Microsoft Shakes Up Its Leadership and Internal Structure

http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/17/microsoft-shakes-up-its-leadership-and-internal-structure-as-its-fiscal-year-comes-to-a-close/

by rbanffy • 11 years ago

155 106 11 years ago

techcrunch.com

Roritharr• 11 years ago

As per my comment on the Stephen Elop Thread:

Ex Microsoft Manager went to Nokia, destroyed its Market Value, sold the debris back to Microsoft is now leaving Microsoft again. Time to short whatever company he is going to next. ;)

walterbell• 11 years ago

At least he is assured a permanent place in business school case studies.

jpkeisala• 11 years ago

Nokia lost 17 million euros a day it's market value while Elop was CEO of Nokia. I guess he is going down in the history as one of the worst CEO's. Though, some say he wasn't a mole but was hired to sinking ship but somehow it is hard for me to believe from his actions.

odiroot• 11 years ago

Also killing the most exciting software platform -- Maemo/Meego.

On the other hand we now have Jolla so it's not that bad.

pjmlp8• 11 years ago

He was hired by the Nokia board to do exactly what he did. So blame the greedy board members only looking for their bank accounts.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/terokuittinen/2013/09/24/nokia-a...

http://blogs.marketwatch.com/thetell/2013/09/24/nokia-board-...

freehunter2• 11 years ago

one of the worst CEO's

Leo Apotheker?

untog• 11 years ago

He will always be vilified, but the truth is that Nokia was on the way out anyway, no matter who was in charge.

josu• 11 years ago

So was Apple in 97.

RyJones• 11 years ago

Steve Ballmer destroyed ~3.8 Enrons of shareholder wealth during his reign. http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_1_5/1754661_Shareholder_decimat...

ntakasaki2• 11 years ago

That doesn't even take into account dividends paid or the dotcom boom. My bad for clicking on a low quality non tech forum site.

rbanffy4• 11 years ago

Microsoft has perfected the use of executive outplacement as an offensive weapon. Watching where he goes now will prove entertaining.

Let's just pray he doesn't go to Blackberry. QNX deserves better.

bernadus_edwin2• 11 years ago

Betting website should add this prediction. Elop new company will sell in two years -> 1 : 4

hbharadwaj• 11 years ago

As an ex-management consultant, I don't see any other plays that were possible for Elop. I am going off of the Bloomberg article for some conclusions. He is vilified simply because he became the last CEO of a beloved empire which was already gasping for it's last breaths. His plays were the right plays from a Business Perspective. But at that point, it was already too late and Apple/Google had already conquered the market. The only viable option would have been to re-invent the cell phone.

1. Nokia had a Maps business. Obviously, Elop wanted to see it on the chosen platform. 2. Nokia had a host of apps that they wanted to see on the chosen platform. 3. Google refused to allow modifications to their MADA. 4. Meego/Maemo were not viable/not ready. 5. Microsoft's offer came with an infusion of cash.

(Bloomberg article: http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/magazine/content/11_24/b42320567...)

tomjen32• 11 years ago

I think what most of us hate him for is going the MS route rather than making Android phones. Nokia used to make great phones, but with sub-par OS. Why not combine the best of both worlds?

tdicola• 11 years ago

Samsung rose to power as the biggest (and most profitable) Android manufacturer during the same time Nokia made its big (company breaking) bet on Windows Phone. If Nokia had gone with Android perhaps they could have been the dominant Android hardware...

ChuckMcM• 11 years ago

I agree, and everyone loves to hate the bad guy but what I find interesting is that my wife loves her Lumia phone running Windows, she really really wants a Lumia 640 and they are just barely becoming available in the US after a lot of really great reviews in Europe. There is a small but vocal group of people who could be excellent advocates here and logistics issues? or something are plaguing the roll out. That is a bigger systemic problem. Hopefully aligning both windows and hardware will highlight situations where you have a hardware 'winner' that is under funded.

sangnoir2• 11 years ago

He is vilified simply because he became the last CEO of a beloved empire which was already gasping for it's last breaths

That's being overly generous to Elop. The 'Burning Platform' memo was by his own volition and it played a big part in the decline. This essay nails what Elop did wrong[1] (a bit over-the-top though). Namely, he called his own product crap, and when he distributed the memo, Nokia had no solution ready - they were waiting on Microsoft (Osborne effect). "Hey guys, our phones are currently crap. That Maemo phone you're about to buy - we're discontinuing it. We will have awesome ones sometime in the future though. Remember to by a Nokia ;-)".

