Office Duties Split in New Organization

Departing leaders in the Office and Microsoft TV groups have been replaced by longtime executives from closely related organizations. The moves each signal continuity, rather than radical change, to the company’s strategy in the two areas. Meanwhile a shuffle of executives in the U.S. small and midmarket sales team mean that partners serving smaller firms will see some new faces in the U.S. market.

Longtime Executives Replace Sinofsky

In the Business Division headed by President Jeff Raikes, the duties of Steven Sinofsky, the longtime Office executive who moved to the Windows Client division in Mar. 2006, have been split between two longtime executives in his old division.

Antoine Leblond has been promoted to vice president, Office productivity applications, where he will oversee design, development, and testing of the Office suite and related applications (such as Visio). Leblond formerly headed program management for Office development. He has been with the Office unit since 1989 and has influenced design of the shared services (such as the user interface framework and Visual Basic for Applications environment) of the suite. Consequently, his appointment is unlikely to lead to major changes to the unit’s design approach.