News

Former Lotus Exec Now Hatching Ideas for Microsoft

• By Barbara Darrow
• November 16, 2007

The high-rise building along the Charles River is about two blocks from Lotus Development's old headquarters building. Microsoft is beefing up its East Coast presence with its new Cambridge facility. It is also conveniently close to the MIT campus, which is no accident.

xconomy first reported on Sturtevant's new endeavor in late September.

The high-rise office houses some of the Softricity staff. Microsoft acquired Softricity and its virtualization know-how last year. That group, now dubbed Softgrid, is in the One Memorial Drive building; it will also be the location of Sturtevant's new team, which he's building now.

Sturtevant says there's not much to talk about yet. "I'm just getting my feet wet, learning about this organization. But yes, we are outside the existing [Microsoft] business units and yes we're doing work with Ray [Ozzie]'s group."

Part of his marching orders is to help incubate new technologies and ideas. "We're looking at new ways to come up with products and services," he noted.

According to a Microsoft spokesperson, Sturtevant reports to Jack Ozzie, general manager of concept development. He reports to his brother Ray Ozzie. The latter Ozzie is now chief software architect for Microsoft.

Microsoft hosts a number of incubation efforts. "Microsoft Research does the longer term stuff. Then each of the divisions has its own incubation teams focusing more narrowly on their businesses, and then there's the stuff Jack and his team are doing, which is across groups," the spokesperson said.

The Ozzie brothers and Sturtevant spent time at the independent Lotus Development Corp., and stayed for awhile after IBM's acquisition of Lotus in 1995. The Ozzies worked on Symphony and Lotus Notes, while Sturtevant designed Freelance Graphics and helped launch InterNotes.

Most recently, Sturtevant was CTO for EONS, Inc., a social networking company serving people over 50. He had also been managing director and vice president of technology for Idealab, the product incubator started by Bill Gross. And he co-founded RadNet, a collaboration software company and RadioAMP, according to his bio.