1. http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2011/08/coining...

nivla• 11 years ago

I am not sure if I agree with the statement that Nokia's market share were destroyed by MS. If I recall Nokia was on its downfall even before Apple's iPhone came into market. I grew up with the 3330, so I always have a soft corner for them, it was my first phone and lasted forever. However, with the emergence of the iPhone, Nokia's fate was sealed. Most people here on HN including me considered Nokia DOA and it wasn't until the emergence of Lumia phones with its incredible Camera that people started to take notice. The comments went from "pfft DOA" to "I would totally consider if they made one in android!".

Strategically I think it was a better plan for Nokia to go with Windows regardless of the CEO. Apple doesn't do partnerships and the only other popular option was Android, which was ruled by Samsung and to compete against them would be to compete against a Goliath. So indirectly I think MS did help them even though it was for their own gains.

Also keep in mind, only the phone division was sold to MS. The rest of the company is intact and still trading in the stock market.

rurban• 11 years ago

And a new unofficial national holiday for Finland. Finally!

fredgrott• 11 years ago

side note: MS does not pay premiums when buying companies..ever

smithkl42• 11 years ago

Interesting to see that Scott Guthrie is now getting talked about in the same breath as the MS senior management. His career is on a tear. Hopefully he can continue to help with the turnaround.

smiler• 11 years ago

He was already there.. he's continuing in the same role

mhomde• 11 years ago

Ugh, I sure hope Scott doesn't become an example of the Peter Principle. He strikes me as a very knowledgeable nice guy that wouldn't fare well in management

qq66• 11 years ago

Scott Guthrie is one of those unicorns who is both highly knowledgeable, very nice personally, and a great manager (I'm not sure why you suggest that he wouldn't fare well in management, but he is already running Azure). I remember a Azure demo day that he led at NEA where he opened a console, created a git repo, wrote a hello world, and deployed it to Azure in ~60 seconds.

njloof• 11 years ago

I don’t think that Microsoft is shedding its most popular executives.

And perhaps some "ding, dong, the witch is dead" from Redmond over those that are departing?

VieElm• 11 years ago

Microsoft is separating applications and Windows. Is that a new thing? Does this mean Outlook and Office are no longer part of the same internal organizational structures when they used to be? I think if this is true and a new development that's going to be very good for Microsoft. I feel like Windows, while still a great workhorse OS has been like a anchor weighing Microsoft applications down on other platforms.

amogrr• 11 years ago

Outlook and Office are part of the Applications and Services Group. Windows was the Operating Systems Group. It's been this way since 2013

WalterGR6• 11 years ago

Were Windows and Office ever part of the same org? I don't believe so - at least in this century. In fact, my understanding is that the antitrust consent decree required a separation between the OS and applications orgs.

fredkbloggs• 11 years ago

It's standard practice at any large company to make org changes at least once a year, and is considered mandatory at any that's "struggling"; i.e., not growing, losing money, and/or flopping with high-profile new products or acquisitions. It doesn't necessarily reflect any real change in product mix, day-to-day life for the rank and file, or any high-minded view of how the company ought to be run. It's just what CEOs do to demonstrate that they're "doing something" so they can keep their highly lucrative jobs a while longer. The departure of Elop was expected and is also standard for CEOs of acquired companies at some point from a few months to a few years after the deal closes. So all in all, nothing to see here.

zorbadgreek• 11 years ago

The size and scope of these changes are atypical for Microsoft, especially given the number of senior executive departures.

edwinnathaniel• 11 years ago

Dynamics CRM approaching $2B and the Head is cut... :(

arethuza• 11 years ago

I read that as meaning all of the Dynamics products - AX, NAV, GP etc. - not just CRM.

