Microsoft Ousts CIO

Microsoft has terminated the employment of its CIO Stuart Scott, who was also a corporate vice president at the software company.

Scott's executive biography on the Microsoft Web site was updated on Nov. 5 with a note saying that "Stuart Scott's employment at Microsoft ended in early November 2007."

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A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that Scott was terminated "after an investigation for violation of company policies."

Microsoft General Manager Shahla Aly and Corporate Vice President Alain Crozier will assume his responsibilities until a replacement is identified, the spokesperson told eWEEK.

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Scott joined Microsoft in July 2005 and reported to Kevin Turner, Microsoft's chief operating officer. Before that, he worked for General Electric Co., where his last position was CIO for several divisions.

At Microsoft, Scott was responsible for the company's IT operations, which covers security, infrastructure, messaging and business applications for the entire company. His responsibilities included supporting Microsoft product groups, corporate business groups, and the global sales and marketing organization.

Part of his responsibility also included overseeing the process known internally at Microsoft as "eating our own dog food," where the IT department deploys and helps manage beta versions of its own products across the company.

This internal beta testing process provides the product development team with important feedback as they move through the engineering process. The Microsoft Web site currently runs on pre-release Windows Server 2008 code, and Windows Vista, Office 2007 and Exchange 2007 were all deployed internally this way.

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