and 12 years at Cisco. “She clearly has the demonstrated knowledge, experience and strategic ability to do the job,” he said. “The potential is there for her to have a significant impact.”
Howdyshell said he is also looking forward to meeting with Rohra to discuss how Myriad360 can work more closely with HPE to drive storage sales growth.
Rohra’s appointment comes with HPE capturing 6.8 percent global revenue share and 31.9 percent year-over-year growth in the second quarter of 2026 for the worldwide external OEM enterprise storage systems market, according to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Storage Systems Tracker. That puts HPE at No. 5 in the worldwide external OEM enterprise storage systems rankings behind Dell, Huawei, NetApp and Everpure.
Rohra replaces former Hybrid Cloud COO Hang Tan, who left HPE in April to join CRN Solution Provider 500 powerhouse CDW as chief strategy and transformation officer.
Rohra will report to HPE Hybrid Cloud Executive Vice President and General Manager and CTO Fidelma Russo, leading the charge to accelerate “execution, innovation, growth and scale” across the hybrid cloud portfolio.
As COO, Rohra will oversee a business that includes HPE’s storage business, its HPE GreenLake on-premises hybrid cloud platform, private cloud, AI infrastructure software including Private Cloud AI, and a wide variety of software offerings including HPE VM Essentials, Morpheus hybrid cloud orchestration software and OpsRamp AI operations management software.
“AI is reshaping enterprise technology, and hybrid cloud is the
essential foundation for organizations to harness their data, modernize infrastructure and scale AI securely,” said Russo. “HPE has a differentiated portfolio and a significant opportunity to lead this next phase of the market. Sheila’s proven leadership and operating expertise will help us accelerate our strategy, drive growth and deliver greater value for our customers.”
