Chief Marketeer at AMD Quits Before Barcelona Launch

Published: August 29, 2007

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

It is the job of public companies to put the best face forward on bad news. And after the delays in getting its quad-core "Barcelona" Opteron processors to market and in watching as Intel's less elegant "Clovertown" Xeon processors have allowed it to gain back market share, you probably could not pick a worse time for the chief marketing officer at AMD to step down.

But last week, Henri Richard, chief sales and marketing officer at AMD and often the public face of the company, said that he was leaving AMD beginning in September. AMD's statement stressed that Richard was leaving AMD "of his own accord and on completely amicable terms."

Richard was president of the computer products group at IT distributor Bell Microproducts before coming to AMD in 2002. Prior to that, he was vice president of worldwide sales and support for IBM's Technology Group, the formerly independent division that made circuits, networking gear, and other intellectual property. Richard joined AMD as vice president of worldwide sales, and eventually rose to take over the top marketing and sales position at the company.

If the single-core Rev E Opterons and dual-core Rev F Opterons made Richard's job easy over the past few years, the delays in getting Barcelona chips into the hands of workstation and server makers this summer has made his job harder, but to be fair, a reinvigorated Intel is what is really making the job more difficult. So does AMD's ongoing--and slow going--antitrust lawsuit with Intel.

"After 20 years in the PC industry--and five of the most professionally rewarding years here at AMD--I have decided to make a move to a different business segment," Richard explained in a statement. "I am leaving AMD at a time when the company is in position to break the monopoly that plagues this industry. I am immensely proud of my contribution to AMD, and in particular, of the strong team I leave behind."

AMD's global sales and marketing organization will report directly to Hector Ruiz, the company's chairman and chief executive officer, until a replacement for Richard can be found.

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