Former Disney executive joins Microsoft as CIO
233541
Microsoft has tapped a former executive at Walt Disney to fill its CIO position, a move that shows the company continuing to fill top executive positions from outside the company.
118428
(InfoWorld) - Microsoft's top executive outlined the company's plan to transition from a traditional software company to offering software plus services for the first time on Tuesday, giving some roadmap details for how the strategy will play out in the next year. In a keynote at the Worldwide Partner Conference in Denver, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer shed more details on the plan other executives, such as Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, have been teasing out over the past year -- but not many more. He gave a time frame for the early part of the transition but mostly echoed what other executives have said about Microsoft's slow transition to adding hosted business services to its traditional software portfolio. "For software plus services, the time is now," Ballmer said, finishing off the first of a raft of keynotes on the first day of Microsoft's annual partner conference. He said that over the next year, Microsoft will continue to sell mostly on-premises software, but there will be more evidence of the transition to its hybrid model as the year goes on. Since Microsoft began talking about its plan to gradually transition to offering more hosted services last year in a speech by Ozzie at its TechEd Conference in Boston, many noted that the company had no choice. With such an entrenched business in enterprise and consumer desktop software, it would be impossible for Microsoft to be as nimble in offering hosted services as rivals like Google and Salesforce.com, which started their businesses as Web-based services providers. And a warmer reception for hosted services is clearly the direction the enterprise market is heading as businesses become more comfortable accessing Web-based services beyond the traditional consumer staples of e-mail and search that have been popular for years. The transition to providing more services will touch every part of Microsoft's business, but some changes will be more obvious than others, Ballmer said. The user interface will be an important place for innovation in this area, and Microsoft's Silverlight technology is the cornerstone of that, he said. Microsoft introduced Silverlight, a browser plug-in that allows for rich video and interactive media experience to be delivered within Web sites, in April. A solid services platform on which partners can build services and also that they can resell with Microsoft managing and hosting them also will be a clear sign of the transition, Ballmer said. Microsoft already is offering a combination of consumer-oriented services, such as Windows Live Hotmail and Windows Live Local Search, but will begin bulking up its portfolio of enterprise services as well, he said. Microsoft already has unveiled business services like Exchange Hosted Services for enterprise messaging and Office Live hosted service for small businesses. There will be new and expanded services like these as Microsoft progresses further with its software plus services strategy, Ballmer said.
484120
Microsoft quietly hired a former senior Linux engineer last week who will be tasked with running the company's joint research lab with partner Novell.
86361
Microsoft announced a deal to distribute films from the Walt Disney Company on Microsoftâs Xbox Live Internet service and outlined a broader array of games.
361149
The executive who leads Microsoft&#39;s government sales effort is leaving to become CEO of a telecommunications company, the software maker said on Tuesday.
188846
Tony Scott, who most recently was CIO at Walt Disney, will take over that same role at Microsoft in February.
407863
A Microsoft Corp. executive responsible for its newly launched Zune digital music player will leave the company.
748584
MicrosoftÂ Chief Financial Officer (CFO) John Connors is leaving the software maker and will become a partner at Seattle area venture capital firm Ignition Partners LLC., Microsoft and Ignition Partners announced separately on Tuesday.
562311
Susan Heystee will oversee the Microsoft relationship and technical cooperation between the two companies.
279771
Worthington Industries CIO Jonathan Dove tells Computerworld that he sees the role of the CIO changing.
707153
The move that shows Microsoft continuing to fill top executive positions from outside the company.
289316
Two weeks ago, Microsoft tested its "four toolsets for interoperability" message on the public and the press, which included an interview with BetaNews. That message has apparently been given the green light, as Corporate VP for Emerging Business Dan'l Lewin fired a shot across the bow last Thursday, in a blog posting directed toward Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen.
630018
Microsoft confirmed on Tuesday that a long-standing and influential member of the Windows OS team has left, one of several recent and imminent executive departures that together represent a changing of the guard at the company.Rob Short, former corporate vice president of the Windows Core Technology group, left the company last month, according to a spokeswoman from Microsoft&#39;s public relations firm.Short had helped develop the Windows OS at Microsoft since joining the company in 1988. He was on the original Windows NT development team, which did some of the early work to optimize Windows for the PC architecture. Most recently, Short and his team were responsible for the design, development and testing of the core components of Windows.News of Short&#39;s departure follows the announcement last week that&#160;Jeff Raikes, head of Microsoft&#39;s Business Division, will leave the company in September. Raikes is one of the company&#39;s top executives, overseeing Office and all of Microsoft&#39;s business products. Microsoft has appointed Stephen Elop, a former executive at Juniper Networks, Macromedia and Adobe, to succeed him.At the same time Microsoft unveiled Raikes&#39; departure, it also said that&#160;Bruce Jaffe, corporate vice president of corporate development, will leave at the end of next month. Charles Fitzgerald, Microsoft&#8217;s general manager of platform strategy, also plans to leave the company in the next month or so, Microsoft has confirmed.When Microsoft Chairman and founder Bill Gates leaves his day-to-day activities at Microsoft midyear, he will leave behind an executive staff that looks vastly different from how it did a few years ago -- which may not be such a bad thing, considering the 33-year-old company aims to generate more revenue from newer business models and technologies.&quot;It is interesting that the company so far seems to have had some successful outside hires [when it&#39;s] had a reputation in the past of chewing them up and spitting them out,&quot; said Rob Helm, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft.However, he noted that the departing Raikes was instrumental in transitioning Office beyond a mere set of desktop applications to become a bona fide business collaboration suite. So it hasn&#39;t necessarily been the Microsoft long-timers that have prevented the company from evolving beyond its core businesses, Helm said.&quot;If Microsoft is moving too slowly in the Web-based world it&#39;s not necessarily because the old guard is holding it back,&quot; he said. &quot;It may be more a matter of the sheer size of the company and the inherent difficulty of turning a ship that big.&quot;Apart from CEO Steve Ballmer and Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft&#39;s entertainment and devices division, many of the company&#39;s other top executives have joined the company in the past three years. They include the man widely seen as Gates&#39; successor, Chief Architect Ray Ozzie, who joined Microsoft in 2005. Kevin Turner, Microsoft&#39;s chief operating officer, and Steve Berkowitz, senior vice president of Microsoft&#39;s Online Services Group, also joined the company that year. And Raikes&#39; replacement, Elop, won&#39;t start at Microsoft until the end of the month.
134011
Michael Eisner plans to step down as  Walt Disney Co.'s chief executive when his contract expires in  September 2006, the Wall Street Journal said on Friday.
365081
Sept. 10, 2004 - Michael Eisner plans to step down as chief executive of the Walt Disney Co. when his contract expires in 2006, he said in a letter to the company&#39;s board of directors.
770038
Software executive, who came from Apple in 1981, says he's not sure what he'll do when he leaves Microsoft in September, but it will probably be outside of tech.
102037
The HP-iest job on Earth HP has appointed a long-time Disney executive, Michael Mendenhall, as its new marketing boss.â¦