Windows chief Terry Myerson is leaving Microsoft, and CEO Satya Nadella announced that the company is embarking on another major reorganization of its top management, creating two new engineering teams and new roles and responsibilities for several executives.
Nadella says this is part of the company to "accelerate innovation", explaining that the future now lies in "intelligent cloud and intelligent edge".
First of all, there will be an entirely new group called Experiences & Devices, led by Rajesh Jha. Nadella explains that the primary goal of this division is to ensure a single product across all end-user experiences and devices. To do that, Microsoft is making the following changes, as Nadella announced in a memo sent to employees:
- Devices: Panos Panay will now serve as our Chief Product Officer and will lead our device visions and further product offerings at the hardware and software boundaries of devices, creating new categories and opportunities for the entire ecosystem
- Windows: Joe Belfiore will continue to lead our Windows experiences and drive Windows innovation in partnership with the PC and device ecosystem
- New experiences and technology: Kudo Tsunoda will continue to lead this team to define how we engage users with high-value experiences to help them achieve more
- Enterprise Mobility and Management: Brad Anderson will continue to lead Windows Enterprise deployment and management efforts
A second new team called Cloud + AI Platform will be led by Scott Guthrie and will build on several changes starting with the promotion of Jason Zander to executive vice president of Azure. A further general change includes the following:
- The Windows Platform Group led by Harv Bhela, Henry Sanders, and Michael Fortin will join Jason's team
- Business AI: The customer service, marketing and sales teams, previously led by Gurdeep Singh Pall, will join James Phillips' Business Applications Team.
- Universal Platform Store and Commerce: Eric Lockard and his team will also join the Cloud + AI Platform team
- AI Perception & Mixed Reality: Alex Kipman will lead this new team, which brings together all speech, vision, MR and additional perception capabilities into one team
- AI Cognitive Services & Platform: Eric Boyd will lead this new team, including AI Platform, AI Fundamentals, Azure ML, AI Tools, and Cognitive Services. Joseph Sirosh and his team will join this new team. Eric and his team will take over leadership across all AI-related areas from Harry Shum and will work closely with AI+R.
In the end, Nadella reminds us that the ultimate goal is to work together as “One Microsoft” that can help drive innovation and the power of a growth mindset.
