Stephen DiFranco Leaves HP For Broadcom

Longtime Hewlett-Packard channel executive Stephen DiFranco has left HP for a new position at chip maker Broadcom.

DiFranco, who until May served as vice president of Americas enterprise channels at Palo Alto, Calif.-based HP, revealed the move to Broadcom via his LinkedIn profile, where he said effective this month he is Broadcom's senior vice president of worldwide channels for the Internet of Things.

An HP spokesperson confirmed DiFranco's departure. Broadcom did not respond to a CRN request for more information by press time.

[Related: HP's Whitman: 'Either You Are Being Disruptive, Or You Are Being Disrupted']

DiFranco, a 2014 CRN Channel Chief, moves from HP to Broadcom at an interesting time. HP is splitting into two separate companies, one focused on enterprise infrastructure and the other on personal systems and printers.

Irvine, Calif.-based Broadcom, meanwhile, is being acquired by Singapore-based Avago Technologies.

DiFranco has been a good friend to the channel, said Rick Chernick, CEO of Camera Corner Connecting Point, a Green Bay, Wis.-based solution provider and longtime HP channel partner.

"He knows what's going on in our world," Chernick told CRN. "He took care of resellers. Every time I had a problem, he took my calls and pushed the right buttons. In my years on the HP partner council, I found him to be a good spokesman for HP."

Chernick said he is guessing that DiFranco found something that made him hungry for new opportunities. "Broadcom is a new challenge, a new direction, for him."

Rich Baldwin, CIO and chief strategy officer at Nth Generation Computing, a San Diego-based solution provider and HP channel partner, said DiFranco was results-oriented and looked at the product mix of partners' sales.

"He's been around a long time," Baldwin told CRN. "He has a good understanding of the business. He was a friend of the channel. If I had a situation, he was there."

KEVIN MCLAUGHLIN contributed to this story.

PUBLISHED JUNE 3, 2015