Rory P. Read is an American business executive. He is the CEO of

Vonage Vonage (, legal name Vonage Holdings Corp.) is an American cloud communications provider operating as a subsidiary of Ericsson. Headquartered in Holmdel Township, New Jersey, the organization was founded in 1998 as ''Min-X'' as a provider of resi ...

, a position he assumed on July 1, 2020. He previously served as EVP chief operating executive at

Dell Dell is an American based technology company. It develops, sells, repairs, and supports computers and related products and services. Dell is owned by its parent company, Dell Technologies. Dell sells personal computers (PCs), servers, data ...

as well as president and CEO of

Virtustream Virtustream was a provider of cloud computing management software, infrastructure as a service ("IaaS") and managed services to enterprises, governments and service providers. It was a subsidiary of Dell Technologies. Virtustream was headquart ...

. He was formerly the chief integration officer at Dell, with responsibility for planning the integration of Dell and EMC. From August 2011 to October 2014 he served as president and chief executive officer of

AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufactur ...

. He has also worked for IBM and

Lenovo Lenovo Group Limited, often shortened to Lenovo ( , ), is a Chinese Multinational corporation, multinational technology company specializing in designing, manufacturing, and marketing consumer electronics, Personal computer, personal computers, ...

Education

Read graduated ''magna cum laude'' with a bachelor's degree in information systems from

Hartwick College Hartwick College is a private liberal arts college in Oneonta, New York. The institution's origin is rooted in the founding of Hartwick Seminary in 1797 through the will of John Christopher Hartwick. In 1927, the Seminary moved to expand into a ...

Career

IBM

Read spent 23 years at IBM serving in various global leadership roles. He worked in IBM's Asia Pacific region as general manager, Business Innovation Services for Asia Pacific. As managing partner for IBM's Business Consulting Services Industrial Sector, Read led the division through a turnaround that significantly improved gross margins, drove new customer acquisitions and generated double digit revenue growth and operating profitability. He was vice president of IBM eBusiness Transformation that produced more than $1 billion in company-wide savings and $21 billion in sales.

Lenovo

Read served as president and chief operating officer of Lenovo Group, Ltd. During Read's five-year tenure at Lenovo he was responsible for driving growth, execution, profitability and performance across a global $16 billion enterprise encompassing over 160 countries. At the time of Read's departure, Lenovo had just marked the seventh straight quarter as the fastest growing PC maker in the world and had become the world's third largest global PC manufacturer.

AMD

Read is the former CEO and president of AMD, where he followed

Dirk Meyer Derrick R. "Dirk" Meyer (born November 24, 1961) is a former Chief Executive Officer of Advanced Micro Devices, serving in the position from July 18, 2008 to January 10, 2011. Education He received a bachelor's degree in computer engineering ...

. Appointed president and CEO in August, 2011, Read served on the company's board of directors. Rory was followed by

Lisa Su Lisa Su (; born 7 November 1969) is a Taiwanese-American business executive and electrical engineer, who is the president, chief executive officer and chair of AMD. Early in her career, Su worked at Texas Instruments, IBM, and Freescale Semi ...

. At AMD, Read inherited a company that had approximately 95% of its revenue driven by the PC market. Read diversified the portfolio to produce revenue of 50% from five new high growth markets, building over US$2 billion in new businesses. Under Read, AMD lowered costs by over 30% (primarily due to employee layoffs) while restructuring AMD debt, strengthening the balance sheet, and returning to non-GAAP profitability. He was responsible for attempting to implement an ambidextrous X86/ARM architecture (AMD has never shipped a single ARM CPU) and the clean sweep of AMD

GPU A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobi ...

s or

APU APU or Apu may refer to: Film and television * ''The Apu Trilogy'', a series of three Bengali films, directed by Satyajit Ray, with the fictional character Apu Roy, comprising: ** ''Pather Panchali'' (''Song of the Little Road'') (1955), the first ...

s in new game consoles during his tenure (with Nintendo being the exception). Read also served as an executive advisor for AMD.

Dell / Virtustream

Read served as the EVP chief operating executive of

, and president and CEO of

, a Dell subsidiary. Read was formerly the chief integration officer at Dell, with responsibility for planning the integration of Dell and EMC. He led a cross-functional team which managed the planning of the proposed acquisition. Previously he was chief operating officer and president of worldwide commercial sales for Dell. He was responsible for Dell's global go-to-market initiatives, omni-channel sales planning and enablement.

Vonage

On June 8, 2020, Read was named the next CEO of

, a business cloud communications provider. He assumed the role on July 1, 2020.

Personal life

Read is married to Mary Savoy-Read, also a graduate of Hartwick College. As of 2011, the couple had four children.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Read, Rory Living people American technology chief executives AMD people American chief operating officers Hartwick College alumni Dell people IBM people Lenovo people 1961 births