After the Microsoft reorg for delivering/supporting high-value experiences/activities the Devices and Studios Engineering Group lead by Julie Larson-Green will have undoubtable the far biggest challenge of all hardware development and supply chain from the smallest to the largest devices Microsoft builds. What I found below is that the conceptual structure developed by Microsoft might have much greater chance of success in general, and Julie Larson-Green is much better in meeting that challenge, in particular, than what I thought previously about her.
In Steve Ballmer and Microsoft Senior Leadership Team: One Microsoft Conference Call [Microsoft News Center, July 11, 2013] the internal part of the challenge was briefly described as:
ADRIANNE JEFFRIES, The Verge: Hi, thanks so much. My question is, Steve, with Julie and Terry leading separate software and hardware teams, how do you feel you can bring devices to the market in a way that Apple and other competitors do? Will they work closely enough and collaboratively enough to compete with Apple?
JULIE LARSON-GREEN: I think it’s a perfect way for us to approach it. Terry [Myerson leading the Operating Systems Engineering Group] and I have worked together for a long time. We both have worked on the operating system side. I’ve worked on the hardware side [as well since joined the Windows division in H2 2006 as CVP of program management for the Windows Experience], and it’s a good blending of our skills and our teams to deliver things together.
So the structure that we’re putting in place for the whole company is about working across the different disciplines and having product champions.
So Terry and I will be working to lead delivery to market of our first-party and third-party devices.
STEVE BALLMER: Yes, and maybe just also have Tony Bates [leading Business Development and Evangelism Group with dotted line management of the OEM business in the COO/SMSG] add a little bit. Tony is going to have a critical role running business development evangelism, our role with our hardware innovation partners, our OEMs.
TONY BATES: Yes, I would just add to that. Julie alluded to this — first party, there’s also a third party — and I think having a single interface to our key innovation partners [which is one of the roles of his group], but two bringing together the way we think about offers with our partners is going to be absolutely critical. So when we think about how we work together, I think of going back to one strategy, one team. So we’re all going to be part of that. It’s going to be critical that we have that interface going forward.
ADRIANNE JEFFRIES: And is Terry there?
TERRY MYERSON: Yes. I thought Julie and Tony had it very well said. We’ve got innovative ideas coming from our OEM partners, and Julie’s team has some very innovative ideas. And the platform [engineered by his group] needs to span from the PPI whiteboard that Tony talked about to Xbox, to our phone, and beyond. So it’s exciting to have all these hardware partners in the Windows ecosystem, or in the Microsoft ecosystem, and all the innovative ideas and to bring it to market together.
Regarding the product and high-value scenario champions’ role:
From: One Microsoft: Company realigns to enable innovation at greater speed, efficiency
One Strategy, One Microsoft
We are rallying behind a single strategy as one company — not a collection of divisional strategies. Although we will deliver multiple devices and services to execute and monetize the strategy, the single core strategy will drive us to set shared goals for everything we do. We will see our product line holistically, not as a set of islands. We will allocate resources and build devices and services that provide compelling, integrated experiences across the many screens in our lives, with maximum return to shareholders. All parts of the company will share and contribute to the success of core offerings, like Windows, Windows Phone, Xbox, Surface, Office 365 and our EA offer, Bing, Skype, Dynamics, Azure and our servers. All parts of the company will contribute to activating high-value experiences for our customers.
We will reshape how we interact with our customers, developers and key innovation partners, delivering a more coherent message and family of product offerings. The evangelism and business development team will drive partners across our integrated strategy and its execution. Our marketing, advertising and all our customer interaction will be designed to reflect one company with integrated approaches to our consumer and business marketplaces.
How we organize our engineering efforts will also change to reflect this strategy. We will pull together disparate engineering efforts today into a coherent set of our high-value activities. This will enable us to deliver the most capability — and be most efficient in development and operations — with the greatest coherence to all our key customers. We will plan across the company, so we can better deliver compelling integrated devices and services for the high-value experiences and core technologies around which we organize. This new planning approach will look at both the short-term deliverables and long-term initiatives needed to meet the shipment cadences of both Microsoft and third-party devices and our services.
