EMC Blocks Former Exec from Selling Storage at HP

As reported here in The Station on April 29, Hewlett-Packard recruited longtime EMC storage executive David Donatelli to become its new senior vice president for Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking. Donatelli was to start his new job May 5, but, oops, that didn’t happen.

EMC, its corporate dander up at the defection, immediately obtained a court order to restrict Donatelli from moving to his new job due to a noncompete clause in his contract pertaining to the storage side of the business.

A couple of weeks went by following the court order from the Suffolk County Superior Court of Massachusetts. Then, on May 26, a compromise was reached: The original order was changed by the same court, allowing Donatelli to begin working at the IT systems company.

But he can do no storage work, apparently. Donatelli will serve as HP’s executive vice president of Enterprise Servers and Networking, which seems like quite a load right there. Due to the restrictions in the court’s most recent order, Dave Roberson, senior vice president and general manager of the StorageWorks division, will handle HP’s storage administration.

HP said it is “pleased with the court’s recent decision and looks forward to the contributions Donatelli will make to HP’s business.” Donatelli won’t have quite so much on his plate until things calm down, so that’s probably good for him.

In the meantime, what’s EMC going to do to make sure he’s not talking about storage? Bug his phone? Have him tailed? Spy on him with an unmanned aircraft?

We’ll buy tickets to that.