Meet Satya Nadella's new team: Stephen Elop out; Terry Myerson gets bigger role

Microsoft chief Satya Nadella, in an email to employees, informed that former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop is leaving the company.

Nadella said, “With the structural change, Stephen and I have agreed that now is the right time for him to retire from Microsoft. I regret the loss of leadership that this represents, and look forward to seeing where his next destination will be.”

As part of a new re-organisation, Elop is departing alongside other key Microsoft executives, including the 13-year old veteran Kirill Tatarinov – who was running Microsoft Business Solutions, and Eric Rudder – who spent more than 25 years at Microsoft, founded the Servers and tools business, and led Microsoft Research. In addition, Chief Insights Officer Mark Penn has also resigned from the firm to form a private equity fund.

“We are aligning our engineering efforts and capabilities to deliver on our strategy and, in particular, our three core ambitions,” said Nadella. “This change will enable us to deliver better products and services that our customers love at a more rapid pace.”

He revealed the changes in a memo, noting that a new ‘Windows and Devices Group (WDG)’ will be responsible for Surface, HoloLens, Lumia, Surface Hub, Microsoft Band, and Xbox. That newly formed division will be led by Terry Myerson, who is currently responsible for Microsoft’s big push with Windows 10.

“We will combine the engineering efforts of our current Operating Systems Group and Microsoft Devices Group (MDG) led by Stephen Elop. This new team brings together all the engineering capability required to drive breakthrough innovations that will propel the Windows ecosystem forward,” Nadella added.

Executive Vice President Scott Guthrie will continue to lead the Cloud and Enterprise (C+E) team. As a part of this announcement, the company will move the Dynamics development teams to the C+E team, enabling the company to accelerate ERP and CRM work and bring it into the mainstream C+E engineering and innovation efforts.

Executive Vice President Qi Lu will continue to lead the Applications and Services Group (ASG) focused on reinventing productivity services for digital work that span all devices and appeal to the people who use technology at work and in their personal lives.

Following these changes, Microsoft’s Senior Leadership Team totals 12 executives:

• Satya Nadella, Chief Executive Officer
• Chris Capossela, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer
• Kurt DelBene, Executive Vice President, Corporate Strategy and Planning
• Scott Guthrie, Executive Vice President, Cloud and Enterprise
• Amy Hood, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
• Kathleen Hogan, Executive Vice President, Human Resources
• Peggy Johnson, Executive Vice President, Business Development
• Qi Lu, Executive Vice President, Applications and Services Group
• Terry Myerson, Executive Vice President, Windows and Devices Group
• Harry Shum, Executive Vice President, Technology and Research
• Brad Smith, Executive Vice President and General Counsel, Legal and Corporate Affairs
• Kevin Turner, Chief Operating Officer