For the last few days there had been many rumors regarding a major restructuring at Microsoft. Now, bang on schedule, Microsoft has announced the major rejig which now combines the Windows and Windows Phone divisions under a newly formed operating systems division which will be led by Terry Myerson.
The restructuring is part of a new ‘One Microsoft’ philosophy. Already, Microsoft has outlined that from now onwards it’s a devices and services company.
As mentioned above, the former Windows Phone chief Terry Myerson will take over the new operating systems engineering group that will include Windows, Windows Phone and even the Xbox OS.
Julie Larson-Green will lead the new devices and studios engineering group. In this division she will be in charge of Surface, Xbox and all PC related accessories.
A separate applications and services engineering group will be led by former Bing head Qi Lu. This division will include the various Microsoft applications including Office, services and search products like Bing. Current, Office division head Kurt DelBene will be retiring from the company.
Satya Nadella who was leading Microsoft’s serves and tools division, will now lead the newly formed cloud and enterprise engineering division. He will be overseeing backend technologies like datacentres, databases, and other enterprise technologies.
Eric Rudder will continue to lead Microsoft Research, but Rick Rashid will be moving to the operating systems engineering division.
Former Windows CFO Tami Reller will now lead marketing for Microsoft, and Mark Penne will take a broad view of marketing strategy.
Tony Bates, who headed Skype, will take over the new business development and evangelism group.
Overall, these sweeping changes have been made to make Microsoft a more nimble company so that it can compete with the break neck product upgrade cycles of companies like Google.
CEO Steve Ballmer sent out a memo to the 90,000+ Microsoft employees stating “One strategy, united together, with great communication, decisiveness and positive energy is the only way to fly.” He notes the company’s successes, “but we all want more, let’s go.”
