Introducing Windows Live Operations
Friday, March 24 2006
On Wednesday I worked in MSN Operations and then on Thursday I found myself working in Windows Live Operations. Such is life in the corporate world. ;-)
So what the heck am I talking about? Yesterday, Kevin Johnson announced a reorganization of the Platform & Services Division (PSD). I'm no business analyst, by any stretch of the imagination, but in my opinion this was simply the next step after the overall restructuring done 7 months ago when the company created 3 core divisions (press release here). The biggest effect of the core restructuring was that MSN and the Windows groups were put into the same silo. The purported reason was to foster greater communication and collaboration between the groups. Honestly, I've heard from more than one person that this has actually been working, to which I am very pleasantly surprised. With regard to this most recent restructure, I don't have any forecasts, but I sincerely hope that the positive collaborative efforts continue to grow and improve.
One thing that I found especially interesting was Steven Sinofsky's move from Office to lead the Windows and Windows Live engineering Group. From the press release, his group "will have engineering teams focused on delivering Windows and engineering teams focused on delivering the Windows Live experiences." I find this interesting because I've been reading his blog for several months now and have found him to be quite open and responsive, which is very refreshing to see from senior management. I honestly wish that all or most of our senior management would do the same thing as it provides a lot of insight into them as people and as our leaders. Go check out his blog, although his posts tend to be quite long [like I have room to talk] they are very informative.
So where does this leave me in the chain of command? Well, as always I'm still just a grunt...and quite happy being one I might add! :-) But if you're really curious then here goes. We have been moved out from under David Cole's MSN wide umbrella and are now underneath Blake Irving's Windows Live Platform Group. This group is basically the meat-and-potatoes of your online Microsoft meal. It consists of all the infrastructure services such as data centers, operations, storage, networking, security and many other areas that are exactly what the title implies...a [fairly standard] online platform for all of our products to run on.
Reporting to Blake, is my corporate VP, Debra Chrapaty, with the newly titled Windows Live Operations. Yeah, just try to say her last name 3 times really fast [which even she jokes about]. ;-) She's been our corporate VP for a few years now and I must say that I really like her style. She's a straight shooter with lots of energy and follows through on her committments. Not only that, but she's very approachable [even to us grunts].
A quick aside... Here's an interesting little thing that happened to a good friend of mine here at work. I'll leave her anonymous because I didn't ask for permission to print this story. She was going through a particularly rough time in her personal life (a divorce with custody issues) and as people do during such times, she had one particularly bad day that just made her break down. She was in the ladies restroom sitting on the bench crying when a lady she didn't know, but had seen around the halls sat down next to her and just started talking with her. My friend said the lady was very nice, sincere and sympathetic offering any assistance she could. They spoke for 10-15 minutes and my friend felt much better. As they were parting ways the lady asked my friend her name. My friend told her and then of course asked for her name in return. I'll give you one guess who that anonymous lady was. Yep, Debra Chrapaty.
Upon hearing that story I immediately had a lot of respect for Debra personally and working for her group over the past few years I have developed a lot of respect for her professionally too.
With regard to this announcement, I think it will be pretty much 'business as usual' for me. I'll continue to be a grunt developer in MSN Windows Live Operations...and loving it. =)
~tod
tags: windows+live microsoft
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