Microsoft Undergo Major Company Reshuffle

Microsoft officials on Thursday announced details of the latest companywide reorganization, designed
to help the company make itself into a leaner, meaner devices and services machine.


First order of business: Steve Ballmer stays on as CEO. There's no change in
leadership at the very top. And basically all the other new "winners" in the
reorg are already household names at the company.


The new Microsoft is not going to be cleaved cleanly along devices and
services lines, as some had thought and heard. The new organization is a little
more complicated than that.


Gone are the current five Microsoft business units -- Windows, Server and
Tools, Microsoft Business Division, Entertainment and Devices and Online
Services -- each with its own president and chief financial officer.


Going forward, all three of Microsoft's operating systems will be lumped
together into a single division, so as to share more technologies and components. And
marketing and business strategy for all of Microsoft's product lines is moving
out of the individual business units and into centralized, cross-company
groups. 


These changes will be phased in over the next several months, though some of
Microsoft's roughly 100,000 employees will begin working almost immediately with
their new groups. (From what I am hearing, there are no layoffs today as part of
this changing of the guard.)


Who's in, who's out
In the new organization, reporting to Ballmer are heads of four new
engineering groups, along with a handful of executives in charge of new
centralized functional groups. Most of the new leaders are familiar names to
those who know the company. The four new engineering chiefs:


Terry Myerson, current head of Windows Phone engineering, is
now the head of the new Operating Systems Group at the company. Myerson is going
to run engineering for the Windows, Windows Phone and Xbox operating
systems. Anything that attaches directly to these OSes, such as Xbox Live, also
reports into this new OS division. All of these OSes are currently running on a
common "core" based on Windows NT.


Qi Lu, current head of Microsoft's Online Services Division,
is now the head of the new Applications and Services group. Lu is in charge of
engineering for Bing, MSN, Office 365, Office servers and clients, Dynamics CRM
and ERP, Skype, Yammer and Lync.

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