SiliconBeat

It looks like there’s been a resolution of sorts to the dispute over whether a former EMC storage executive can go to work for Hewlett-Packard as head of HP’s newly converged data center hardware business.

David Donatelli will be HP’s new executive vice president for enterprise servers and networking, but he won’t have “storage” in his title for another year.

Last month, HP announced it had hired away Donatelli, who was the longtime president of EMC’s data storage division. HP said Donatelli would fill a new position responsible for its servers, storage and networking business, as part of the company’s strategy for more closely integrating the three hardware segments.

But EMC argued that its contract with Donatelli precluded him from going to work for a competing business for one year. That led a Massachusetts court to issue a temporary order last month, barring Donatelli from taking the new job at HP.

Now the court has said Donatelli can join HP, but with some restrictions. HP said Tuesday that Donatelli will have a slightly shorter title than planned. Senior vice president Dave Roberson will continue to manage HP’s storage division, but he’ll report to another executive vice president, Ann Livermore, instead of Donatelli.

In a brief statement Tuesday, HP said it was “pleased with the court’s recent decision.”