…
How We Work
The final piece of the puzzle is how we work together and what characteristics this new Microsoft must embody. There is a process element and a culture element to discuss.
Process wise, each major initiative of the company (product or high-value scenario) will have a team that spans groups to ensure we succeed against our goals. Our strategy will drive what initiatives we agree and commit to at my staff meetings. Most disciplines and product groups will have a core that delivers key technology or services and then a piece that lines up with the initiatives. Each major initiative will have a champion who will be a direct report to me or one of my direct reports. The champion will organize to drive a cross-company team for success, but my whole staff will have commitment to the initiative’s success. We will also have outgrowths on those major initiatives that may involve only a single product group. Certainly, succeeding with mobile devices, Windows, Office 365 and Azure will be foundational. Xbox and Bing will also be key future contributors to financial success. Our focus on high-value activities — serious fun, meetings, tasks, research, information assurance and IT/Dev workloads — also will get top-level championship.
Culturally, our core values don’t change, but how we express them and act day to day must evolve so we work together to win. The keys are the following:
Nimble
In a world of continuous services, the timeframe for product releases, customer interaction and competitive response is dramatically shorter. As a company, we need to make the right decisions, and make them more quickly, balancing all the customer and business imperatives. Each employee must be able to solve problems more quickly and with more real-time data than in the past.
Communicative
In the new, rapid-turn world, we need to communicate in ways that don’t just exchange information but drive agility, action, ownership and accountability.
Collaborative
Collaborative doesn’t just mean “easy to get along with.” Collaboration means the ability to coordinate effectively, within and among teams, to get results, build better products faster, and drive customer and shareholder value.
Decisive
As a global company with literally billions of diverse customers in an accelerating business environment, we must have a clear strategic direction but also empower employees closest to the customer to make decisions in service of the larger mission. This is tricky in a big company, but it is the key to higher levels of productivity, growth and customer satisfaction.
Motivated
In our industry, every day brings more challenges and more opportunities than the day before. But we have a unique chance to make the lives of billions of people better in fundamental ways. This should inspire all of us — those who love making products and services, those who love engaging with customers, and those who love planning and running our company in the most effective way possible. We want people who get up each morning excited to make Microsoft better — that’s how we come closer to fulfilling the potential of all people around the globe.
Our leadership team has discussed these cultural aspects a lot and is committed. In my own staff meetings, we are modeling these new characteristics yet also find ourselves occasionally slipping back. One strategy, united together, with great communication, decisiveness and positive energy is the only way to fly.
From Steve Ballmer and Microsoft Senior Leadership Team: One Microsoft Conference Call [Microsoft News Center, July 11, 2013]
In order to execute then on this one Microsoft strategy, we’re organizing by discipline and by engineering area.
Of course, at the end of the day, we have to deliver great products, a great family of devices and services and experiences that help people realize high-value activities.
So we will have teams that function across the company and across engineering areas to deliver on a high-value experience or device type like Windows, which literally has engineering content already today from our entire company, and involvement from a variety of innovation partners.
So we have the notion today that teams work across the company. That’s fundamental. But we’ll formalize, we’ll organize by discipline, and we’ll have product champions who bring together our cross-company teams to deliver our core products and high-value scenarios.
…
RICHARD WATERS, Financial Times: Thank you. Hello. Does this mean that senior managers won’t have direct profit/loss account responsibility that they might have had before? And, if so, how are you going to hold people accountable, and what kind of measures are you going to use; what kind of incentives and measures are actually going to make this new senior management team work?
STEVE BALLMER: Suffice it to say, the level of accountability we all feel for the success of the company rises when we all have to look at the company’s integrated profitability. I’ll let Amy talk a little bit about sort of the concepts. I don’t know that we’ll go into the specifics, but the concepts in terms of how we’re thinking. And there are pieces, obviously, that will have to have attention.
