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Microsoft Server and Tools Head Muglia To Step Down 79

Posted by Soulskill from the shakeup-continues dept.
snydeq writes "Longtime Microsoft executive Bob Muglia, president of the company's server and tools business, will step down from his position later this year, according to a Steve Ballmer memo issued Monday to company employees. Muglia has been with Microsoft for 23 years, leading development efforts in Microsoft Office, Windows NT and online services businesses. More recently, Muglia shepherded Microsoft's entry into cloud computing, guiding the rollout of the company's Azure platform. Muglia's departure follows that of Ray Ozzie, whose exit was made all the more notable by a memo warning Microsoft to start thinking beyond the PC."
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Microsoft Server and Tools Head Muglia To Step Down More

Microsoft Server and Tools Head Muglia To Step Down

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  • Cloud (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jav1231 ( 539129 ) on Monday January 10, 2011 @06:17PM (#34829078)
    If he's responsible for the "cloud" moniker, good riddance.

    • Re:Cloud (Score:4, Insightful)

      by 0racle ( 667029 ) on Monday January 10, 2011 @06:21PM (#34829158)
      Like most new markets MS enters, 'the Cloud' was firmly established by the time MS got there.

      • Which is probably one of the reasons that Muglia works someplace else now. Microsoft's 'cloud strategy' is an oxymoron. Once again, they were playing golf while the market changed.

        • Microsoft is actually in a tougher position than "oxymoron" would suggest: They have an existing(and quite profitable/lock-in generating) business in server OS licences, Exchange and SQL licences, and CALs. Unlike many of their "cloud" competitors, who are either carving new ground or just making it really easy to buy VPS services from them without a call to sales, almost every MS Cloud success is an MS server loss.

          Since Microsoft offers roughly the same things as "cloud" services that you can buy from t

          • There's that, and your ability to spin up thousands of disposable Linux licenses (and even Windows licenses) from cloud providers at hardly any cost at all. Cloud is cheap. Vendor lock-in isn't so much non-existent as a different value system entirely.

            Microsoft's grip on its clientele has been systems, end to end ones where you have to make only one convenient phone call, rather than face several vendors pointing fingers at each other. IBM and Oracle know this value, too.

            Yet it's like Henry Ford's Model T.

          • You're right. It's the classic innovators dilemma. Ultimately, they have to do it though because if they don't, somebody else will.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jav1231 ( 539129 )
        Yeah, we call it the Internet.

      • And like most, they bastardized it beyond recognition.

        Not that it meant much before, but now it means even less.

      • This is new MS Cloud# accelerated with .NET! It's awesome extended.
    • From the Wall Street Journal article [wsj.com] on this:

      According to one person familiar with the matter, Messrs. Muglia and Ballmer disagreed about how to allocate resources within the division to new areas that aren't yet delivering big sales, such as cloud computing. Mr. Muglia's group oversees Windows Azure, an online service that lets businesses develop and run applications in Microsoft data centers.

      From the sounds of it, Muglia placed less emphasis on cloud computing than Ballmer wanted him to.

    • I was actually thinking that if he was responsible for all the stupid, non-intuitive changes to Server 2008, good riddance.

  • Last Comment... (Score:3, Funny)

    by D Ninja ( 825055 ) on Monday January 10, 2011 @06:19PM (#34829118)

    "And don't let the chair hit you in the butt on the way out!" - Ballmer

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      "And don't let the chair hit you in the butt on the way out!" - Ballmer

      Well, the chair meme is from someone MS clearly didn't want to lose, while if you RTFA this one was clearly fired by Ballmer outright. Quite fascinating read that memo.

      • Re:Last Comment... (Score:5, Informative)

        by Rary ( 566291 ) on Monday January 10, 2011 @06:54PM (#34829618)

        ...if you RTFA this one was clearly fired by Ballmer outright. Quite fascinating read that memo.

        Agreed. Here are the really interesting portions of the memo:

        Bob Muglia and I have been talking about the overall business and what is needed to accelerate our growth. In this context, I have decided that now is the time to put new leadership in place for STB.

        Translation: I sat down with Bob to discuss the direction STB should be going in, and Bob didn't agree with my vision, so I replaced him.

        In conjunction with this leadership change, Bob has decided to leave Microsoft this summer.

        Translation: Bob told me where to shove my vision, and will probably go off to start his own company that kicks our cloudy asses, because let's face it, I'm no visionary leader.

