SiliconBeat

Hewlett-Packard has lured away a top executive from data storage vendor EMC, and put him in charge of HP’s newly realigned data center business, just as competition in that arena is heating up.

David Donatelli, who was president of EMC’s biggest division, will become HP’s new executive vice president for Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking. For those counting at  home, HP has only nine other executives with the rank of EVP.

The announcement seems to indicate a new focus on the data center business, just as some other companies are making their presence known in that market. Cisco, the networking company, says it’s going to sell servers. Oracle, the software company, is buying Sun, which makes servers.

As the big tech companies vie to offer an integrated array of data center products – storage, servers, networking and software — HP says its own networking business, known as ProCurve, will be moved alongside the enterprise servers and storage business under Donatelli’s purview.

(ProCurve head Marius Haas will report to Donatelli. HP said the former head of servers and storage, senior vice president Scott Stallard, is retiring after 34 years with the company.)

HP acknowledged the trend in its announcement, saying: “As the future of computing moves toward converged platforms of servers, storage and networking, this combination accelerates the drive for efficiency and innovation.”

Donatelli will report to Ann Livermore, the EVP whose Technology Solutions Group is the major division of HP that sells computers and software to business customers. She also oversees EDS, the giant IT services contractor that HP bought last year.