When it comes time to how we’re doing with our consulting business, which is a multibillion dollar business that doesn’t get discussed much, I think we’re all pretty clear. Kevin is on point. He thinks about it. He lives it. He eats it. He breathes it. He sleeps it every day. And I sleep well knowing that. There will be pieces, but I think the problem we’ve had in a sense — not the problem, but the opportunity we have — is if you subdivide the thing into too fine a set of parts you don’t think about your R&D investments as a general corporate resource that should be repurposed and used very broadly. It’s my resources, my business, and so this notion even from a P&L and resourcing perspective of getting to a one Microsoft strategy is very important, and yet we need to have strong financial accountability, and maybe Amy can talk about that.
AMY HOOD: Yes, I would not say that I wouldn’t necessarily associate this new org chart to any reduction in accountability from a financial perspective. I think we have always thought about personal accountability around this table to product success. And I think that will not change in the new organizational structure. Steve’s used words like that already. I think whether we call it accountability or a P&L or financial accountability, it will still remain just as it has in the past.
In such a setup Julie Larson-Green’s group will have an absolutely critical place to succeed with Microsoft powered or pure Microsoft devices on the market. Would Larsen-Green up to that task? What follows below is all the necessary evidence to judge for yourself:
Interview: Windows President Julie Larson-Green [ABC News, Nov 13, 2012]
ABC News sits down with the woman now in charge of Microsoft Windows.
From Operating Segments of the 2012 [FY12] Annual Report:
Windows & Windows Live Division (“Windows Division”) develops and markets PC operating systems, related software and online services, and PC hardware products. … approximately 75% of total Windows Division revenue comes from Windows operating system software purchased by original equipment manufacturers (“OEMs”), which they pre-install on equipment they sell. In addition to PC market volume changes …
Principal Products and Services: Windows 7 operating system; Windows Live suite of applications and web services; and PC hardware products. …
From Note 21 – Segment Information and Geographic Data of the Notes to Financial Statements of the 2012 Annual Report:
(In millions)
FY12
FY11
FY10
Revenue:
$ 18,818
$ 18,787
$ 18,789
Operating Income:
$ 11,908
$ 11,971
$ 12,193
Windows 8 Charms Developers with New Touch Experiences [WindowsVideos YouTube channel, Sept 13, 2011]
Julie Larson-Green, Corporate Vice President Windows Experience at Microsoft, unveiled a fast and fluid new user interface for the upcoming Windows 8 at the company’s Build conference earlier today in Anaheim. Larson-Green showcased how Windows 8 is built for touch by demoing gestures such as swipe left, right, top and bottom as well as new features called charms such as search, share, start, devices, and settings.
More to view from Julie Larson-Green: Microsoft Reimagines Windows, Presents Windows 8 Developer Preview [WindowsVideos YouTube channel, Sept 13, 2011]
Interview with Julie Larson-Green about Office 2007 and Windows 7 [BryZad YouTube channel, Nov 21, 2009]
D6 Conference Windows 7 Multi Touch Keynote Demo [AllTingsD, May 28, 2008]
This is the D6 (All Things Digital) Conference Windows 7 Multi Touch Demo shown by Julie Larson Green after the Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer Chat with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher.
Julie Larson-Green [Microsoft TCN –Awards and Recognitions, Feb 28, 2010]
2008 Outstanding Technical Leadership
In revamping the interface of Microsoft Office 2007, Larson-Green effected a paradigm shift in one of the company’s most successful products.
“At first, no one wanted to change Office dramatically,” says Julie Larson-Green, who was tasked with overseeing a reimagining of the product’s end-user interaction and overall experience in the fall of 2003. Larson-Green’s leadership of Microsoft Office 2007′s redesign, the most radical revamp in the product’s history, required immense courage and conviction, to which this award attests.
