Who should be Bill Gates' technical successor at Microsoft?
It's not CEO Steve Ballmer, who at last month's D6 Conference admitted, "I am not an engineer." I'll say. Steve is a marketing guy who has put other marketing guys in charge of Microsoft.
Should it be Bill's handpicked successors, Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie or Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer? For an upcoming eWEEK story about Microsoft after Bill Gates, I asked several analysts about the logical technical successors. None mentioned Craig, while some worries defined Ray's possible Microsoft future.
Forrester Research analyst Rob Koplowitz described Ray as a "brilliant technical visionary." Problem: He "might still be a bit of an outsider after just a few years. Also, he was Gates' man, and with Gates gone ..." Koplowitz didn't finish the sentence. But the implications are hugely important. It wouldn't be the first time I've heard concerns that Ray isn't Ballmer's man.
Several analysts surprised me with their pick for technical successor: Bob Muglia, senior veep of the Server and Tools division.
"Bob Muglia particularly stands out because his organization is profitable, growing in double digits, is facing tough competition against open-source alternatives, and is a major factor backing Windows and Office on the desktop," said Directions on Microsoft analyst Rob Helm.
Koplowitz described Muglia as a "technical genius like Ozzie, but with better Microsoft cred."
Roger Kay, president of analyst firm EndPoint Technologies, shared similar sentiments. "I've been spending time with Bob Muglia, and I think [the Server and Tools business] is the most functional unit at the company. It's a $13 billion business dropping $4 billion to the bottom line."
He continued: "It's responsive to its customers and lives in a competitive environment. Bob motivates his troops and inspires confidence in his customers. I think he continues to do what he does in a post-Gates world. STB could almost split off as a stand-alone company, but it does share some technologies with other units."
Server and Tools certainly is having a busy year, with releases of Visual Studio 2008, Silverlight 2, Windows Server 2008, Hyper-V virtualization, SQL Server 2008 and new "Essential" Server products. While the division's margins are smaller than the Office and Windows (e.g., Business and Client) groups, year-over-year growth is consistently stronger and contribution to sales of volume-licensing contracts is more significant. Server and Tools products will also drive new Microsoft hosted services.
Where Client is doing OK—hampered by Windows Vista—and Business is doing well, Server and Tools' performance is exceptional. According to a Forrester report published on Friday, "80 percent of firms cite the Redmond software giant as their primary server OS vendor." The division has posted more than 20 consecutive quarters of growth.
Bob took over Server and Tools in October 2005. It has been boom time pretty much since, building on an already strong foundation and diversifying into new areas, such as hosted services.
But he's not alone as the man who could wear the Gates mantle, or at least share it sometimes. Other future technical successors the three analysts said to closely watch:
- Steven Sinofsky, senior vice president, Windows and Windows Live
- David Thompson, corporate vice president, Microsoft Online
- Bill Veghte, senior vice president of the Online Services & Windows Business group
- S. Somasgear, senior vice president, Developer division
- Kurt DelBene, senior vice president, Office Business Platform group
- Chris Capossela, senior vice president, Information Worker Product Management group
- Satya Nadella, senior vice president, Search, Portal & Advertising group
- Stephen Elop, (incoming) president, Business division
- Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president, .NET Developer division
- Eric Rudder, senior vice president, Technical Strategy
- Rick Rashid, senior vice president, Research
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