'One Microsoft' realignment focuses on devices and services
Microsoft on Thursday unveiled a sweeping company-wide restructuring plan that Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said will enable the company to "innovate with greater speed, efficiency and capability."
The "One Microsoft" realignment aims to view the company's product lineup "holistically, not as a set of islands," Ballmer wrote to employees in a memo. The company will now be organized by functions:
In addition, the CEO believes the corporate streamlining of Microsoft will allow the company to deliver "a more coherent message and family of product offerings." Marketing, advertising, and all customer interaction will focus on portraying Microsoft as a company that offers a tightly integrated ecosystem for both consumers and businesses.
"As devices become further integrated into everyday life, we will have to create new and extraordinary experiences for our customers on these devices," Ballmer wrote.
"We are going to focus on completely reinventing experiences like creating or viewing a creative document and what it means to communicate socially or at home or in meetings at work. We are going to immerse people in deep entertainment experiences that let them have serious fun in ways so intense and delightful that they will blur the line between reality and fantasy. And as we develop these new experiences, we will also support our developers with the simplest ways to develop apps or cloud services and integrate with our products."
The motto of "One Microsoft all the time" will also ask employees to be nimble, communicative, collaborative, decisive and motivated in their work. Ballmer highlighted these specific keys as how he wants to express the core values of Microsoft's corporate culture.
Word first leaked last month that Microsoft was plotting a "major restructuring" of its organization. The changes are viewed in part as a response to the success of Apple, which has long focused on offering users a complete ecosystem across a range of devices and platforms.
Microsoft's shakeup is just the latest major restructuring to hit the tech industry. Google announced its own organization changes in March that split up the company's mapping and commerce unit, placing the Maps team under the search division, while commerce became part of the advertising group.
And late last year, Apple instituted its own executive shakeup by firing iOS chief Scott Forstall and retail head John Browett, and assigning mores responsibilities to designer Jony Ive, hardware lead Bob Mansfield, and software leader Craig Federighi. Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook explained that the changes were enacted to encourage greater "collaboration" within the company.
The "One Microsoft" realignment aims to view the company's product lineup "holistically, not as a set of islands," Ballmer wrote to employees in a memo. The company will now be organized by functions:
Microsoft's restructuring aims to allow "a more coherent message and family of product offerings," CEO Steve Ballmer said.
- Engineering (including supply chain and data centers)
- Marketing
- Business Development and Evangelism
- Advanced Strategy and Research
- Finance
- Human Resources
- Legal
- Chief Operating Officer (including field, support, commercial operations and IT).
In addition, the CEO believes the corporate streamlining of Microsoft will allow the company to deliver "a more coherent message and family of product offerings." Marketing, advertising, and all customer interaction will focus on portraying Microsoft as a company that offers a tightly integrated ecosystem for both consumers and businesses.
"As devices become further integrated into everyday life, we will have to create new and extraordinary experiences for our customers on these devices," Ballmer wrote.
"We are going to focus on completely reinventing experiences like creating or viewing a creative document and what it means to communicate socially or at home or in meetings at work. We are going to immerse people in deep entertainment experiences that let them have serious fun in ways so intense and delightful that they will blur the line between reality and fantasy. And as we develop these new experiences, we will also support our developers with the simplest ways to develop apps or cloud services and integrate with our products."
The motto of "One Microsoft all the time" will also ask employees to be nimble, communicative, collaborative, decisive and motivated in their work. Ballmer highlighted these specific keys as how he wants to express the core values of Microsoft's corporate culture.
Word first leaked last month that Microsoft was plotting a "major restructuring" of its organization. The changes are viewed in part as a response to the success of Apple, which has long focused on offering users a complete ecosystem across a range of devices and platforms.
Microsoft's shakeup is just the latest major restructuring to hit the tech industry. Google announced its own organization changes in March that split up the company's mapping and commerce unit, placing the Maps team under the search division, while commerce became part of the advertising group.
And late last year, Apple instituted its own executive shakeup by firing iOS chief Scott Forstall and retail head John Browett, and assigning mores responsibilities to designer Jony Ive, hardware lead Bob Mansfield, and software leader Craig Federighi. Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook explained that the changes were enacted to encourage greater "collaboration" within the company.
Comments
Well good to know they now have a faster way to create products and services no one wants or needs. Keep up the great work monkey boy.
"Developers!, Developers!, Developers!"
Hey Steve, how about innovating with some speed first.
"The two most important requirements are to be ethical and sincere... once we learn to fake those, we've got it made!"
Seeing this announcement made me smile thinking how once again Apple has been proven right in terms of their operating/business model.
"Lots of change. But in all of this, many key things remains the same. Our incredible people, our spirit, our commitment, [U]our belief in the transformative power of technology[/U] — [B]our Microsoft technology[/B] — [U]to make the world a better place[/U] for billions of people and millions of businesses around the world."
To specifically narrow the scope of "the power of technology" to only their own branded products is really disgusting to me. It appears to completely disregard -- and indeed, intentionally diss -- everyone else's contributions. I've never seen arrogance as enormous as that before, even from Microsoft.
I'm at a loss to understand why Ballmer still has a job.
I look forward to the reinventing of communication in meetings because up to this point, meetings have generally sucked.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jd_in_sb
What's with Microsoft's obsession with using "One" (One Microsift, XBOX One)? Reminds me of their ".Net" fixation in the 1990's.
We're number 1
We're number 1
We're number 1
I know projects called "ONE blah-blah" and all the projects failed. Ugh-ugh!
This is just to temporarily please the shareholders. They can restructure all they want but the core problem is they can't innovate anything on their own.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rogifan
So basically Ballmer is re-orging Microsoft the way Cook did at Apple. I never thought it made sense to have all these competing divisions with their own leaders and P&L's. And at Apple it made even less sense because they only have one P&L to begin with. So what was the point of having an OSX chief and an iOS chief? None.
Seeing this announcement made me smile thinking how once again Apple has been proven right in terms of their operating/business model.
100% agree.
I have no idea about the quality of the various managers but MS did something very unique here in copying one of Apple's strongest strengths. They have eliminated much of the potential in-fighting cause by senior managers being tracked by specific P&L for their divisions. For example:
Terry Myerson is in charge of OSes including the software controlling the XBox.
Julie Larson-Green is in charge of hardware engineering including the hardware of the XBox.
Tami Reller is in charge of all marketing including the the XBox.
Steve Balmer is responsible for the profit/loss of the XBox.
This organization has the potential (and I say potential for it can be fraught with dangers as well) to allow decisions to be made for the good of the company VS the good of a single product (like protecting Office or Windows). We will see if this works out for MS. It will require Steve to be strong in his decisions and stamp out "pet projects" protected by a single high-level manager. It also forces all these people to really work together on a day by day basis and Steve Balmer HAS to be the final authority on any (and there will be many) disagreements that come up between functional managers. MS did not go "all the way" as Tim did by putting all software under a single person (though to be fair, MS has lots more software than Apple) but I think this is a good start.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jungmark
"innovate with greater speed, efficiency and capability."
Hey Steve, how about innovating with some speed first.
They are tripling the speed of their innovation. Sadly, they fail to realize that tripling zero is still zero.
Remember that other oxymoron "Microsoft Works"
thanks for the laugh Mr Balmy and the PR/ad people suggested he use the word hollistic too wow
Wow. Great reference.
Typical Microsoft management thinking: order your employees to start innovating via a memo. Doesn't work that way. Microsoft's culture has deep problems. Rearranging the deck chairs won't fix those problems.
And I'd bet the farm that they fired the people best suited to have innovative ideas.