David Goeckeler new CEO of Western Digital

American computer hard disk drive manufacturer and data storage company Western Digital has has appointed Cisco executive David Goeckeler as its next chief executive officer and a member of its Board of Directors, effective March 9.

Goeckeler currently leads Cisco's $34 billion networking and security business, its largest business unit.

"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," Matthew Massengill, Chairman of the Board, said in a statement.

"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 organisations make him the right person to lead Western Digital in a world increasingly driven by applications and data."

Goeckeler succeeds Steve Milligan, who previously announced his intended retirement.

"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 and push the boundaries of both software and physical hardware innovation within an extremely important layer of the technology stack." IANS