Raikes Retiring from Business Division

Jeff Raikes, the mastermind of Microsoft’s largest and second-most-profitable business, has announced his imminent retirement. The move could bring strategic changes to a unit that drives a great deal of business for resellers and service partners, and that competes fiercely with enterprise software vendors. Elsewhere in the organization, key sales and operations positions are currently vacant, and some longtime Windows engineers have taken their leave.

Summarized here are changes to the Directions on Microsoft OrgChart at the corporate vice-presidential level and above since Oct. 2007. For further details, see the most recent online OrgChart.

Macromedia Ex-CEO to Replace Raikes

One of Microsoft’s executive leaders has announced plans to leave the company in Sept. 2008 and hand most of his duties over to the former CEO of a key Microsoft competitor.

Jeff Raikes has announced plans to retire from his post as president of Microsoft’s Business Division, the company’s largest unit by revenue. Hired in 1981 from Apple, Raikes was a key influence in the development of the Office application suite before moving to lead Microsoft’s worldwide sales force in 1992. In 2000, he returned to Office and related applications in what became the Information Worker division. There he oversaw a steady stream of releases and stronger antipiracy efforts that kept the Office suite business growing and also diversified the division by building the SharePoint line (credited with US$800 million in revenue for the company’s fiscal year 2007), building up the Project and Visio businesses (which crossed US$1 billion in combined revenue in 2006), and spearheading the company’s push into unified communications (which Raikes predicted would be a US$45 billion industry by 2009).