A specialist in user-interface design, Larson-Green began working with Office in 1997, when she program-managed FrontPage. She subsequently helmed UI design for Office XP and Office 2003, which had evolved into a large organization of carefully negotiated compromises among the application suite’s various programs. Although Office’s great success was based on customer familiarity, the Customer Experience Improvement Program was indicating that users, while basically happy with the product, were increasingly either unaware of (possibly redundant) functions among Office’s different programs or frustrated by the amount of training necessary to use an astonishingly complex set of commands, dialogs, and interaction modes.
After deciding that Office needed to be made easier to use, Larson-Green’s team arrived at the elegant solution of the browsable Ribbon (or Office Fluent user interface) and its contextual cousins that united the product’s common capabilities and ease of experimentation. “The breakthrough,” Larson-Green says, “arrived with contextualizing the user interface and realizing that all of the product’s features didn’t have to be present all the time.”
SELLING THE REDESIGN
As development of Office 2007 proceeded, Larson-Green was confronted with the equally formidable task of selling the redesign across Office’s various programs. “Our biggest challenge,” she says, “was convincing people that we had an idea that would work.” Heavily invested in the earlier version, the Word, Excel, Outlook, and other organizations were initially reluctant to relegate control to an umbrella design team. Even more significant, Larson-Green had decided not to compromise the integrity of Office 2007 with the safety net of a “classic mode.”
It’s difficult to change the direction of a large organization at the best of times. It’s even more difficult when the goal is still incomplete. Larson-Green’s ability to argue her vision without necessarily being able to address myriad objections in detail is a remarkable trait in a data-driven culture such as Microsoft’s. One by one, however, the suite’s principals bought into the design as it was being tested and fleshed out.
Office 2007 shipped to nearly universal critical acclaim in January 2007, and Larson-Green was promoted to corporate vice president of program management for the Windows Experience. As with Office 2007, she plans to identify and solve customer problems, which will in turn drive a new design and its subsequent engineering. “In the old world,” she notes, “coding would start and design would kind of evolve with the coding.”
COLLABORATIVE EFFORTS
Flattered by her nomination for the Outstanding Technical Leadership Award, Larson-Green admits to shock at winning. “I was very pleased,” she says, “but also kind of embarrassed. I may have been the ringleader, but I couldn’t have done it without a lot of help from a lot of people.” She cites principal Office User Experience Team Program Manager Jensen Harris, Product Design Manager Brad Weed, General Manager Dave Barthol, and Test Manager Sean Adridge as key collaborators.
As for the prize, Larson-Green will treat its dispensation as a family affair. “Unless we all agree on one, we’re going to split the award and each pick a charity,” she says. “My seven-year-old son has already decided he wants to do something with animals. My fifteen-year-old daughter wants to do something with children. And my economist husband is doing all the research on how much money goes to programs versus administration.”
The Ribbon in Microsoft Office 2007 New Features & Upgrades [mydigitalworks YouTube channel, March 18, 2008]
Q&A: Microsoft Showcases New User Interface for Office “12” Core Applications [Microsoft feature story, Sept 13, 2005] PressPass spoke with Julie Larson-Green, group program manager for the Office User Experience at Microsoft.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: Microsoft Office 2007: The Story of the Ribbon [10 videos, each 10” long on the creativecrewchannel YouTube channel, Jan 11, 2009]
From Julie Larson Green BIO [Microsoft, Oct 25, 2012]
Larson-Green joined Microsoft in 1993 and has focused on technical design and development throughout her career. As a program manager in Development Tools and Languages, she was instrumental in several releases of Visual C++ for 32-bit operating systems and led the development of Microsoft’s first customizable integrated development environment for Windows. Moving to the Windows team, she was responsible for the Internet Explorer 3.0 and Internet Explorer 4.0 user experiences, including features related to the Web-integrated Windows desktop.