Not sure the comparison with Box is that appropriate - Box is more comparable to SharePoint, which is a huge product (on-premise and as part of Office 365).

bernadus_edwin2• 11 years ago

Need new head to compete with oracle and salesforce

bottombutton• 11 years ago

SAP too. Even newer, cloud-based companies like Workday are looking like very promising contenders for the same small/midsize businesses as AX, GP, NAV, and SL.

pjmlp8• 11 years ago

Can we please have .NET, C++ and Windows on the same unit to avoid the usual issues among them (e.g. Longhorn)?

WalterGR6• 11 years ago

I don't remember the Longhorn problems being due to any friction between the developer division and the Windows org.

Rather, mostly Microsoft bit off more than it could chew, and somewhat the perf of .NET on the average machine of the day wasn't up to snuff. If I recall correctly, there were also issues with managed-native interop that really threw a wrench into the works when developing the new (.NET-based) shell.

EDIT: There could also have been issues due to the antitrust consent decree - but that's speculation - I don't remember the details of the decree. If that is the case, then parent comment could be correct.

pjmlp8• 11 years ago

Many of those performance issues were political and not technical.

Hence why the going native when the windows team won the redesign to Vista.

Everything that the .NET team has been doing in the last years in terms of compiling directly to native code via MDIL to Windows Phone 8 and now .NET Native, it is a consequence of that.

The ideas behind Longhorn could have been achieved if .NET followed the same compilation model as Ada, Delphi, Modula-2, Modula-3, Oberon or any other memory safe language with compilation straight to native code.

This is how I see it by reading between the lines from all those MSDN articles, Channel 9 videos and occasional forum posts.

I might be wrong, but that is how I see it.

sdar• 11 years ago

Takeaways and what I'll watch for:

Kirill failed to cloudify. Qi isn't interested in the Dynamics business. Benioff couldn't get on-boarded. Guthrie is happy to step in.

* Azure can improve with Dynamics. Can Dynamics business improve with Guthrie? * Will cloud revenue reporting get more "obfuscated" in quarters to come?

Terry's and Elop's orgs were a) building cohesive/unified experiences and b) fighting conspiring threats to their long-term business solvency. Consolidation chose the most prominent leader.

* Does the bench of Terry's replacements change? * Could it be the first step towards scaling down hardware and devices?

Animats• 11 years ago

Bing isn't even mentioned.

There used to be a CEO of Bing (Qu Lu and Nadella had been in that slot) but last year, Bing was split up under 5 VPs; there's no longer a real Bing organization.

It's strange. Bing has 20% market search share under its own name, plus 13% under the Yahoo brand. That's 33%. Google has 64%, so Bing is now more than half the size of Google in terms of searches. That's OK market share; it's like being Chrysler vs General Motors.

Bing's profits, though, are awful. Microsoft apparently loses money on Bing.[1] It's hard to tell from the way Microsoft reports online services. Google's advertising revenue is 18 times Microsoft's. That's Bing's problem. Nobody buys Bing ads. It's surprising, with the the market share, that Bing can't fix this.

[1] https://www.ventureharbour.com/visualising-size-google-bing-...

boomzilla• 11 years ago

Bing's under Qi Lu. I guess the main reason is that a search engine by itself can not improve its market share. You'll need more channels to increase the traffic. By giving more power to Lu, Bing can leverage other channels too like desktop search, enterprise search, etc. to increase brand awareness and traffic.

Google is not just a search engine by itself. Most of everything else that Google does also aim to protect and increase search traffic.

afsina• 11 years ago

That market share numbers are only for US.

VOYD2• 11 years ago

Yes, it is. WW Google averages 85-90% of all "searches", except in China.

cma• 11 years ago

The problem is 22% of those searches are for Google.

Silhouette2• 11 years ago

Bing has 20% market search share under its own name, plus 13% under the Yahoo brand. That's 33%.

That's hard for me to believe; where do those figures come from? No site I currently work on gets anything close to that much traffic from Bing and Yahoo compared to Google. Anecdotes vs. data and all that, but I'm talking about a few different sites on completely different subjects here. We see quite consistent traffic levels from different search engines if you compensate for active advertising campaigns and similar factors.

Google's advertising revenue is 18 times Microsoft's.

