Rom Kosla’s account of Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s technology agenda describes a shift from building the foundation to improving how the whole business works. After moving HPE to private cloud infrastructure and consolidating more than 20 ERP systems into one SAP instance, his priorities turned to end-to-end process improvement, service stability, governed generative AI and measurable business outcomes.
Who is Rom Kosla?
HPE appointed Kosla as chief information officer in June 2023; the company said he joined in July 2023. HPE identified him as senior vice-president and CIO in an article published on 11 May 2026. That publication is the latest title confirmation available here, rather than a live status check.
Before HPE, Kosla was CIO at Retail Business Services, the services company of Ahold Delhaize USA, and at PepsiCo. HPE’s appointment announcement also records earlier roles at Deloitte and Nestlé. He holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Cleveland State University and an MBA from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
At HPE, his remit includes technology strategy, AI and data, e-commerce, application development, ERP and security operations. He also has an outward-facing advisory role with customers. Kosla describes HPE as “customer zero” for its products, while preferring “customer gold” to emphasize that internal use should help the company create better products.
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How HPE’s IT agenda moved from transformation to optimization
Kosla said HPE had spent roughly two years moving to a private-cloud installation on company hardware and consolidating more than 20 ERP systems under one SAP instance. With those foundations in place, he said the question was no longer simply whether a system had been transformed, but whether the resulting processes worked efficiently from beginning to end.
End-to-end value streams
Instead of optimizing isolated applications, Kosla focuses on complete value streams. In lead-to-quote, that can mean shortening quote turnaround, pricing accurately and removing unnecessary manual work. The best design may differ by sales channel and distributor model.
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The same approach applies elsewhere: finance may prioritize closing the books faster, while supply-chain teams may need better forecasts of the raw materials required for production. The common measure is business performance across the chain, not an individual application’s technical upgrade.
The “right to play, right to win” test
Kosla says HPE prioritizes initiatives by asking whether it has the skills to act and whether funding, business resources and capacity are available to deliver. “We spend time focusing on which areas offer the right to play and the right to win,” he said in the 2025 interview.
That framework distinguishes an attractive idea from an executable one: a project must fit HPE’s capabilities and have enough organizational capacity to produce a result.
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How HPE is using generative AI internally
Kosla described ChatHPE as an internal generative-AI hub powered by Azure and OpenAI technology. Reported use cases included legal contract review, customer-service work in operations, reusing campaign material in marketing and finance analytics. Employees also use Microsoft Copilot, while developers use GitHub Copilot.
“There are lots of conversations around how we unlock the benefits of AI in the company.”
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Special offer. See more information about Outbyte and uninstall instructions. Please review EULA and Privacy policy.— Rom Kosla, HPE CIO, quoted in the 2025 Computer Weekly interview
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Governance before broad adoption
Kosla said HPE built an internal platform with significant governance. His concern about ordinary AI tools was specifically about HPE’s control over data entered into, and extracted from, those tools; it should not be read as a universal claim about every commercial AI service.
The descriptions above are reported internal practices at the time of the interview, not an independent audit of deployment, security controls or business results.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Why service stability became a priority
Kosla associated the private-cloud and ERP work with a high number of incidents and made stabilization a major objective. He compared service-ticket volumes at PepsiCo and HPE:
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| Organization | Employees | Tickets | Qualification |
|---|---|---|---|
| PepsiCo | About 300,000 | About 600,000 | Figure reported by Kosla in the 2025 interview |
| HPE | About 60,000 | A couple of million | Figure reported by Kosla in the 2025 interview |
Kosla said HPE was targeting an approximately 85% reduction in its ticket total. He also reported 99% uptime across quoting and financial systems. These are interviewee-reported figures, not independently audited benchmarks, and they describe the situation and goals discussed in 2025.
What “business velocity” means to Kosla
Kosla frames IT value around outcomes: less manual friction, better access to data and coordinated planning across raw materials, manufacturing and product delivery. He favors shorter planning horizons and work that can be completed in a sprint window instead of waiting for annual planning approvals.
“We don’t even like to use the word speed – we say velocity, because velocity equals direction, and that’s crucial for us.”
— Rom Kosla, HPE CIO, quoted in the 2025 Computer Weekly interview
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In his view, the CIO role is converging further with business leadership. He expects closer cooperation between IT and finance as cost scrutiny increases, while cybersecurity remains a continuing priority. Those are Kosla’s expectations, not a settled rule for every organization.
Why SAP capacity and resilience remain CIO concerns
In a separate HPE article published on 11 May 2026, Kosla wrote that the company’s SAP S/4HANA roadmap encountered infrastructure approaching its limits as business growth accelerated. He presented capacity planning, architecture, resilience and operational readiness as CIO responsibilities. That later perspective shows that foundational transformation does not end the work: growth can make infrastructure capacity and reliability urgent again.
Quick Recap
What this interview says about modern IT leadership
- Transformation is a phase, not the finish line: after private cloud and ERP consolidation, attention moved to process performance.
- Process scope matters: lead-to-quote, financial close and supply planning cross application boundaries.
- AI adoption needs controls: HPE’s described model paired practical use cases with an internally governed platform.
- Reliability is a business metric: ticket reduction and uptime were treated as conditions for value delivery.
- Direction matters as much as pace: Kosla’s “velocity” language links faster delivery to a clear business objective.
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