“It’s definitely an exciting time,” Avancena told Techwire via email.
“This role synthesizes everything I love about being a CIO and business partner: the art of the possible, discovering IT’s value with customers; alignment of strategy to actionable, measurable and repeatable results; and application of digital transformation,” he wrote Monday on LinkedIn, adding: “Public service reinforced resilience in leaning into your core mission to help one another. I am grateful for the opportunity to extend my work’s passion and mission with HPE in this exciting role.” Avancena’s last day at Kern County was March 18.
“I am excited that Mac Avancena has joined the HPE GreenLake go-to-market leadership team as the new vice president of HPE GreenLake Solution Areas,” Keith White, executive vice president for HPE GreenLake Cloud Services Commercial Business, said via email. “Mac is an experienced leader with strong industry knowledge and a proven track record of driving strong business results in various industries for the last 25 years.”
The county, a multibillion-dollar agricultural engine and home to four of the country’s top seven producing oil fields, has appointed its Technology Services Manager Fidel Chavez as provisional CITO and leader of the Information Technology Services Division while its chief administrative officer works to appoint a permanent CITO. Chavez is a 22-year employee who, the county said, “has the full support of the Chief Administrative Office to ensure IT services and projects proceed uninterrupted during this transition.”
Kern praised Avancena for “four years of inspiring and transformative leadership,” adding: “Under his direction, our county made numerous technological advancements that have positioned us well for a strong future.”
These no doubt included expanding its existing relationship with HPE in 2020, to boost storage capacity while stabilizing spend, and to move off legacy to HPE’s GreenLake platform, via systems integrator Nth Generation, which brokered the deal. The four-year deal, which deployed in February 2020, enabled Kern to increase its overall storage capacity by 63 percent.
