Management
Frank Harbist
President and CEO
ProStor Systems
Frank Harbist joined Prostor after a career of over 21 years at Hewlett Packard Company highlighted by an extensive record of success in change-related situations including internal startups, M&A and divestitures. He was responsible for the P&L management of several very large multi-national businesses at HP. Today Mr. Harbist is president and chief executive of ProStor Systems. In this role he provides leadership to position the company at the forefront of the storage industry and leads the development of the strategic plan to advance the company's mission. Mr. Harbist’s objectives are to promote revenue, profitability and growth of the overall business by serving its three primary constituents – customers, shareholders and employees. He oversees all company operations to ensure production efficiency, quality, service, and cost-effective management of resources.
Prior to joining ProStor, Mr. Harbist was Vice President of Business Strategy and Operations for HP Business Critical Systems (BCS). There he was responsible for leading the development of BCS’s overall strategic direction and it’s execution to plan. His role extended across all business functions and regional field and service activities and across key external business partners.
Harbist was the VP and General Manager of two separate divisions with HP StorageWorks for the five years preceding his move to BCS. More recently he led the Storage Software Division, responsible for HP’s storage management, data protection software, data migration/movement software, and information management and archival offerings and strategy. Prior to that, he was leader of the Nearline Storage Division, which includes tape drives, libraries and optical jukeboxes providing backup, recovery and long-term removable storage solutions.
Harbist joined HP in Palo Alto, California, in 1987 and held various positions in multiple HP businesses across many functional areas during his 21-year career. He also has extensive international experience, having worked both in Asia and Europe during his HP career.
Harbist was the general manager for Hewlett-Packard Company's Volume Systems (VS) business in 2001-2002, responsible for developing and bringing to market HP's industry-standard server solutions. Prior to becoming the VS general manager, Harbist launched and managed HP's server appliance business as its general manager.
Harbist was also the financial controller for HP's North American Business PC organization for a year and controller of HP's ProCurve Networking Business for two years. During this time he helped successfully manage these organizations through transitions into industry leading growth positions.
Harbist worked in Germany and Boston for HP's (former) Medical Products Group from 1993 to 1998. During this time he helped manage multiple HP businesses and was responsible for supply chain and finance activities. Prior to his work in Europe, Harbist worked for three years in HP's engineering workstations business in Cupertino, California, in both supply chain and finance roles. He also worked in both Hong Kong and Palo Alto in HP's International Field Operations from 1987 to 1990.
Harbist holds an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University and a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Tech.
