Microsoft is reorganizing its Azure cloud, artificial intelligence, and data business, with numerous reshuffles of the executive team. As reported by ZDNet, the consolidation has been announced internally. The news was given by Scott Guthrie, Executive Vice President of Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise Group.
The realigning of the business is thought to be effective as of June 7. Arguably the most important change is the creation of a new Cloud AI Platform division. This organization will be headed by Corporate Vice President Joseph Sirosh.
Cloud AI Platform will manage Microsoft’s Azure Machine Learning, Azure Search, and Bot Framework products. Additionally, it will oversee teams covering Algorithms, R Server, and Data Science Solution.
Sirosh has history managing numerous Microsoft groups, such as SQL Server, Azure Data Lake, and Cortana Intelligence Suite.
Microsoft has also created a new Azure + Data Platform Group which will be run by Corporate Vice President of Azure, Jason Zander. He will oversee many of the groups that Sirosh once lead.
As well as the two new groups, the company also moved more divisions under the wing of James Phillips. He currently leads the Business Applications Platform and Intelligence (BAPI), but will now also head Customer Engagement Solutions (Dynamics CRM). This responsibility will come under his new position of head of Business Applications Group.
Charlotte Yarkoni, Corporate Vice President of Growth + Ecosystems will now also helm AppSource and Azure Marketplace. Dynamics Customer Engagement Solutions chief Jujhar Singh has also been moved, but his relocation is unspecified.
Reshuffles
ZDNet reports that it is unlikely there will be a loss of jobs due to this reshuffle. Aside from consolidating divisions and changing organizational heads, it seems the employees will remain the same moving forward. In other words, Microsoft is reshuffling but not downsizing.
The changes come a week before Microsoft holds its Data Insights Summit, with keynoted on June 12 and 13.
