Microsoft Corp. on Monday will announce a realignment of its Platforms Group, aimed at optimizing and improving its core Windows businesses.
Microsoft Corp. on Monday will announce a realignment of its Platforms Group, aimed at optimizing and improving its core Windows businesses, officials said.
In an interview with eWEEK on Monday, Jim Allchin, the Group Vice President of Platforms at Microsoft, in Redmond, Wash. said this organizational redesign will be a critical next step in the evolution of the Windows business and the operating system platform, particularly as the company heads towards the
release of the next Windows operating system, code-named Longhorn.
Among the changes is the creation of the Windows Core Operating System Division (COSD), a new, centralized engineering division that will be responsible for the core operating system platform.
That will fall under the leadership of Brian Valentine, who is currently the senior vice president for Windows. He will work exclusively on the engineering, customer and market requirements, architecture, technology, tools, planning and process components of the Windows business.
Allchin said that Microsoft is to align the Windows Business teams more closely with the companys
current profit and loss (P&L) structure.
Changes include having the Windows Client Business, currently under the stewardship of Senior Vice President Will Poole, report directly to Allchin. The Windows Server organization will also now become part of the Server and Tools Business, reporting to senior vice president Eric Rudder.
As part of this change, Bill Veghte, the current corporate vice president for the Windows Server Group, moves to work for Kevin Johnson, Microsofts group vice president of Worldwide Sales, Marketing and Services, where he will lead North America sales and marketing.
Bob Muglia, the senior vice president of the Enterprise Storage and Enterprise Management Divisions, will now also lead the Windows Server effort, adding this to his current responsibilities for Storage and Management products. He will continue to report to Rudder.
In addition, Allchin said he will announce two management changes. Dave Thompson, the corporate vice president of the Windows Server Product Group, will move across to head up the Exchange Team.
Also, after more than 14 years in Windows, Sivaramakichenane Somasegar, the current corporate vice president of the Windows Engineering Services Group, will take over the leadership of the Developer Division and report to Rudder.
So as to ensure that the Windows leadership remains aligned and coordinated around product development, communication, decision-making, and execution, a Windows Leadership Team will also be established. It will be anchored by Valentine, Muglia and Poole.
The Windows Engineering Leadership Team will also be headed by Valentine and focus on the engineering side of the business.
Peter Galli has been a financial/technology reporter for 12 years at leading publications in South Africa, the UK and the US. He has been Investment Editor of South Africa's Business Day Newspaper, the sister publication of the Financial Times of London.He was also Group Financial Communications Manager for First National Bank, the second largest banking group in South Africa before moving on to become Executive News Editor of Business Report, the largest daily financial newspaper in South Africa, owned by the global Independent Newspapers group.
He was responsible for a national reporting team of 20 based in four bureaus. He also edited and contributed to its weekly technology page, and launched a financial and technology radio service supplying daily news bulletins to the national broadcaster, the South African Broadcasting Corporation, which were then distributed to some 50 radio stations across the country.
He was then transferred to San Francisco as Business Report's U.S. Correspondent to cover Silicon Valley, trade and finance between the US, Europe and emerging markets like South Africa. After serving that role for more than two years, he joined eWeek as a Senior Editor, covering software platforms in August 2000.
He has comprehensively covered Microsoft and its Windows and .Net platforms, as well as the many legal challenges it has faced. He has also focused on Sun Microsystems and its Solaris operating environment, Java and Unix offerings. He covers developments in the open source community, particularly around the Linux kernel and the effects it will have on the enterprise.
He has written extensively about new products for the Linux and Unix platforms, the development of open standards and critically looked at the potential Linux has to offer an alternative operating system and platform to Windows, .Net and Unix-based solutions like Solaris.
His interviews with senior industry executives include Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Linus Torvalds, the original developer of the Linux operating system, Sun CEO Scot McNealy, and Bill Zeitler, a senior vice president at IBM.
For numerous examples of his writing you can search under his name at the eWEEK Website at www.eweek.com.
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