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Innovation

Further consolidation coming across Microsoft devices, services

Microsoft Surface chief Panos Panay is taking over engineering for all of Microsoft's premium devices. And Outlook, Exchange, OneDrive and SharePoint are becoming even more closely aligned.
Written by Mary Jo Foley, Senior Contributing Editor

Microsoft is consolidating more products/services around as part of its latest reorg, with the goal of further reducing silos inside the company.

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CVP Panos Panay
My contacts have shared a couple more tidbits regarding what's happening inside the company, following CEO Satya Nadella's announcement of the latest Microsoft reorg.

As part of that reorg, Microsoft Devices chief Stephen Elop left the company, and the Devices group was moved under Executive Vice President and Windows chief Terry Myerson.

It turns out Panos Panay, the Corporate Vice President in charge of Surface, is taking on a bigger role following Elop's departure. Panay is not taking on the finance, marketing and supply chain part of Elop's duties, but he is going to be the head of engineering for all Microsoft premium devices, including Surface, Windows Phone, the Xbox console, the Surface Hub conferencing system, Microsoft fitness Band and HoloLens augmented-reality glasses.

A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that Panay "will be taking over (engineering for) premium devices."

I'm not sure yet exactly what Panay's new title is, but the change in his responsibilities was announced internally last week, sources say.

There are also more changes happening in Executive Vice President Qi Lu's Applications and Services Group -- beyond the return of Jeff Teper to the combined OneDrive/SharePoint team.

According to a couple of internal emails, Microsoft is going to be consolidating its previously separate OneDrive/SharePoint and Outlook/Exchange teams -- along with its Office 365 shared services and Yammer units.

The new reporting structure will call for Corporate Vice President Rajesh Jha to head up all of these teams. (Jha was already heading up the Office 365 services and combined Outlook/Exchange teams.)

Teper will run OneDrive/SharePoint (ODSP) and report to Jha. And Javier Soltero, the former head of Acompli (which Microsoft bought last year), will become the Corporate Vice President in charge of program management for Outlook, replacing Harve Bhela, who is moving to the Windows org. Bhela is replacing Windows veteran David Treadwell, who is taking on a new role in Microsoft's Cloud & Enterprise team.

The push toward "One Microsoft" continues...

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