Jeremy Burton, Others Promoted In The EMC Information Infrastructure Business

EMC this week promoted three senior-level executives, including the man who is more and more seen as one of the most visible faces for the storage company.

The appointments were all made in the EMC Information Infrastructure business, which includes EMC's storage, data protection and archiving business, along with its RSA security business, business intelligence solutions and other solutions.

Jeremy Burton, hired in 2010 as EMC's first chief marketing officer, is now president of products and marketing for EMC Information Infrastructure, where he will be responsible for EMC's Enterprise & Mid-Range Product Division, the Data Protection & Availability Division, the Isilon Systems Division, the Emerging Technology Products Division and Information Intelligence Group.

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Burton also is responsible for marketing, technical alliances, solutions, cross-business-unit engineering and the Office of the CTO, EMC said.

Denis Cashman, a 25-year EMC finance veteran, is the new CFO for EMC Information Infrastructure.

Also moving up the corporate ladder is Jonathan Martin, the new CMO for EMC Information Infrastructure. In that role, Martin takes over for Burton.

Burton and Cashman both report to David Goulden, CEO of the EMC Information Infrastructure business, while Martin continues to report to Burton as he did in the past, EMC said.

Burton has a lot of charisma and character, said Keith Norbie, director of server, virtualization and storage for the Eastern U.S. for Technology Integration Group (TIG), a San Diego-based solution provider and EMC channel partner.

"He's a guy who really champions the channel," Norbie said.

Jamie Shepard, regional and health systems senior vice president at Lumenate, a Dallas-based solution provider and EMC channel partner, called Burton's promotion "awesome."

"He's such a smart guy," Shepard said. "He's probably one of the most technical chief marketing officers in the industry, and has a strong background in security, data protection and storage."

Shepard said that Burton went through some of the most challenging periods to hit EMC in the last couple years, but ended up branding EMC with such future technologies as big data and the hybrid cloud.

"Jeremy is amazing at taking the current technology EMC has and creating the vision of what EMC will be for the industry," he said. "EMC is probably two to three years ahead of anyone else. Jeremy doesn't have a crystal ball, but I swear he can see the future. He's molding EMC's product lines for the future."

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EMC declined to further comment on the promotions.

However, Goulden, in a prepared statement, said, "Coupled with the fact that we are exceptionally well positioned as a company to help customers navigate this time of great IT transformation, our executive team is second to none. I am incredibly fortunate to work alongside these top-notch leaders, each of whom personifies excellence in their respective domains and each of whom will play a key role as we drive our strategy forward in the years ahead."

It has been a busy last few months of reorganization for the EMC Information Infrastructure business.

EMC in January named 11-year veteran Goulden as CEO of the EMC Information Infrastructure business, making him one of the top front-runners to eventually succeed EMC Chairman, CEO and President Joe Tucci when he steps down, which is not expected to happen until 2015 or later.

EMC in September formed a new division, the Emerging Technology Products Division, under the leadership of Chirantan "CJ" Desai, who joined EMC as president of that division after a nine-year stint at Symantec, where he most recently served as executive vice president of information management. Prior to Symantec, he also spent several years at Oracle.

The Emerging Technology Products Division has at its core the company's previous Flash Business Unit, which includes its XtremIO all-flash storage arrays, ScaleIO software-defined storage technology, and XtremSF PCIe cards and XtremSW flash storage software. Also included is EMC's hybrid cloud gateways and high-performance computing storage lines.

A month later, EMC reorganized its hardware and software development teams to streamline the development of several of its storage product lines. A new division, the Enterprise and Midrange Systems Division, was formed. The division combines EMC's VMAX enterprise storage development team and its VNX midrange storage development team.

The company's VPLEX, RecoverPoint, and Backup & Recovery Systems software development teams also were formed into a new Data Protection & Availability Division.

PUBLISHED MARCH 27, 2014