Microsoft reorganization: A quick look at who’s in charge now
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.
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. Image Alt Text
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.
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. Image Alt Text
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.
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