Continuing her focus on end-user software, Larson-Green joined the Office team in 1997 and led program management for Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft FrontPage, including the early work in information worker servers. More recently, she has been responsible for leading the user interface design for Microsoft Office XP, Microsoft Office 2003 and the 2007 Microsoft Office system, which was lauded for its innovative reinvention of the user experience for productivity software.
…
Before joining Microsoft, Larson-Green was a senior development engineer at a Seattle-based company [Aldus] that created leading desktop publishing software. She has a master’s degree in software engineering from Seattle University and a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Western Washington University. A native of Washington state, she lives there with her husband, who is a university professor, and her two children.
From The Rise of Julie Larson-Green, the Heir Apparent at Microsoft [Wired, July 11, 2013]
Today’s promotion is just the latest leap for Larson-Green. Most recently, she replaced her longtime boss and mentor, Steven Sinofsky, to become engineering head of Windows this past November, jumping two rungs up the ladder. Unlike the notoriously prickly Sinofsky, Larson-Green is known for her communication skills and ability to work well with others, uniting people, including those outside her own purview, around a common goal.
But if you step back a bit, her biography has been a story of tenacity and persistence in pursuit of a closely-held personal mission to reshape how the world uses computers, according to various press reports, public appearances by Larson-Green, and Microsoft in-house media.
…
[When applying for a Microsoft position in 1993, being a development lead in Aldus] Larson-Green found herself in the potentially embarrassing situation of giving a frank assessment of the weaknesses and strengths of software code compilers made by Microsoft, along with those made by Microsoft rival Borland, to a room that turned out to be dotted with Microsoft staffers. But the Microsofties were impressed, and soon roped Larson-Green into a gig helping to oversee the development of Microsoft’s Visual C++ — just the sort of software development tool she had critiqued.
…
It’s hard not to wonder whether Larson-Green will end up replacing a controversial boss once again, if and when Ballmer leaves the company. The longtime Microsoft sales executive has been rightly criticized for allowing once-catatonic rival Apple to surpass Microsoft in driving the growth of personal computing, first through music players and now via smartphones and tablets.
And it’s interesting that when asked about replacing Ballmer at Wired’s business conference this past May (see video below), Larson-Green was uncharacteristically blunt. “I wouldn’t rule it out, but I’m not in a hurry,” Larson Green said. “Give me a year and ask me again.”
[you can reach the video here]
From Bodyslams at Microsoft Prepared Larson-Green for Overhaul [Bloomberg, July 12, 2013]
Julie Larson-Green body-slammed a 6-foot-6 colleague who was blocking her exit one day in 2001 when the largest earthquake to hit Washington state in a half century rattled her office.
“When I have a direction I want to go, it doesn’t matter who’s in my way,” said Larson-Green, 51, who started at Microsoft 20 years ago and is the company’s highest-ranking female engineering executive.
…
Jensen Harris, the Microsoft software designer who Larson-Green shoved out of the way during the 2001 earthquake — even though she’s about a foot shorter than he is — said she makes quick work of any obstacle. The temblor “was my first experience with Julie,” said Harris, who has worked for her for the past 10 years overhauling Office and Windows. “Julie has this immediate ability to cut through things.”
…
Rene Haas, vice president and general manager of computing products at Nvidia Corp. (NVDA), which makes the chip for one of the Surface tablet’s two models, said while Larson-Green is capable, “It’s not a small task for anybody.”
Maria Klawe, a Microsoft board member and president of Harvey Mudd College, said Larson-Green will do fine. “Software-hardware integration is one of the really exciting things going on in the world right now and you really need people who can cross that boundary,” said Klawe.
…
Ballmer praised Larson-Green’s ability to play well with others, a skill he said was critical to Microsoft’s future success.
Larson-Green put that skill into practice last fall when she convened design and program management executives from various products and plied them with pricey wine. Then she pitched teams like those overseeing the Bing search engine on putting their other priorities on hold to build for Windows.
With a 15-minute conversation, she won over Derrick Connell, a Bing vice president who had never met her before. He gave Larson-Green 20 percent of his staff for six months to build the new search app in Windows 8.1. It was a big project on a short time frame.
