February 14th, 2008
Microsoft reorg: Who's in; who's out
On February 14, Microsoft announced a corporate reorganization affecting many of its divisions.
As with any Microsoft early-year reorg — which typically occur after the company’s fiscal mid-year reviews — there are winners and losers. Check out my slideshow of who’s in and who’s out as a result of today’s changes.
As of today’s reorg announcement, a bunch of execs got fancy new titles and promotions. A few veterans are out — or on their way out. Keep in mind that some of the execs mentioned in today’s official press release from Microsoft actually announced their departures months ago. Microsoft swept up all of the big comings and goings into today’s announcement for simplicity’s sake (not to mention to keep the noise about executive departures to a minimum).
The biggest winner in Microsoft’s Valentine’s Day reorg, in my opinion, was Bill Veghte. Veghte used to be Corporate Vice President of the Windows Business Group. Now he is Senior vice president of the newly merged Online Services & Windows Business Group. Vehghte’s “expanded role” calls for him to spearhead “all end-user business strategy, sales and marketing across Windows Client, Windows Live, MSN and Search. In addition, he will continue to have shared responsibility for OEM sales.”
(At Microsoft, a Senior VP title outweighs a Corporate VP one, for those trying to make sense of the ever-changing Microsoft org chart.)
Check out the slideshow of Who’s Hot and Who’s Not — after today’s Microsoft reorg.
The biggest mystery, post-reorg, remains Senior Vice Presient and former aQuantive CEO Brian McAndrews. No new title, no noticeable new responsibilities — yet. Company watchers are betting on McAndrews to become the new head of the Yahoo acquisition (whenever and if ever that deal is consumated.)
Who’s on the outs after today’s reorg?
* Online Services Business chief Steve Berkowitz is leaving, as previously rumored, (though not until August 2008).
* Mobile Communications chief Pieter Knook is out and replaced by former Server and Tools manager Andrew Lees.
* Former Windows marketing chief Mike Sievert is out, replaced by Brad Brooks, who is now Corporate Vice President of Windows Consumer Product Marketing. (Interesting that the word “consumer” is in there. Microsoft has had an informal division between consumer and business marketing in Windows, but it’s rare to see anyone’s title clearly call it out.)
* Sanjay Parthasarathy, former Corporate VP of Developer and Platform Evangelism, is out of his DPE spot, as reported a month ago; his replacement is Walid Abu-Habda. Still no word on what Parthasarathy’s next move is. Last word from him was he intended to stay at Microsoft in some new role. Update: Now we know what that role is: Corporate Vice President, Startup Business Accelerator.
* Scott Di Valerio, former head of Microsoft’s OEM business who resigned months ago, is gone and now replaced by Corporate VP Steve Guggenheimer.
Other newly minted Microsoft Senior VPs, as of today, include:
- Chris Capossela, senior vice president, Information Worker Product Management Group.
- Kurt DelBene, senior vice president, Office Business Platform Group. \
- Antoine Leblond, senior vice president, Office Productivity Applications Group.
- Andy Lees, senior vice president, Mobile Communications Business. Lees takes the place of Pieter Knook, who is joining Vodafone.
- Satya Nadella, senior vice president, Search, Portals & Advertising Group. According to the Microsoft press release, “Nadella will continue to lead Microsoft’s engineering efforts across Live Search, Microsoft adCenter, and Subscriptions, Points and Billing platforms. He will also take over responsibility for MSN programming and engineering.” Steven Sinofsky is still the Senior VP in charge of engineering for Windows Live (and Windows).
- S. Somasegar, senior vice president, Developer Division.
A few more promotions that I see as interesting:
* Scott Guthrie, a former general manager in Microsoft’s Developer Division, gets a promotion and a new title of corporate vice president, .NET Developer Platform. His responsibilities don’t change, however, according to Microsoft: He will continue to oversee “several development teams responsible for delivering Microsoft Visual Studio developer tools and Microsoft .NET Framework technologies for building client and Web applications.”
* Roz Ho — one time head of Microsoft Mac Business Unit turned general manager working on a secret project in the Microsoft Mobile and Entertainment Division — is now officially corporate vice president, Premium Mobile Offerings. “Ho will lead the new Danger Inc. team and continue to focus on various consumer-focused premium mobile offerings in mobile communications,” Microsoft officials said. (Can you say Pink and Purple?)
What else do you make of these latest organizational changes?
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