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News last week of Windows’ demotion from shining cash cow to a set of appendages tucked under other parts of the organization caught many of us by surprise. As you’ve no doubt read, Windows honcho Terry Myerson is headed out the door, while Windows itself gets split into multiple pieces, absorbed into different parts of the organization:
- Windows Core, the “guts of the platform” gets assimilated into Scott Guthrie’s Azure activities as part of the loftily titled “Cloud and AI Platform team.” The Windows Core organizational concept is nearly as old as Windows itself — there were Core Teams in the late 1990s and in December 2003, Microsoft created a “Windows Core Operating Systems Division” just for the legendary Brian Valentine. It’s going to Jason Zander, who becomes the EVP of Azure and Windows, reporting to ScottGu.
- The rest of Windows as we knew it — the user interface, feature packaging, OneDrive and other online services, Surface, and the like — gets jumbled in with Office 365 and moved to the new Experiences & Devices group under Rajesh Jha, the former EVP of the Office Product Group. One guess which way this is heading. Let’s hear it for Microsoft 365 and the rental model.
- Panos Panay continues to run the Windows Devices effort. Joe Belfiore leads “Windows client experience” — which seems to be a decent step toward making the Windows PC a usable peripheral for your phone. Both report to Jha.
That's a lot to absorb. Something about comeuppance in the subtext. Tim Sneath, who was with the Windows team for 17 years, and now works for Google, has a very bitter take: