Microsoft continues to hone its latest reorg with more employee shuffles
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As it approaches the end of its fiscal 2018, Microsoft announced more organizational changes as the dust settles from its corporate-wide reorg that happened in March, according to multiple sources.
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Today, Microsoft announced internally a number of new organizational shifts across its engineering divisions, aimed at further focusing on the company's "intelligent cloud/intelligent edge" charter. So far, there's no word of any planned layoffs resulting from these latest org-chart tweaks.
One of this week's changes involved Microsoft Corporate Vice President Kudo Tsunoda departing his current post. Last we heard, Tsunoda's focus was on Mixed reality, "3D for Everyone," Story Remix, Photos, HoloLens and "other secret unannounced things."
In late March, as part of the company's latest reorg, Tsunoda was named as the continued head of the New Experiences and Technology (NEXT) business at Microsoft. His group moved to report to Executive Vice President Rajesh Jha, the new head of the combined "Experiences and Devices" team at the company.
As Microsoft announced internally today, Tsunoda is looking for a new role at the company. No word on where that will be or when it will start -- or if Tsunoda will opt to leave Microsoft in search of greener pastures. And no word on what's going to happen to Tsunoda's current team. (I asked.) Update: I'm hearing Tsunoda's team was disbanded, with a number of his reports moving to other parts of Microsoft.
Microsoft officials did confirm that Tsunoda is currently still with the company but declined to say much else about today's reorg, beyond acknowledging that Microsoft making some new org changes today.
In January 2018, Microsoft made changes to its Windows NEXT business that officials hoped would make its mixed-reality/augmented-reality business better aligned with real-world use cases. Tsunoda's NeXT business was the team charged with designing "experiences" for 3D, Windows Mixed Reality and Hololens and other emergent technologies. Megan Saunders was the General Manager of this team prior to this shake-up.
I'm also hearing that some teams that Microsoft had designated as part of Executive Vice President Jason Zander's new centralized Azure and Windows engineering organization are moving under Jha's Experiences and Devices unit, specifically in the Windows mobile-device-management and analytics piece of the org. At the same time, the Edge development team is back to Experiences and Devices team -- which makes sense, given Edge is now being positioned as a cross-platform app, not something for which the Windows Engineering team obviously should be responsible.
Update: A couple of additional teams also were moved from Windows engineering back to Corporate Vice President Joe Belfiore's Windows client experience team, including the Design team (under Albert Shum) and the Windows Insiders program (under Dona Sarkar), sources said.
Microsoft is gearing up to actively promote Microsoft 365 in the coming months. of Windows 10, Office 365 and Enterprise Mobility + Security. Brad Anderson, who reports to Jha, heads up Microsoft 365, all-up.
There may be some more movement as part of today's reorg. Microsoft seems to be interested in distancing itself from the Microsoft Windows-first legacy which has been in place for years.
Meanwhile, if you see something more significant about today's reorg news, dear readers, feel free to say something....