“I trust that you will do it,” Connell said she told him. “We’ve worked harder to make sure we delivered on that trust.”
Microsoft will now have to move even faster and get things right the first time, Larson-Green said. She said she “hates that stereotype” that has trailed Microsoft for decades — that the company only gets it right on version 3.0.
“You really only get to sell something one time,” she said. “We shouldn’t do it unless we think it’s great.”
Then the functionally separate COO/SMSG under Kevin Turner will play a crucial role in the devices success, and not only because of its internal OEM part. Here is the background information on that functional organization in order to assess its importance for yourself:
Sales, Marketing and Services Group (SMSG): – SMSG employs more than 45,000 people and is responsible for Microsoft sales, marketing, and service initiatives; customer and partner programs; and product support and consulting services worldwide [2009]
- SMSG is one of the core groups at Microsoft and stands for “Sales, Marketing, Services, IT & Operations Group”. Shortened you can get Sales Marketing and Services Group (IT & Operations are actually part of the Services division). [2011]
- As Microsoft’s chief operating officer (COO), Kevin Turner leads the company’s global sales, marketing and services organization of more than 47,000 employees in more than 190 countries. Under his leadership, the sales and marketing group delivered more than $77 billion in revenue in fiscal 2012. Turner oversees worldwide sales, field marketing, services, support and partner channels as well Microsoft Stores and corporate support functions including Information Technology, Worldwide Licensing & Pricing and [Commercial] Operations. The sales and marketing organization is focused on delivering Microsoft’s family of devices and services to customers and partners all over the world. [2013]
Enterprise and Partner Group (EPG)
Small and Midmarket Solutions & Partners (SMS&P), see also Microsoft Small and Midsize Business Pressroom
Public Sector Groups (PSG): Education, Public Safety & National Security, Government, Health, International Organizations see also Worldwide Public Sector Virtual Presskit
Communications Sector
Enterprise Services (Services)
Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM)
Worldwide Licensing and Pricing (WWLP)
Marketing and Operation (M&O)
Consumer & Online (C&O)
According to [Microsoft] Worldwide Marketing & Operations as of July 14, 2013: How exciting would it be to have a global view of the largest software company in the world, and help optimize go-to-market strategy and operations execution? The WW M&O organization does just that by integrating business, marketing, and operational leadership globally. We combine our consumer and commercial marketing into a single organization, and serve as the center of gravity for subsidiary marketing and operations. We align our corporate assets and talent to spark innovation, drive growth, win share and improve the customer and partner experience.
According to Sales Jobs at Microsoft as of July 14, 2013, with added overall/marketing descriptions when available:
Microsoft Enterprise [and] Partner Group (EPG), Sales: Our enterprise customers call our Worldwide Enterprise and Partner Group their trusted advisors. We help these customers strengthen their own customer relationships, lower their costs, and build a strategic advantage.
Microsoft Enterprise Services, Sales: We solve problems. What could be better than helping a customer discover a technology or service that solves a pressing business problem? Or that makes a life easier, richer, or more rewarding? Those are a winning scenarios for everyone—for the customer you satisfy, for our company, and for you—the person who solves the problem and makes the sale. That’s Enterprise Services Sales at Microsoft.
Microsoft Enterprise Services, Overall: We are the consulting and enterprise support division of Microsoft. We help businesses around the world get a maximized return on their investment in Microsoft products and technologies. This means not only helping with deploying and optimizing IT, but also helping businesses move forward with IT initiatives that deliver the most business value. We have a global team of more than 9,720 professionals in 88 countries, we help a large number of customers worldwide achieve their business objectives each year. Why do so many businesses and individuals trust us to help them save money and improve their profitability? Because we are the experts at accelerating the adoption and productive use of Microsoft products and technologies. Our goal is to empower our customers to succeed. We help our customers get the most out of existing IT assets, saving them money and delivering real business results. We are committed to the transfer of knowledge so that our customers can drive the success of projects through best practices, intellectual property, and key insights from thousands of Microsoft Services engagements worldwide. When it comes to support, we never forget that our customers’ business and their success comes first.
