Diane Bryant, the former head of Intel Corp.’s data center business, is joining Alphabet as Google Cloud’s chief operating officer.
Bryant, who was a high profile leader at Intel, is retiring from the chipmaker effective Dec. 1. She's not been at Intel since taking a leave of absence in May to attend to a personal family matter. At the time, the company said she would return to the chipmaker in a new leadership capacity after six to eight months.
Bryant headed the data business since 2012 and had been with Intel for 32 years. Diane Greene, senior vice president of Google Cloud, announced the move in a blog post.
According to an Intel regulatory filing, Bryant and the company will have an agreement “to certain restrictions on the use of confidential information and on solicitation of Intel employees, and will grant a customary release.”
Intel will also make a separation payment of $4.5 million to Bryant.
Bryant had run Intel’s data center business, an important growth engine for the company as its PC business adjusts to a shrinking PC market. Just a month before her leave, she had been promoted to group president of the Data Center Group.
Because of the length of Bryant's planned absence, Intel had already installed a new head of the data center business. Navin Shenoy took the Data Center Group's GM role in May.
Greene praised Bryant’s long technology career and engineering background.
“Diane’s strategic acumen, technical knowledge and client focus will prove invaluable as we accelerate the scale and reach of Google Cloud,” she wrote.
Under Bryant, she earned CEO Brian Krzanich's praise as Intel’s data center business expanded beyond servers to include network and storage across end-uses and product lines. Its business models were also extended.
In February, Bryant outlined how Intel had become a data center-first company, a major symbolic shift for a company that had become synonymous with the PC for decades.