Just weeks after being appointed president of Intel Corp.’s Data Center Group, longtime Intel executive Diane Bryant is taking a leave for six to eight months, the company announced today.

Intel attributed the leave to the need for Bryant (pictured) to tend to an unspecified “personal family matter,” and a spokesperson declined to provide additional details. Intel Chief Executive Brian Krzanich said that since the group is too important to leave in the hands of an interim chief, he’s appointing Navin Shenoy as general manager of the group, which brought in $16 billion in sales from processors for servers in data centers and other products last year. Bryant had led the group since 2012.

“Over the past five years, Diane has transformed DCG from a server-centric group to a business that spans servers, network and storage across all end-user segments, and with product lines and business models that extend beyond the traditional,” Krzanich said in a statement. “DCG’s leading products and strategies — driving industry transformations’ to pervasive cloud computing, virtualization of network infrastructure, and adoption of artificial intelligence solutions — have positioned the business to be the growth driver for Intel.”

At least that’s the hope, as Intel want to supply not only private data centers but also private and public cloud providers as Intel’s traditional business, personal computers, has seen a long-term decline in the era of the smartphone. But the group has struggled to grow lately.

In its first quarter, Intel reported last week, the group’s revenue rose only 6 percent, to $4.2 billion, about $200 million short of analysts’ estimates. Intel had forecast revenue in the group to grow by double digits this year, but scaled estimates back to the high single digits earlier this year.

Meanwhile, other companies such as Qualcomm Inc. are angling to get a piece of the market for data center chips, which Intel still dominates. And cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure are getting a lot of business that otherwise would go to companies building their own data centers.

Moreover, operating profit margins in the group have declined, from about 44 percent a year ago to 35 percent in the first quarter. That’s apparently at least partly because, as Intel announced in February, it’s planning to use its latest-generation chip fabrication technologies on data center chips first instead of on PC chips, which means a greater portion of costs is attributed to the Data Center Group.

Bryant joined Intel out of college in 1985. Shenoy, who joined Intel in 1995, most recently has served as general manager of the Client Computing Group. Until succession plans are announced in the next few weeks, Murthy Renduchintala, group president of the Client and Internet of Things Businesses and Systems Architecture and chief engineering officer, will be the group’s acting leader.

Krzanich said he would announce Bryant’s next job when she returns.

Photo: Robert Hof