In a news report yesterday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was said to be planning on a “significant” restructuring of the software giant. Not much detail was revealed on the restructuring of the company to a “devices and services company” but now new details have emerged from Bloomberg.
“One idea under consideration by Ballmer would create four divisions: an enterprise business led by [Satya] Nadella; a hardware unit overseen by [Don] Mattrick; an applications and services division under [Qi] Lu; and an operating-systems group jointly led by Terry Myerson, Windows phone chief, and Julie Larson-Green, head of Windows engineering, said one person. [Tony] Bates would also be given a significant role, said the person,” Bloomberg reports, citing an inside source. Tony Bates is currently the president of Skype. Andy Lees, who runs the corporate development and strategy division, is expected to leave the company in the coming months.
If Microsoft continues with this idea, the top executives listed will face new challenges and more responsibility. Keep in mind that these plans are not final, and may change. The purpose of this restructuring is to cut the number of unnecessary units and create cooperation between products so that Microsoft can better compete against Apple and Google. Ballmer has apparently been a strong proponent of better cooperation between different Microsoft divisions and had stressed in the past about executives making that happen.
