News

Microsoft Reorg Continues

• By Stuart J. Johnston
• August 02, 2006

Brian Valentine, currently senior vice president of the Windows Core Operating System Division (COSD), will begin to transition to a new, as-yet-unannounced, role elsewhere in the company once Windows Vista ships. Valentine, a 17-year company veteran, has been in charge of Windows for the past eight years, according to his Microsoft biography.

Moving into that spot, and for the transition period designated as co-head of COSD, is another company lifer, Jon DeVaan. Currently senior vice president of Engineering Excellence, DeVaan has been in charge of engineering standards for the company's products. COSD is one of eight organizations within Microsoft's Platform and Services Division (PSD).

"Jon will drive Windows operating system development, cross platform integration and work closely with Steven Sinofsky [named in March as senior vice president of the Windows and Windows Live Group] on the products and services coming on the heels of Windows Vista," read a statement released by the company.

That will include "Vienna," previously code-named "Blackcomb." Although the company has not said what Vienna will include, it has said that the follow-up OS to Vista will ship sometime after Windows Longhorn Server.

DeVaan's new job title is senior vice president of engineering. He and Valentine report to Kevin Johnson, co-president of PSD.

Meanwhile, also after Vista ships, two other Redmond long-timers will begin reporting directly to Ozzie. Dave Cutler (currently a senior technical fellow) and Amitabh Srivastava (corporate vice president of COSD) will work directly with Ozzie on initiatives focused on Live products and services, according to the statement.

Cutler, a nearly legendary operating systems designer, is credited with having lead Microsoft's efforts to create Windows NT -- without which the company would not have been able to make the move into enterprise products.

Srivastava first joined Microsoft in 1997 to work in the Microsoft Research organization, and later founded the company's Programmer Productivity Research Center, now called the Center for Software Excellence. The organization works on technologies and products meant to help Microsoft's own developers create more reliable code.

Finally, in this round of reorg, Gary Flake and the Live Labs team will immediately report to Ozzie with the aim of broadening their work in online services creation and research projects oriented towards the company's services initiatives.