Huddleston Taking Leave, Schuster To Run Microsoft OCP

Ron Huddleston, corporate vice president of the Microsoft One Commercial Partner (OCP) worldwide organization, is going on an indefinite family leave a little less than a year into the job, and Gavriella Schuster will step into the role.

Schuster previously reported to Huddleston as corporate vice president for worldwide channels and programs, and was also considered Microsoft's "worldwide channel chief," a semi-official designation that she had also held prior to Huddleston's arrival in OCP when she was CVP of the now-discontinued Worldwide Partner Group (WPG).

Huddleston, a former senior executive at Oracle and more recently at Salesforce.com where he helped set up the AppExchange business app marketplace, got the nod to lead the newly formed OCP in early 2017. He moved over to the partner role from an initial posting in the Microsoft Dynamics organization in the summer of 2016.

The OCP worldwide organization reports to Judson Althoff, executive vice president for the Microsoft Worldwide Commercial Business. Forming OCP consolidated channel efforts that were previously spread throughout different divisions and groups inside Microsoft. A particular focus was bringing developer enablement into the main channel organization.

This leadership change late in calendar 2017 caps a tumultuous year for Microsoft field and channel employees, as well as the Microsoft partners who interact with them. The creation of the OCP early in the year served as a precursor for a massive reorganization throughout the Microsoft field, with layoffs and reassignments occurring through the summer and the fall.

It remains to be seen what the change will mean for some of the initiatives that Huddleston championed, especially the Solution Maps, also known as OCP Catalogs, which were lists of go-to partners in different geographies and vertical industries for various elements of a solution. Much of the field reorganization involved the staffing of the new Channel Manager roles, which had responsibility for maintaining the maps.

The other major OCP initiative since its creation was to reorganize all Microsoft partner employees and efforts around three motions -- build-with, sell-with and go-to-market.

Posted by Scott Bekker on December 11, 2017 at 11:10 AM