Microsoft Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM), Sales: We solve problems and engage with strategic Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) to identify and drive efficiencies, best practices, product improvements and consumer loyalty.
Microsoft Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM), Overall: Tablets, Smartphones, Laptops, Netbooks, Desktops, Smart TVs…the device business is exciting, fast-paced & rapidly changing. We help Microsoft partners to design & sell the latest hardware solutions featuring Win7, Win8, Windows Phone, Server, Office & Bing. If you’re passionate about impacting the global ecosystem of partners, and influencing the experience on the 100’s of millions of devices that ship every year, then this is the team for you. Check out exciting opportunities in engineering, marketing, business development and policy.
Microsoft Public Sector, Sales1: The Worldwide Public Sector team focuses on truly partnering with customers and partners in Government, Health and Education industries in new and innovative ways. This effort includes not only working on projects and programs important to them, but also staying focused on establishing Framework Agreements that are all-encompassing.
Microsoft Public Sector, Sales2: For more than 30 years Microsoft has provided technology solutions for Public Sector organizations globally. Microsoft, along with our partner ecosystem, addresses the most complex, mission-critical technology issues for the government (federal, state and local), education (K-12 and universities) and healthcare (hospitals, physicians’ offices and other Health & Life Sciences organizations). The global Public Sector has made huge investments in our products to create practical, cost-effective solutions.
Microsoft Small and Midmarket Solutions & Partners (SMSP / SMS&P), Sales: Our Small & Mid-market Solutions and Partners team ensures that we and our ecosystem of partners deliver technology solutions that meet the unique needs of small and medium businesses and home consumers.
Microsoft Small and Midmarket Solutions & Partners (SMSP / SMS&P), Overall: Small & Mid-market Solutions and Partners works with our ecosystem of partners, including system integrators, resellers, distributors, hosters, managed service providers and readiness partners, to deliver technology solutions that meet the unique needs of our customers. The SMS&P team is responsible for selling the broad spectrum of Microsoft products and cloud services, an exciting growth area for both Microsoft.
Microsoft Worldwide Licensing and Pricing (WWLP), Sales and Overall: World Wide Licensing and Pricing Group (WWLP) is accountable for leading and orchestrating the business groups, segments and field in global development and implementation of licensing business models that make it easy for customers to acquire, use, and manage Volume Licensing products while maximizing synergy among all business groups across Microsoft.
Microsoft Communications Sector, Sales: The Communications Sector is responsible for driving the sales and marketing of Microsoft services and innovative software-based solutions to telecommunications, hosting, media and entertainment companies.
Microsoft Consumer & Online (C&O), Sales = Marketing: Each day, more people are spending more time online—always connected, using multiple devices. The goal of Consumer & Online (C&O) is to build consumer loyalty and enable a seamless consumer experience across Windows, mobile devices, and online properties. We couldn’t do this without close cooperation of a broad network of retail and online partners, PC and device manufacturers, advertisers, and publishers. You’ll find all kinds of talent in C&O: content development, marketing, advertising sales, business development, operations, and technical. We offer world-class advertising sales, consumer marketing, and creative services to our partners and advertisers. We help them build consumer loyalty by targeting their unique styles and needs. Our consumer marketing team is also responsible for evangelizing the breadth and value of Microsoft’s consumer offerings including Windows, Windows Mobile, MSN, Windows Live (which includes Hotmail and Messenger), Bing, and other advertising-supported services. Our business is to help consumers experience a “Life without Walls,” and we hire outstanding people to do so.
Filed under: Cloud Computing strategy, notebooks, smartphones, tablets Tagged: device play, high-value scenario champions, Julie Larson-Green, Microsoft, Microsoft COO, Microsoft initiatives, Microsoft SMSG, OEMs, product champions 
