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Microsoft has announced a major restructure of its business that sees Julie Larson-Green head up Xbox hardware and studios.
The chaneges have abandoned the company’s divisional structure, which means an end to the ‘Entertainment and devices’ division, and will instead focus on ‘functions’ such as engineering, marketing, finance, research and so forth.
The idea is to create one united Microsoft.
Larson-Green will lead the Devices and Studios Engineering Group, which includes all hardware development (think Xbox and Surface) and will also be responsible for studios experiences, including all games, music, video and ‘other entertainment’.
She had previously led the Microsoft Window division.
Other heads includes Terry Myerson, who leads the operating systems engineering group (that’s all operating systems across PC, mobile and console).
Applications and Services (which includes ‘search’) is led by Qi Lu. Marketing is headed by Tami Reller, Eric Rudder is in charge of Strategy and Research, while cloud and enterprise engineering is being led by Satya Nadella.
Elsewhere, Kevin Turner is COO, Tony Bates is in charge of business development and Evangelism, Amy Hood will centralise all of the finance organisations, the Legal team is now under the leadership of Brad Smith, while Lisa Brummel will lead the HR Group.
Steve Ballmer wrote in an extended email to staff: "We are rallying behind a single strategy as one company — not a collection of divisional strategies. Although we will deliver multiple devices and services to execute and monetize the strategy, the single core strategy will drive us to set shared goals for everything we do. We will see our product line holistically, not as a set of islands. We will allocate resources and build devices and services that provide compelling, integrated experiences across the many screens in our lives, with maximum return to shareholders.
"All parts of the company will share and contribute to the success of core offerings, like Windows, Windows Phone, Xbox, Surface, Office 365 and our EA offer, Bing, Skype, Dynamics, Azure and our servers. All parts of the company will contribute to activating high-value experiences for our customers."
He added: "We will organize the company by function: Engineering (including supply chain and datacenters), Marketing, Business Development and Evangelism, Advanced Strategy and Research, Finance, HR, Legal, and COO (including field, support, commercial operations and IT). Each discipline will help drive our overall strategy. Each discipline will also be charged with improving our core capabilities in its area. We must improve in all aspects of the business."
