Microsoft business reshuffling puts the spotlight on four execs
In a sweeping corporate reorganization to focus on the company’s shift from a software provider to a products and services business, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has announced changes to his executive team to support a new structure that divides the company into four divisions.
In a sweeping corporate reorganization to focus on the company’s
shift from a software provider to a products and services business, Microsoft
CEO Steve Ballmer has announced changes to his executive team to support a new
structure that divides the company into four divisions.
[BACKGROUND: Ballmer
unveils broad Microsoft reorganization
SECURITY: Microsoft:
Windows 8, Internet Explorer, Office, Visual Studio, Lync are all vulnerable]
The new groups are Operating Systems Engineering, Devices
and Studios Engineering, Applications and Services Engineering and Cloud and
Enterprise Engineering.
Heading up these groups are:
Executive Vice President of Devices and Studios Julie Larson-Green (former
Corporate Vice President of Windows Engineering);Executive
Vice President of Operating Systems Terry Myerson (former corporate vice
president Windows Mobile);Executive Vice President of Applications and
Services Qi Lu (former president
of Microsoft Online Services);Executive
Vice President, Cloud and Enterprise Satya Nadella (former president of the
Server & Tools Business).
Larson-Green’s
previous role is trimmed back a bit, pulling away her responsibility for
Windows and limiting her to running Microsoft hardware programs and development
of games. That means she’ll head up the Surface tablets and Xbox, filling the
void left by Don Mattrick when he left Microsoft last week to head up Zynga.
Julie Larson-Green
Last fall
Larson-Green was vice president of program management for the Windows
experience when then-president of Windows and Windows Live, Steven Sinofsky
quit right after launching Windows 8 and introducing Microsoft’s Surface
tablet. In the aftermath, she was promoted to head up Windows Engineering.
Until then her
experience had been all in software, having worked on the user experience for
Internet Explorer and managing programs, UI design and R and D for Windows 7
and Windows 8. In the past Ballmer has praised her technical expertise, design
skills and communication abilities.
[MICROSOFT: Purges, personalities & pursuing other opportunities]
Terry Myerson
Myerson’s shift to head up engineering of operating systems gives him authority over not just Windows Phone but also Windows 8, which could help advance Microsoft’s goal of
making it easier to write applications that run on both platforms. He is also in charge of operating systems for Xbox.
He led the Microsoft
Exchange team for eight years before running the Windows Phone division.
Lu is very important
to business customers as his job puts him in charge of research and development
for Microsoft Office, Office 365, SharePoint, Exchange, Yammer, Lync, Skype,
Bing, Bing Apps, and MSN. He also heads up the Advertising Platforms and Business
group.
Qi Lu
His previous
responsibility was for search, portal and online advertising efforts, which
included Bing. Before coming to Microsoft he worked for 10 years at Yahoo,
where he also worked on search and advertising.
Satya Nadella
Nadella’s role
remains pretty much the same, building and running the company’s computing
platforms, developer tools and cloud services. He deals closely with developers
and promotes Microsoft’s concept of the Cloud OS – a blend of Windows Server
and Windows Azure cloud services to provide flexible cloud resources and
support hybrid clouds.
Windows Server, SQL
Server, Visual Studio, System Center and Windows Azure fall under his purview.
Tim Greene covers Microsoft and unified communicationsMostly Microsoft blog.tgreene@nww.com and@Tim_Greene.
for Network World and writes the
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