Roger Fingas
An Apple vice president responsible for government and enterprise sales, John Solomon, has reportedly left the company for reasons unknown.
Representatives for Apple confirmed the departure, but didn't offer an explanation, Reuters said on Tuesday. The executive also appears to have no particular destination in mind, as his LinkedIn profile mentions only "tbd" under job title and company fields.
Most of Solomon's work history has been with HP, where he held various executive roles since 1992 and served as general manager of the firm's global business unit for consumer printers before joining Apple in January 2015.
Apple has typically downplayed government and enterprise sales over the consumer market, and for years even lacked a dedicated team. The company has gradually warmed up to the corporate market however, for instance by partnering with IBM in 2014, and later other corporations like Cisco and Deloitte.
In Sept. 2015, Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed that the company had reached $25 billion in enterprise sales for the prior 12 months alone. The mix of device sales is unknown, but likely skewing towards iPhones and iPads given industry trends.
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I think Apple is about to revamp its enterprise business in a big way.
New iOS devices with IBM MovileFirst applications, new file system, new DB, could lead to revamped server OS on VMs.
Time will tell.
Why does the headline say unexpected?
In any fast growing business, which the enterprise segment for Apple represents, it's not uncommon for there to come a point where management that got things underway is replaced. Might just be that Apple needs a manager with different/more experience at this level in the segments growth. I wonder if there's a name for this, maybe 'The Entrepenuer's Dilemma' or some such.
Edit: just googled. The Founder's Dilemma. Happened to me. https://hbr.org/2008/02/the-founders-dilemma