Codebreaker

Ozzie leaves Microsoft

John Moe Oct 19, 2010

Rejoins Black Sabbath.

It’s another story about an executive at a tech company but the departure of Ray Ozzie is important if you want to understand Microsoft. Ozzie was the Chief Software Architect and was selected by Bill Gates five years ago to be the visionary who would take over the task of dreaming big dreams and thinking big thoughts once Gates moved off to focus on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. But recent years have seen Ozzie moved more and more to the side and he was never given a major division or project to head up. Ozzie came into the company after they acquired his company Groove and he was vocal about the threat of internet based business models to Microsoft. He outlined ways to move the company more aggressively to the cloud. But either he wasn’t an effective leader or the other people in charge weren’t clued in because Microsoft’s migration to the cloud has been painfully slow. So now he’s quitting. One wonders where he might go next.

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