There has reportedly been a major shakeup at Microsoft, with two senior executives are leaving and one has a big new job.
New CEO Satya Nadella has only been on the job a few weeks and already some important names are cleaning out their desks, according to a report by news agency Reuters.
Bates gone
The VP of Business Development and Evangelism Tony Bates, who came to Microsoft through its acquisition of Skype, is one of them.
Bates was expected to get Nadella's job and clearly his failure to do so has been seen as the end of his career at Microsoft. He will not be too concerned having bolstered his CV and been lined up for several CEO jobs elsewhere.
Marketing boss Tami Reller is also gone. She has been both CMO and CFO of the company's Windows unit. It is not clear why she went; Reller has been at Redmond since 2001.
Penn in
Mark Penn, formerly an Executive Vice President, will be Nadella's Chief Strategy Officer.
Penn, who worked for Bill Clinton and Tony Blair in addition to Microsoft, has been responsible for advertising. It was him who pushed an aggressive stance against Google in its ads for Bing.
Eric Rudder is taking Bates' job. Reller will be replaced by Chris Capossela.
No clues
So far, it is not clear where this shuffling of suits is taking Microsoft. What is telling is that they are all internal candidates, and there is no real new blood coming into Microsoft.
At the moment we only have Reuters describing it as a rumour. In fact it was announced to staff on Friday, but will be made official tomorrow.
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