Scott will sit at CEO Satya Nadella's right hand, a further sign that LinkedIn execs are taking leadership positions at Microsoft.

Mitch Wagner, Executive Editor, Light Reading

January 24, 2017

2 Min Read
Microsoft Names LinkedIn's Kevin Scott CTO

Microsoft named Kevin Scott, LinkedIn's infrastructure boss, to the job of chief technology officer, a new position reporting directly to CEO Satya Nadella, the company said Tuesday.

Scott will also continue as senior vice president of infrastructure at LinkedIn Corp. , which Microsoft acquired for $26.2 billion last month. He also joins Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT)'s senior leadership team, along with LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, reporting directly to Nadella, Microsoft says. (See Microsoft Closes LinkedIn Acquisition. What's Next?)

Scott's first order of business will be integrating LinkedIn and Microsoft's cloud services. Microsoft is looking to integrate LinkedIn with Microsoft Office and Dynamics, its CRM tool, to help foster collaboration, sales, training, talent management and more.

Previous to joining LinkedIn, Scott held senior leadership positions at Google, where he oversaw mobile ads, and AdMob, a mobile ads company which was acquired by Google.

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Scott's elevation is a further demonstration that LinkedIn is taking a leadership role within Microsoft. Earlier, LinkedIn CEO Weiner was named to head up the transition team integrating the two companies, a job that typically goes to someone from the acquiring company.

Many mergers and acquisitions don't end well, something Microsoft knows all to well with its failed $6 billion acquisition of ad company aQuantive and $7 billion acquisition of the mobile unit of Nokia. (See The Nokia/Microsoft Conspiracy Theory.)

This time, Microsoft is looking to learn from its own and others' past failures and successes, including its own $2.5 billion acquisition of Minecraft developer Mojang, and Facebook's acquisition of Instagram.

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— Mitch Wagner, Follow me on TwitterVisit my LinkedIn profile, Editor, Light Reading Enterprise Cloud

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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