Microsoft has today made an announcement that it is splitting up its business as it creates new “Experiences & Devices” and “Cloud + AI Platform” divisions along with big leadership changes. The restructuring comes as the Microsoft Windows chief, Terry Myerson will be leaving the company after 21 years.
Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, detailed the major news in an email to employees and blog post, starting with the restructuring.
Today, I’m announcing the formation of two new engineering teams to accelerate our innovation and better serve the needs of our customers and partners long into the future.
Nadella shared that he believes the shake up will help Microsoft meet the company’s responsibilities and challenges looking ahead, like what’s next for its ‘intelligent cloud’ and ‘intelligent edge’, how fast AI is progressing, and how our physical and virtual realities are merging with AR.
Today’s announcement enables us to step up to this opportunity and responsibility across all our Solution Areas.
Here are the details on the first new team along with leadership changes:
Moving forward, Rajesh Jha will expand his existing responsibilities to lead a new team focused on Experiences & Devices. The purpose of this team is to instill a unifying product ethos across our end-user experiences and devices.
[…]
- Devices: Panos Panay will now serve as our Chief Product Officer and will lead our devices vision and further our product ethos across hardware and software boundaries for our first-party devices, while creating new categories and opportunities for the entire ecosystem. He will be the key leader ensuring end-to-end devices business execution excellence.
- Windows: Joe Belfiore will continue leading our Windows experiences and will drive Windows innovation in partnership with the PC and device ecosystem. The future of Windows is bright as we continue to innovate across new scenarios and device form factors, and more deeply connect to our Microsoft 365 offerings. Joe will share more about the Windows roadmap at Build.
- 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 our Windows Enterprise deployment and management efforts with even tighter alignment across Microsoft 365 and will partner closely with the EMS teams within Cloud + AI Platform.
Here are the specifics on the second new team as a part of the restructuring:
Second, Scott Guthrie will expand his existing responsibilities to lead a new team focused on Cloud + AI Platform. The purpose of this team is to drive platform coherence and compelling value across all layers of the tech stack starting with the distributed computing fabric (cloud and edge) to AI (infrastructure, runtimes, frameworks, tools and higher-level services around perception, knowledge and cognition).
There are a host of other leadership changes and updates as well. Nadella notes his gratitude to Myerson for his 21 years of work and that he will stay on in the short-term during the transition.
Terry has been instrumental in helping me arrive at this new organizational structure, and I deeply appreciate his leadership and insight as we’ve worked through the opportunity that lies ahead. Over the past several years, Terry and the WDG team transformed Windows to create a secure, always up-to-date, modern OS. His strong contributions to Microsoft over 21 years from leading Exchange to leading Windows 10 leave a real legacy. I want to thank Terry for his leadership on my team and across Microsoft. He will work with me on the transition over the coming months.
In closing, Nadella notes the work ahead of the company with customers with “unmet and unarticulated needs” as fuel to motivate their progress.
To truly get the best impact from our efforts, we will have to push ourselves to transcend Conway’s law. Having a deep sense of customers’ unmet and unarticulated needs must drive our innovation. We can’t let any organizational boundaries get in the way of innovation for our customers. This is why a growth mindset culture matters.
You can find the full statement on the major changes on Microsoft’s website.
Image via Business Insider
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