Nist led HP's NonStop division, which built very high-end machines used for the heart of the New York Stock Exchange and other demanding tasks. She worked at the division when it was the independent Tandem Computers company, acquired in 1997 by Compaq Computer and subsumed within HP in 2002.
Nist long led the NonStop group, but Martin Fink took over in May. Most recently, Nist was vice president of quality for HP's Enterprise Storage and Servers Division.
At Penguin, Nist will report to Chief Executive Enrico Pesatori, a familiar boss: He also was CEO of Tandem and ran the Compaq division that bought it.
Penguin sells Linux servers and, through its 2003 acquisition of Scyld Computing, clusters of Linux machines linked into high-performance technical computing systems.
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Discuss: HP server exec leaves for Linux firm
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