Vista and Longhorn Server Delays Force Another Microsoft Reorg

Published: April 5, 2006

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

The delay of the Vista implementation of the "Longhorn" version of the Windows desktop platform to January 2007 as well as the several past delays that have pushed Longhorn Server into sometime later in 2007, has precipitated yet another management shakeup at Microsoft.

Jim Allchin, who was vice president of the Platforms Group at Microsoft until last September, has made no secret that he is going to retire after Vista comes to market, and he is a tough guy to replace. But Microsoft seems inclined to do it sooner rather than later. Allchin brought Windows NT 3.51, Windows NT 4, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 to market, but Longhorn and its kicker, "Blackcomb," are several years late coming to market.

In fact, Longhorn is an intermediate operating system, a stopgap measure because the jump from "Whistler," the code-name for Windows Server 2003, to Blackcomb--whatever that might end up being--was too large. Longhorn's desktop implementation was outlined when Windows XP was launched in 2001, and at the time, Microsoft said it would be out in 2003. A year later, after Microsoft got really nervous about security, Longhorn was pushed out to 2004 or 2005, depending on who you asked, and when the summer of 2004 rolled around, it was pushed out to the second half of 2006, which everyone thought would mean the Christmas buying season. And, as we learned two weeks ago, Longhorn will miss Christmas.

Microsoft and its partners are tired of delays, and so last fall Microsoft tapped Kevin Johnson, who has been in charge of Microsoft's worldwide sales, marketing, and services organization, to be president of its merged Platform Products & Services Division, which includes Windows server and client products, development tools, middleware servers, and MSN. But this seems to have been an insufficient reorganization. Allchin is technically co-president of this division.

In the wake of the delay for delivering Vista from the end of this year to January 2007, which reported on two weeks ago, Microsoft has brought over Steven Sinofsky, who has been running Microsoft's Office products, to take over a new group in the Platform Products & Services Division called the Windows and Windows Live Group, which will, as the name suggests, copes entirely with getting Windows to market. Because Vista is largely done, Sinofsky, who has been elevated to the role of senior vice president and who has lead the creation of four different Office suites as well as various development tools in his 17-year tenure at Microsoft, is expected to work on Blackcomb and whatever is out there beyond that. Microsoft confirmed last week that Office System 2007 will be pushed out to coincide with the Vista release, but that the work on that product will be done on time by October of this year. This is one of the reasons why Sinofsky is now in charge of planning Windows. Although it still comes down to the Core Operating System Division to actually make the code he specifies. It would seem that Microsoft has as much trouble architecting operating systems it can deliver on as it does in coding them once it architects them. Otherwise, Sinofsky would be in charge of COSD.

Just in case you can't keep track of it all, the Windows and Windows Live Group plans the future Windows platforms, including the online software services Microsoft is planning. The Core Operating System Division, which was created last year and which is led by senior vice president Brian Valentine, implements the core features in the operating system that are shared by desktop, server, storage, and think client implementations.

In total, Microsoft created eight new units underneath the Platform Products & Services Division, including the Windows Live Platform Group, now headed up by Blake Irving; the Online Business Group, led by David Cole; the Market Expansion Group, which is a marketing job for Microsoft's platforms and services, head up by Will Poole; the Windows Client Marketing Group, which is dedicated to marketing the Windows desktop and which has Mike Sievert in charge. The Developer and Platform Evangelism Group is still led by Sanjay Parthasarathy, and the Server and Tools Business Group still has Bob Muglia in charge.

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