Ex-Intel executive heading to EMC

Pat Gelsinger has joined EMC as president and chief operating officer of the company’s new information infrastructure products group, reporting directly to chief executive Joe Tucci. Gelsinger will oversee EMC’s storage hardware and software business, as well as its data security, content management, and data systems management lines.

Gelsinger, 48, previously served as senior vice president of Intel’s enterprise chip production business, where he managed the company’s line of processors for business desktop and server computers, and its chips for data storage systems. Gelsinger was also the executive in charge of Intel’s lucrative relationship with EMC, which buys vast numbers of chips for its storage products. In that capacity, he developed a close relationship with Tucci and other EMC executives, and when Intel launched a major management shakeup, Gelsinger decided it was time to move on.

“It was a combination of the situation at Intel and the opportunities at EMC,’’ Gelsinger said, adding that at Intel, “I was getting to the point where I was finishing what I wanted to get done.’’

Meanwhile, Gelsinger saw major growth opportunities at EMC, especially in international markets. “EMC is not nearly as globalized as it needs to be,’’ he said. While Intel derives about 75 percent of its revenue from outside the United States, EMC gets about half its revenue from abroad. Gelsinger believes that EMC must expand its sales in fast-growing overseas markets like China and India.

Gelsinger’s hiring is part of a larger management shuffle at EMC. Howard Elias, 52, president of the company’s global services operation, will become president of a new information infrastructure and cloud services unit. The business unit will combine Elias’s duties with new responsibility for EMC’s growing array of cloud services - data storage and management that are hosted at remote data centers and linked to EMC’s customers over the Internet.

Gelsinger and Elias will become members of EMC’s executive office of the chairman, along with Tucci, vice chairman William Teuber, and chief financial officer David Goulden. Members of the executive office report directly to 62-year-old Tucci, and could be prime candidates to succeed him. But yesterday Tucci said that he intends to stay on at EMC at least through the end of 2012.

Meanwhile, Intel announced its own reorganization yesterday. Tom Kilroy, who previously managed the enterprise chip business along with Gelsinger, will now run Intel’s sales and marketing operation. Chief administrative officer Andy Bryant will take charge of worldwide manufacturing, and Sean Maloney and Dadi Perlmutter will oversee the development of Intel’s major chip lines.

Nathan Brookwood, research fellow at Insight64, a chip industry research firm in Saratoga, Calif., said that the new Intel management structure deprived Gelsinger of responsibility for sales and marketing, making it unlikely he could have succeeded Intel chief executive Paul Otellini. “Pat ended up being one of the odd men out,’’ Brookwood said.

Gelsinger said that during interviews for his new job, Tucci and members of the EMC board told him that he would be considered as a successor to Tucci once he retires. “To me, that was very refreshing,’’ Gelsinger said.

His new job will keep Gelsinger in close contact with his former colleagues at Intel, but he foresees no tension in the relationship. “EMC is 100 percent aligned with Intel,’’ said Gelsinger. “Part of my job at Intel was winning 100 percent of EMC’s business. We succeeded.’’

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.