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Rom Kosla’s account of HPE’s technology agenda describes a company moving from large foundational projects into a harder optimization phase: improving complete business processes, stabilizing service, applying AI inside governed systems and proving IT’s value through business outcomes. Kosla became HPE’s CIO in June 2023 (joining the company in July 2023, according to HPE). An HPE article published 11 May 2026 identifies him as SVP & CIO; that is the latest title confirmation in the available material, not a live status check.
Who is Rom Kosla and what does he run at HPE?
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 BS in Computer Science from Cleveland State University and an MBA from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
At HPE, his remit covers technology strategy, AI and data, e-commerce, application development, ERP and security operations. HPE said the appointment was intended to continue its internal digital transformation and drew on Kosla’s experience with digital front ends and complex distribution and supply chains.
John Schultz, HPE’s executive vice president and chief operating and legal officer, said in the 14 June 2023 appointment announcement: “The performance and agility of our IT team is critical to ensuring our customers and partners have great experiences doing business with us, and that our team members are able to innovate at the speed of business.”
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Kosla describes HPE as “customer zero” for its products: the company should use its own technology in ways that help it create better products for customers. He has also described an outward-facing advisory role with customers. Those are Kosla’s characterizations of his operating model.
From transformation delivery to end-to-end optimization
In the 21 May 2025 Computer Weekly interview, Kosla said HPE had spent about two years moving to a private-cloud installation on company hardware and consolidating more than 20 ERP systems under one SAP instance. His emphasis then shifted from delivering the platforms to improving the complete value streams that run across them.
Why value streams matter
Kosla argues that optimizing one application at a time can miss the delays and manual work between systems and departments. In a lead-to-quote process, for example, the objective is not merely to keep a quoting application available. It is to shorten quote turnaround, price correctly and remove unnecessary human intervention, while recognizing that requirements differ by sales channel and distributor.
The same logic applies elsewhere: financial optimization could mean closing the books faster, while supply-chain optimization could involve predicting the raw materials needed for production. His examples place technology decisions inside operating processes rather than treating applications as isolated projects.
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How he chooses where to invest
Kosla’s prioritization test is whether HPE has both the capability and the capacity to deliver. “We spend time focusing on which areas offer the right to play and the right to win,” he told Computer Weekly. In practical terms, that means checking the available skills, funding, business participation and delivery capacity before committing to an initiative.
What HPE is doing with generative AI
Kosla described ChatHPE as an internal generative-AI hub powered by Azure and OpenAI technology. At the time of the interview, its pipeline included legal contract review, customer-service work in operations, reuse of campaign material in marketing and finance analytics. Employees were also using Microsoft Copilot, while developers used GitHub Copilot.
“There are lots of conversations around how we unlock the benefits of AI in the company,” Kosla said. HPE’s approach, as he described it, was to provide an internal platform with substantial governance rather than leave employees to move sensitive company information through unmanaged tools.
The interview reports HPE’s concerns about what data users enter into ordinary AI tools and what those tools may extract. That is HPE’s stated concern, not a universal finding about every commercial AI service. The source material does not independently audit ChatHPE’s security, deployment scale, accuracy or business results, so the use cases should be read as reported internal plans and practices at that time.
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Stabilizing service after major change
After the private-cloud and ERP work, stabilization became a major priority for Kosla. He associated the transformation period with a high number of incidents and used service-ticket volume to illustrate the difference between HPE and his previous employer.
| Measure | Reported figure | Qualification |
|---|---|---|
| PepsiCo service tickets | About 600,000 | For about 300,000 employees; Rom Kosla’s comparison as quoted by Computer Weekly in 2025 |
| HPE service tickets | A couple of million | For about 60,000 employees; interviewee-reported comparison, not an independent audit |
| HPE reduction objective | About 85% | Kosla’s stated target for reducing HPE’s ticket total |
| Quoting and financial-system uptime | 99% | Kosla’s reported figure for HPE systems in the interview |
These numbers describe Kosla’s account of HPE’s situation and objectives. They are not sector benchmarks, and the available sources do not independently validate them or establish whether the 85% target was achieved.
What the SAP follow-up adds
In an HPE-authored article dated 11 May 2026, Kosla described a later SAP S/4HANA roadmap in which infrastructure was nearing its limits as business growth accelerated. He highlighted capacity planning, architecture, resilience and operational readiness as CIO responsibilities.
This is a separate first-party perspective, not evidence that every outcome discussed in the 2025 interview had already been delivered. It does show that infrastructure headroom and resilience remained active concerns as HPE continued its SAP modernization.
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How Kosla defines business-aligned IT
Kosla’s long-term objective is to connect technology work to measurable business outcomes. He describes business and technology teams working together to remove manual friction, improve access to data and support decisions about raw materials, manufacturing and product delivery.
Velocity rather than speed
He prefers the word “velocity” to “speed” because delivery needs a direction: “We don’t even like to use the word speed – we say velocity, because velocity equals direction, and that’s crucial for us.” The distinction matters in his model: shipping more changes is not useful if teams are moving toward the wrong business result.
Shorter planning horizons
Kosla advocates work that can be completed in achievable sprint windows instead of waiting for annual planning approvals. That approach is intended to shorten the distance between an identified business need and a delivered improvement, while retaining the prioritization test of capability, funding and capacity.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.His expectations for the CIO role
Kosla expects business and IT responsibilities to continue converging. He also anticipates a closer relationship between IT and finance as cost scrutiny increases, alongside continuing cyber priorities. These are his expectations from the interview, not a settled industry consensus.
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Across the interview and the later SAP article, his framework can be read through four operating tensions:
- Transformation versus optimization: building private-cloud and ERP foundations is different from improving the processes that run on them.
- Application scope versus process scope: a reliable individual system may still leave lead-to-quote or supply-chain work slow and manual.
- AI adoption versus governance: practical use cases need an internal control model for data and access.
- Delivery velocity versus service stability: faster change has to coexist with fewer incidents, resilient architecture and dependable operations.
What this interview establishes—and what it does not
The material establishes how Kosla describes HPE’s priorities, examples of internal AI use, the reported service metrics and the decision principles he uses to align IT with the business. It does not provide an independent audit of HPE’s AI controls, a verified industry comparison, or independently measured proof of the ticket-reduction target and uptime figure.
For readers trying to understand HPE’s direction, the clearest conclusion is that the company’s CIO agenda is no longer framed primarily as installing platforms. Kosla presents it as operating those platforms reliably, improving complete business flows and directing scarce technology capacity toward outcomes that matter to customers, employees and the balance sheet.
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