AMD has announced a significant step in its multi-year strategic transformation. On 1st July the company will create two business groups. The new structure will be implemented by Dr Lisa Su, who has been promoted to Chief Operating Officer.
AMD President and Chief Executive Officer Rory Read gave us some background on the decision; "During the past two years, we have been successfully executing our three-step strategy to reset, accelerate and ultimately transform AMD," said Read. "Today’s announcement represents the next step in our long-term strategic plan to help ensure AMD’s operating structure and culture are better aligned to drive consistent growth and profitability by leveraging our leadership IP to create differentiated products that help our customers win across a diversified set of high-growth markets."
The company will consolidate its current business units into just two expanded business groups as follows:
- The Computing and Graphics Business Group will combine AMD’s client, consumer graphics and professional graphics businesses, as well as their related product engineering and sales functions.
- The Enterprise, Embedded and Semi-Custom Business Group will combine AMD’s server, embedded, dense server and semi-custom businesses, as well as their related product engineering and sales functions.
AMD Chief Sales Officer John Byrne has been appointed senior vice president and general manager responsible for leading the Computing and Graphics Business Group, and will report to Dr Su. Meanwhile Dr Su will be the acting lead for The Enterprise, Embedded and Semi-Custom Business Group.
In the email HEXUS received from AMD, CEO Rory Read explained that Dr Su has been a key player in AMD's recent success and will be able to contribute even more as COO. Dr Su only joined AMD in 2012 but previous to this she served in engineering and leadership positions over a 13 year career with IBM.
AMD trimmed its losses in its most recent quarterlies as sales for its graphics cards saw a 28 per cent improvement.