One more Microsoft Corporate Vice President flies the coop

Lee Nackman, who most recently was Corporate Vice President of Microsoft's Directory, Access and Information Protection, is leaving the company.

I wondered aloud (in a blog post this summer) if Nackman would be sticking around when a Microsoft internal reorg memo revealed that Nackman would be "looking for new opportunities." Microsoft execs had said that Nackman was going to be heading up billing and provisioning for Microsoft Online Services, but it seems that transition never happened.

A Microsoft spokesperson sent the following statement when I asked:

“We can confirm that Lee Nackman has decided to leave Microsoft to pursue other opportunities.  We thank him for his contributions over the past several years and wish him well

August 31 was Nackman's last day, he confirmed to me via e-mail.

Another Microsoft Corporate Vice President, enterprise sales chief Simon Witts, also is leaving Microsoft, company, officials announced internally on August 30.

Nackman joined Microsoft in 2009 as Corporate VP of the Identity and Security Division. Before that, he was at IBM for 26 years. He was the Vice President of product development for IBM's Rational software division, and also worked on IBM's Jazz collaborative software development environment, WebSphere development tools, and IBM's compiler and Java virtual machine efforts. According to his Micorsoft bio page, he also "initiated the technology that became the Eclipse open source effort."

Corporate VP Dave Thompson, who also is leaving Microsoft this summer, has been leading the identity team while Microsoft searches for a new head for the division. The aforementioned Microsoft spokesperson didn't respond to my request for an update on who will be taking over the unit.

Nackman isn't the only digital-identity-focused Microsoft exec to part ways with the Redmond vendor. In May, Kim Cameron, a Microsoft Distinguished Engineer and Chief Architect of Identity, left Microsoft. (He's still independently advising Microsoft, however.)

According to a May e-mail from Server and Tools Chief Satya Nadella, Microsoft is not abandoning its digital identity work; in fact, the company will continue to crank out identity-related products for both on-premises and the cloud. I'm expecting we'll hear a lot more at the upcoming Build conference in mid-September, especially given that Microsoft seems to be doing some trial runs of its Build cloud message with certain "influentials."

My guess? Day 2 at Build could be where we hear more about the future of Active Directory in the cloud and Microsoft's overall cloud-identity strategies (especially if John Shewchuk (whose actual Twitter handle is @johnshew is involved). Shewchuk, a Microsoft Technical Fellow, has been instrumental in Microsoft's federated identity work in the cloud. And if newly minted Azure Application chief Scott Guthrie is part of the Build line-up (as one would expect), I'm sure we'll be hearing more on the Web platform, App Server and more development building blocks for the cloud, come mid-September.