San Jose, CA—Western Digital appointed David Goeckeler as chief executive officer. In addition, he was named a member of the Western Digital Corp. board of directors. The appointment was effective March 9, 2020. Goeckeler comes to Western Digital from Cisco; there he served as executive vice president and general manager of its $34 billion Networking and Security business. In addition, Goeckeler succeeds Steve Milligan, who previously announced his retirement.
“David is a transformative leader with an exceptional track record of driving highly profitable, core businesses at scale; while innovating successful business strategies that expanded into new markets and generated new revenue sources,” said Matthew Massengill, chairman of the board. “With experience as a software engineer as well as running large semiconductor development projects, his breadth of technology expertise; business acumen; and history of building and operating world-class organizations make him the right person to lead Western Digital in a world increasingly driven by applications and data.”
Western Digital Corp. New CEO
David Goeckeler led Cisco’s global team of more than 25,000 engineers. He oversaw its networking and security strategy and market acceleration. This included development operations for the company’s technology portfolio and strategic acquisitions. A 19-year Cisco veteran, Goeckeler also led the definition and development of the best product and technology portfolio in Cisco’s history.
Prior to that role, Goeckeler was the leader of Cisco’s Security Business. As such, he was instrumental in defining Cisco’s threat-centric security strategy. He also was pivotal in transitioning the business to a software and recurring revenue-based model and returning the business to share gaining growth. Under his leadership, the Security Group acquired as well as integrated multiple companies.
“The industry is facing an exciting inflection point where customers of every size, vertical and geography are deploying business infrastructure that is software-driven, enabled by data and powered by the cloud. This megatrend has only just now reached an initial stage of adoption and will drive a massive wave of new opportunity,” said Goeckeler.
“In this IT landscape, the explosive growth of connected devices will continue fueling an ever-increasing demand for access to data. With large-scale hard disk drive and semiconductor memory franchises, Western Digital is strongly positioned to capitalize on this emerging opportunity as well as push the boundaries of both software and physical hardware innovation within an extremely important layer of the technology stack.”
“On behalf of Western Digital employees worldwide, I am delighted to welcome David to Western Digital. He joins our company at an exciting and promising time; I wish him great success as he leads Western Digital in its next chapter,” added Steve Milligan.
In addition, Milligan will remain with Western Digital in an advisory role until September 2020 to ensure a smooth transition.
