Microsoft Names LinkedIn's Kevin Scott CTOMicrosoft 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, , Editor, Light Reading Enterprise Cloud