Group Vice President Paul Maritz, 45, has announced his retirement from Microsoft. The company says Maritz will continue to serve part time as a consultant on strategic and business issues.

In his most recent role as Group Vice President, Platform Strategy and Developer Group, Maritz was responsible for overseeing business development, product strategy and planning, and the creation of the .NET development platform. The .NET development platform includes languages, such as the recently announced C#, the Visual Studio.NET application development environment, and the Common Language Runtime (a type of virtual machine that executes applications on .NET-capable devices).

Maritz is exceptionally well respected at Microsoft, and his influence will undoubtedly be greatly missed. However, his departure is not expected to have a major impact, because he has steadily scaled back his involvement over the past 18 months.

Until the spring of 1999, Maritz had dominion over operating systems, server applications, desktop productivity applications, and developer tools—virtually all Microsoft products other than CD-ROM titles, hardware peripherals, and online services. As part of the first major reorganization following Steve Ballmer’s appointment as president in summer 1998, Maritz’s focus was narrowed to development tools and developer marketing. In fall 1999, Maritz transferred day-to-day management of Microsoft's Developer Group to a subordinate. Maritz was on sabbatical for much of the summer of 2000.

New Reporting Relationships

The six vice presidents who report to Maritz have been reassigned to other parts of the Microsoft organization.

Sanjay Parthasarathy, formerly vice president of Platforms Strategic Business Development, has been named vice president of Developer Evangelism and Business Development. Reporting directly to Steve Ballmer, Parthasarathy is responsible for relationships with key ISVs, dot-coms, and venture capitalists. He is also charged with coordinating the activities of developer evangelism teams within the business divisions.

Mike Nash, vice president of Content Development and Delivery, now reports to Jim Allchin, group vice president of the Platforms Product Group. (Allchin just recently returned from a several-month sabbatical.) Nash is responsible for microsoft.com and MSDN, TechNet, courseware, certification, and training programs.

Yuval Neeman, vice president of Developer Tools, now also reports to Jim Allchin. Neeman is responsible for development tools, such as Visual Studio.NET, and related platform technologies.

Chris Atkinson, vice president of .NET Developer Solutions, now reports to Paul Flessner, senior vice president of the .NET Enterprise Server Group. (Flessner’s organization is part of Jim Allchin’s Platforms Product Group.) Atkinson is responsible for evangelizing Microsoft’s Web applications and services to corporate accounts, system integrators, and partners.

Jim Ewel, vice president of the IT Infrastructure and Hosting Solution Group, now reports to Brian Valentine, senior vice president of the Windows Division. (Valentine’s organization is part of Jim Allchin’s Platforms Product Group.) Ewel is responsible for business and product planning for the Windows 2000 Server line, management technologies, terminal services, and network and communications technologies.

Darryl Rubin, vice president of Software Strategy and Distinguished Engineer, will most likely report directly to Bill Gates. (At press time Rubin’s new reporting relationship had not been finalized.)