    • "And don't let the chair hit you in the head and back on the way out!" - Ballmer

      Let me fix that quote for ya! No charge!

      I gotta say; I love the new Xbox/Kinetic, as well as my trusty (but noisy fanned) original Xbox. Too bad they can't make any other product worth the cardboard they ship them in. Kin, Zune, Slate, WinPhone7, Vista, etc.

      Ballmer should take a cue and do his own exit before the board does this for him. Douche at the wheel is not a good sign of a company preparing to take over another market segment that they fail in consistantly.

      • Their keyboards and mice are excellent. I have been using them on my Linux computers for more than a decade. The logo comes off with sandpaper nicely.

        • My new Microsoft laptop cooler is nice too.

        • The last MS keyboard I tried mapped the function keys by default to other uses. You had to hit some key combination to return them to function keys. Inconvenient and non-standard, the MS way.

      • Ballmer should take a cue and do his own exit before the board does this for him. Douche at the wheel is not a good sign of a company preparing to take over another market segment that they fail in consistantly.

        I think Ballmer is doing an excellent job of doing to Microsoft what should be done to it and should just keep doing it as long as possible.

  • Ballmer job security program (Score:5, Interesting)

    by joe_bruin ( 266648 ) on Monday January 10, 2011 @06:31PM (#34829312) Homepage Journal

    And thus, with the exit of half a dozen of the highest level Microsoft department heads, there is nobody at MS that can take over Ballmer's seat as CEO if the board of directors decides to fire him. He's made it much harder to fire him now.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      What are you babbling about? A nutless monkey could do that guy's job.

    • Re:Ballmer job security program (Score:5, Funny)

      by OglinTatas ( 710589 ) on Monday January 10, 2011 @06:46PM (#34829518)

      Outside appointment... Is Carly Fiorina still available?

      • "Is Carly Fiorina still available?"

        I thing Darl McBride should be freeing up soon....

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Capt.DrumkenBum ( 1173011 )

        Outside appointment... Is Carly Fiorina still available?

        Oh yes please! Look what she did with HP, a company that made a few good products, now just imaging how fast she could drive Microsoft into the ground. :)

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sconeu ( 64226 )

          Dammit!!!! You beat me to the punch!

        • Look what Rick Belluzzo did to HP and SGI -- but then caused no harm to Microsoft while working there.

          Of course, a more realistic explanation is that he worked for Microsoft all along.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by gtall ( 79522 )

          I know, that's why I'm rooting for her to take over. Ballmer is a tough act to follow but I think she can drag them down even faster and put MS out of our misery.

    • And thus, with the exit of half a dozen of the highest level Microsoft department heads, there is nobody at MS that can take over Ballmer's seat as CEO if the board of directors decides to fire him. He's made it much harder to fire him now.

      Any schlubb could do better than Ballmer.
      No one has the credentials and image to seem (to the public and the pundits) to be a good choice.

      The only good choice after Ballmer is to somehow coax Bill back.

    • Well now this makes sense ! And if this is the case then Microsoft is slowly sinking.

    • And thus we see the fruits of the labors of Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs begin to ripen.

      Once they complete their infiltration of the MS Board of Trustees, no one will be able to stop the BTC (Black Turtleneck Crew) from taking over all of Silicon Valley.

      And verily, so spake the Lords (all praise to the Lords) that the treasures of Redmond be distributed among their conquerors thusly:

      Server operating systems and tools to He of the Swift Vessel;
      Accessories and consumer devices to the Paragon of Tech Pop C

    • Re:Ballmer job security program (Score:4, Interesting)

      by gbjbaanb ( 229885 ) on Monday January 10, 2011 @07:27PM (#34830012)

      cue comments regarding my goldfish being a better CEO than Ballmer.... no, what this means is that the other executives in their playroom don't have anyone with "I'm next" on their hat, so that (like my goldfish really) means they won't be able to decide who to choose as a replacement, and so Ballmer stays.

      Of course, anyone who likes Android, Apple or well, anything that isn't Microsoft, should be overjoyed at this news. MS is a dead company, but like the proverbial dinosaur the neural impulses havn't travelled all the way from the tail to the brain yet - MS, being the dinosaur that it is, doesn't yet realise its day is over.

      Mind you, one thing that comes to mind is the quality of Bob Muglia. The man that once said to the Seattle Times, with a straight face, "We're going to increase quality in Windows Vista by firing all our quality assurance people!"

