AMD Appoints ex-Sun VP as Chief Marketing Officer

Chip manufacturer Advanced Micro Devices has just announced the appointment of Nigel Dessau as chief marketing officer. The company's newest human asset joined AMD after 22 years of technology sales and marketing experience accumulated at the world's biggest server vendors, IBM and Sun.

The new company chief marketing officer will be responsible for AMD's global marketing, image and campaign strategies, and will be directly reporting to the company's chief executive officer, Hector Ruiz.

Prior to his appointment as chief marketing officer with AMD, Dessau has worked for Sun Microsystems as senior vice president of storage marketing and senior vice president of alliances and licensing. However, his career started at US-based conglomerate IBM, where he spent 19 years. During his stay at IBM, Dessau was appointed business unit executive for IBM Virtualization Solutions, and staged the worldwide launch of the IBM zSeries eServer.

"Nigel's customer knowledge and experience working for IBM and Sun are tremendous assets as AMD charts a new course for the industry with initiatives such as Accelerated Computing," said Dirk Meyer, AMD's president and COO. "As we deliver platforms and solutions to best meet our customers' needs, we will lean heavily on Nigel - who has a proven track record of developing and executing clear, compelling global marketing campaigns."

This is the second important appointment for AMD this month, as the company previously added Ahmed Mahmoud, an ex-Dell vice president to its executive staff. It seems like AMD is collecting high-profile personnel for its own use, but at the same time, recent reports claim that the company plans a massive staff layoff for the next quarter.

AMD has had a lot of problems lately with its CPU business and has been missing its financial expectations for quite a while now. Hiring IT industry veterans might solve some of the company's issues, but AMD has a long way ahead until it fully gets back on track.