Microsoft to move Windows Server engineering team into Windows and Devices Group
Microsoft is moving the engineering team responsible for Windows Server to the Windows and Devices Group, resulting in all versions of Windows at the company now being part of the same unit.
Executive Vice President Scott Guthrie will continue to head up the remaining Cloud and Enterprise unit, and Executive Vice President Terry Myerson will now continue to run the expanded Windows and Devices Group.
Both the Windows Server engineering and the Remote Desktop Services engineering teams will be part of Myerson's organization, my sources are saying. But Mike Neil, who currently oversees Windows Server engineering, and Brad Anderson, who is responsible for Remote Desktop Services, are staying with the Cloud and Enterprise team, I am hearing, and will continue to head up the other teams they currently lead.
I asked Microsoft about the moves, which I was tipped to by sources, and a spokesperson confirmed with the following statement:
As we advance our goal to build operating systems that provide the best experiences from the smallest IoT devices to the largest scale server deployments in public and private clouds, the Windows Server team will move from the Cloud and Enterprise Group to the Windows and Devices Group. These groups already work closely together, and we believe this move will help us bring even more value to our customers as we deliver our most cloud-ready server OS with the Windows Server 2016 launch this fall.
Guthrie since February 2014 has been EVP of Microsoft's Cloud and Enterprise division, where he has been in charge of Microsoft's cloud, server, database, business apps, security, management, and development tools business. Before that, from May 2011 to February 2014, Guthrie was corporate vice president of the Microsoft Azure team. Prior to that, he ran the Developer Division at Microsoft. He's been with the company since 1997.
Myerson has been EVP of the Windows and Devices Group, which is responsible for the Windows OS, apps, games, store, and devices including Surface, Xbox, Lumia, and HoloLens, since 2014. He's been with Microsoft since 1997, when Microsoft bought Interse Corp., where he was CEO.
Moving Windows Server out of the Cloud and Enterprise Group makes sense, given Windows Server and Windows have been developed pretty much in lockstep for the past several years, and Microsoft has been championing the idea of one Windows core shared across platforms.
Microsoft originally combined the Windows Server and Azure teams to create the Server and Cloud unit in 2009. The thinking at that time was that putting server and cloud together made sense because of the company's focus on providing users with the full spectrum of public/private/hybrid cloud offerings from a single place.
Microsoft on July 20 is believed to have signed off on Windows 10 Anniversary Edition, the next major update to Windows 10. Windows 10 Anniversary Edition will be generally available on August 2 and will start rolling out across all devices running the common Windows 10 core, including PCs, tablets, Windows Phones, Surface Hub, Xbox One, and the HoloLens, officials recently said.
Thee server-side complement to Windows 10 Anniversary Edition, Windows Server 2016, will launch in late September and begin rolling out to customers around early October, officials have said. Some of the functionality that's in the Windows 10 Anniversary core is shared with Windows Server 2016.
Microsoft officials wouldn't say when Server and Remote Desktop engineering would move to Windows and Devices, but my bet is relatively soon, given Windows 10 Anniversary is basically done.