      Also, it appears this has been brewing for a few months. From minimsft blog [blogger.com]:
      Somewhat trustworthy source: All BobMu's org's 10s will not see another review cycle. Terminated in groups of under 500 each month to avoid Warn. Can anyone confirm?

      Friday, October 22, 2010 7:54:00 PM

      Chances are the next CEO will be Kevin Turner, a bean counter like none other (apparently). Just the kind of guy to 'turn round' Microsoft's fortunes by basically reducing the number of beans to count. Or, as someone said on that msft blog: KT CEO - that will be a nice touch indeed - walmarting of Microsoft-- how appropriate

      • Of course, anyone who likes Android, Apple or well, anything that isn't Microsoft, should be overjoyed at this news. MS is a dead company, but like the proverbial dinosaur the neural impulses havn't travelled all the way from the tail to the brain yet - MS, being the dinosaur that it is, doesn't yet realise its day is over.

        I love Mac OS X, I think my Android phone is fantastic, and I've been a Linux advocate for years, but I'm not thrilled at this news at all. It doesn't matter where you work, the common workstation has Microsoft products on it and STB is the last business unit of Microsoft that has been putting out good stuff consistently. If Microsoft goes belly up it will have a negative effect on the technology industry by costing businesses tons of money to readjust, and anything that threatens the tech industry threat

        • Another paid Microsoft advocate.

          Seriously, THAT talking point was dead before Microsoft invented it.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mjwx ( 966435 )

            I love Mac OS X, [snip] and I've been a Linux advocate for years,

            Another paid Microsoft advocate.

            Go easy on him, he's clearly a very confused individual.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tom ( 822 )

        MS is a dead company, but like the proverbial dinosaur the neural impulses havn't travelled all the way from the tail to the brain yet - MS, being the dinosaur that it is, doesn't yet realise its day is over.

        The problem with the dinosaur metaphor is and always has been, that we are lacking a meteor.

        I'd rather link it to a beached whale - it is certainly dead, but it will take a while to die, and while it does it is dangerous to come near it.

        And don't forget that a juggernaut like this doesn't just go away. There will be the stench of rotting whale meat for a long time. When they finally go belly-up, there will be some assets that they can sell off, like the licenses to windows, office, etc.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )

        MS, being the dinosaur that it is, doesn't yet realise its day is over.

        Yeah, right. And in 2012, we're going to have a political revival in the US, with uh, a flying monkey elected to the White House who speaks Greek, Russian, and three dialects of Mandrin.

        So, simple question: what is the desktop alternative to Windows?

        Wrong - whatever your answer was. There is no alternative, simply because there is nothing which can be simply migrated to. Windows is the single clear migration path from Windows.

        How about alternatives for:

        * Sharepoint (which has been getting deployed new since

        • alternative to the PC desktop. You're thinking in terms of how things were, not how things will be.

          Look at those smartphones - not one uses Windows Desktop. Even MS says they're the future of computing devices, which is why they're so desperate to get market share.

          Legacy apps - sure these will be around for a while, but will increasingly become virtualised (ie run on a server and accessed remotely via Citrix/RDP/screen scrapers even - just like the old mainframe apps that I used to write scrapers for so the

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      If and that is a big big IF things ever got bad enough at Microsoft for the board to replace Ballmer involuntarily Bill Gates would probably return as an interim CEO.

      • It would be interesting to see if BG can come back and kick Jobs a second time.
      • Sorry, I what I meant was:
        It would be interesting to see if BG can come back and kick Jobs' butt a second time.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Sorry, I what I meant was:

          It would be interesting to see if BG can come back and kick Jobs' butt a second time.

          Does it REALLY matter WHERE he kicks him?

        • Ha! I, never, ever, in a million years, would have thought I might root for Billy boy.
    • with the exit of half a dozen of the highest level Microsoft department heads

      Well, if I had been at MS for 23 years, the last half of that as the head of a major dept (salary+stock+ret plan=retiring very comfortably), I'd be thinking about quitting/retiring as well. Fuck what Steve or Bill wants or needs.
    • Ahhh, nothing like a good ol' Stalinist purge. I presume that very shortly we'll see shocking reports of how Ozzie and Muglia were RESPONSIBLE for all of Microsoft's huge fuckups...
  • He was in charge of tools. Heh Heh.
  • Who fights for the users? (I know, I know... RMS)

  • I guess if you have an opinion at M$ that is not the same as them, you can't work there?

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