Is that specifically for adds on search engine results pages, or do the figures also take into account other advertising channels?

rgbrenner2• 11 years ago

probably from here: http://searchengineland.com/bing-reaches-20-percent-search-m...

ChikkaChiChi• 11 years ago

I concur. Our analytics are fairly consistent with a lot of sources when it comes to browser usage, etc. but we've never seen numbers for Bing + Yahoo anywhere near even 10%.

The Google percentage seems accurate, but there are other sources to consider.

pacala• 11 years ago

Whenever someone types "facebook" in IE's omnibar [assuming IE has an omnibar], it counts as a "Bing search".

antics• 11 years ago

I am employed at MSFT. This post (currently the top post) is factually incorrect on basically every level, both on subjects that look good for the company, and on subjects that don't. I'm stepping in to correct this because it's better that people understand honestly where we are and aren't doing well, then it is to have ridiculous rumors spread by people who shouldn't talk about what they don't understand.

Bing is under Qi Lu, full stop. Lu is very senior VP who reports directly to Satya Nadella. Bing is NOT split among Qi and 4 of his VP peers. It IS true that Lu has split the responsibilities of managing Bing up among SOME of his direct reports, almost all of whom are themselves VPs. But the idea that there is no real "Bing org" anymore is just completely and totally wrong. They all answer to Lu, and they've split responsibilities along sensible boundaries, so that things like UX are under one VP and infrastructure is under another VP.

Second, Bing does not have 20% market share "plus" Yahoo's market share. Bing and MSFT properties like MSN have 20% market share. Yahoo has 12%. You can't just credit Bing with Yahoo's market share. That's a search experience they work hard on, and the fact that Bing powers Yahoo is largely immaterial to their consumers, who come to Yahoo for the Yahoo experience. They could switch to Google tomorrow and the vast majority of consumers would not notice or care. Truthfully, the biggest (and arguably only real) benefit for Bing is the increased ad revenue.

Third, Bing IS profitable. This is well-known and reported on.

Fourth, it is basically completely untrue that "nobody" buys Bing ads. Obviously it would not be profitable if that were true. Furthermore, the supposition that you should buy ads based on market share of the search engine is hilariously wrong. You should purchase ads on the platform where they will be more successful. A lot of times this is Google; sometimes this is Bing. The fact that the parent got this wrong basically indicates that they are not to be trusted on this subject, at all. If the poster doesn't know what they're talking about here, it's better to just stop talking then it is to provide information that is wrong or harmful to people listening in.

JimmaDaRustla2• 11 years ago

Welcome to HN, where people vomit their assumptions like it's fact and get to the top of the comments section.

jbhatab• 11 years ago

When is bing the right choice and google the right choice? I figure with their market shares that it would be pretty normalized. Just curious why there's a big difference between the two search engines in terms of users.

socceroos• 11 years ago

Good to see some clarification. I can tell it means a lot to you since you've become aggressive and belittling. Don't be aggressive and belittling.

iamlolz• 11 years ago

We buy Bing ads and they covert better than Google. Though there's far fewer referrals.

q2• 11 years ago

It seems, new Microsoft is sharply focused on consumer part (aimed at Apple and Google) and enterprise part(aimed at Amazon cloud and others). Article conveys the same.

I won't be surprised if bing is handed over to yahoo completely.

jacquesm• 11 years ago

I won't be surprised if bing is handed over to yahoo completely.

I would be very surprised. As would all those MS employees working on Bing, it would be unprecedented for a company to hand a fully functional and somewhat critical leg of the company to a competitor.

notNow• 11 years ago

The "Great Purge" by Nadella to get rid of all of Balmer era old guards so Nadella & Co can reign supreme in Microsoft.

outside1234• 11 years ago

This is more like the idiot purge. These execs are well known for being the worst of the lot inside Microsoft.

Frankly, Eric Rudder should promptly write a book about how to maintain a VP position at a bigcorp without actually doing anything for a decade.

deciplex• 11 years ago

Who was responsible for the Windows 10 nag that appeared in my system tray a few weeks back? Have they been sacked?

Microsoft Shakes Up Its Leadership and Internal Structure

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