To intensify its focus on the cloud, Microsoft plans a global sales reorganization and job cuts, according to reports.

Mitch Wagner, Executive Editor, Light Reading

June 30, 2017

2 Min Read
Is Microsoft Planning Reorg Around Cloud?

Microsoft is planning a global sales reorganization, including job cuts, to intensify its focus on the cloud, according to reports.

The restructuring could be announced as early as next week, and will effect the Worldwide Commercial Business unit under Judson Althoff and Jean-Phillippe Courtois' global sales and marketing group, according to a Bloomberg report Friday.

"The shifts will be some of the most significant in the sales force in years and will also impact local marketing efforts in various countries," Bloomberg says.

Figure 1:

Microsoft's sales force is trained to sell software on desktops and servers, but signing up cloud customers has become more important, Bloomberg said. Microsoft "wants to accelerate this switch to add more revenue and catch cloud market leader Amazon.com Inc.," Bloomberg says.

AWS has 57% cloud market share, compared with 34% for second-place Microsoft, 15% for Google and 8% for IBM, according to a recent report from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. AWS market share was flat year-over-year, while Microsoft's grew from 20% market share the previous year. (See Cloud Growth Spawns Worries, Mary Meeker Reports.)

The Puget Sound Business Journal reported Microsoft plans a company-wide reorganization around the cloud, to be announced July 5.

Microsoft said Thursday it is buying Cloudyn, a small Israeli company that helps enterprises control costs of running applications on Azure, as well as Amazon, Google and OpenStack clouds. (See Microsoft's Cloudyn Buy Boosts Multi-Cloud Strategy.)

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About the Author(s)

Mitch Wagner

Executive Editor, Light Reading

San Diego-based Mitch Wagner is many things. As well as being "our guy" on the West Coast (of the US, not Scotland, or anywhere else with indifferent meteorological conditions), he's a husband (to his wife), dissatisfied Democrat, American (so he could be President some day), nonobservant Jew, and science fiction fan. Not necessarily in that order.

He's also one half of a special duo, along with Minnie, who is the co-habitor of the West Coast Bureau and Light Reading's primary chewer of sticks, though she is not the only one on the team who regularly munches on bark.

Wagner, whose previous positions include Editor-in-Chief at Internet Evolution and Executive Editor at InformationWeek, will be responsible for tracking and reporting on developments in Silicon Valley and other US West Coast hotspots of communications technology innovation.

Beats: Software-defined networking (SDN), network functions virtualization (NFV), IP networking, and colored foods (such as 'green rice').

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