Microsoft Names LinkedIn Executive to Tech Chief Role
January 24 2017 - 3:07PM
Dow Jones News
By Jay Greene
Microsoft Corp. named Kevin Scott chief technology officer
reporting directly to Satya Nadella, continuing the chief
executive's strategy of bringing outside perspective into the
software giant's highest ranks.
Mr. Scott is senior vice president of infrastructure at LinkedIn
Corp., which Microsoft acquired for $26.2 billion last month. He
will retain that job and title.
Microsoft described his new role as helping to ensure the
company's Office productivity suite and Dynamics customer
relationship management product work smoothly with LinkedIn's
services. Mr. Scott wasn't available for comment, Microsoft
said.
Since becoming CEO nearly three years ago, Mr. Nadella has
elevated executives from acquired companies to high-ranking jobs,
in part to help Microsoft compete in newer businesses such as
social networking, where it has struggled. Mr. Nadella also has
installed new hires in top posts in the Office and cloud-computing
divisions.
Mr. Scott will serve, along with LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, on
Microsoft's senior leadership team, a group of 15 top executives,
including Mr. Nadella, who set corporate strategy.
Ray Ozzie served as chief technical officer -- a slightly
different title than Mr. Scott's -- in 2005 and 2006, after
Microsoft acquired his startup Groove Networks Inc. The job has
been vacant since Mr. Ozzie left the post in 2006, when he became
chief software architect, a post co-founder Bill Gates held before
retiring. Earlier, Nathan Myhrvold, who left the company in 1999,
served as chief technology officer.
Those executives were seen as software visionaries, whose roles
were to guide senior leadership on emerging trends where the
company needed to allocate resources.
Mr. Scott's role is more circumscribed. In a statement, Mr.
Nadella said Mr. Scott's "first area of focus is to bring together"
LinkedIn and Microsoft's cloud-computing products and services for
professionals.
Microsoft said Mr. Scott will remain active at LinkedIn as a
member of the company's executive-management team. At LinkedIn, he
has been responsible for engineering all of the company's
products.
Before joining LinkedIn in 2011, he served as senior engineering
director at Google Inc. He took that job after Google acquired
mobile-advertising company AdMob Inc., where Mr. Scott served as
vice president of engineering and operations.
Mr. Scott has also been an adviser to several Silicon Valley
startups, including Box Inc. and Pinterest Inc.
Write to Jay Greene at Jay.Greene@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 24, 2017 14:52 ET (19:52 GMT)
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