Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)’s Chief Information Officer Tony Scott resigned after five years in the role, to focus on personal projects.
In a statement issued to GeekWire, the Redmond-based software giant informed: “Tony Scott decided to depart Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) to focus on personal projects. While at Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), Tony was a strong IT leader passionate about taking Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)’s technology to the next level and using our experiences and learnings to help customers and partners. We thank Tony for his contributions and wish him well.”
Tony Scott, since his appointment in January 2008, played a critical role in varied activities ranging from internal application suite to the cloud.
Until 2010, Tony Scott considered his key role as pushing 85 to 90 percent of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)s internal applications to cloud between 2015 and 2020. He played a critical role in convincing CEO Steve Ballmer to adopt such a cloud strategy.
Scott earlier announced that all the new applications developed inside Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)would be designed for the cloud, as architecturally it would be easier to start with cloud in mind rather than retrofitting an on-premises application to run on the cloud.
Jim Dubois, Microsoft’s vice president of IT product and services management will serve as interim CIO.
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)’s employees were informed about Tony Scott’s resignation last week.
Tony Scott’s role at the software giant was significant. Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)’s IT department performs a critical process as the first customer of the company’s business groups. It facilitates rolling out new products for use and testing across the company prior to public release. This important process is codenamed ‘dogfooding’. Besides Scott also played a fundamental role of IT in running, securing and maintaining the software giant’s internal systems.
Tony Scott’s resignation is the second high-level departure since Windows 8 was launched with a thud. The former Windows development head Steven Sinovsky left Microsoft for reasons directly attributed to the Widows 8 saga, Tony Scott’s job profile had little to do with Windows 8.
Tony Scott was hired to replace Stuart Scott, who was fired for violating company policies. Before joining Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), Tony Scott played key role in a major IT infrastructure upgrade at Walt Disney besides serving as chief technology officer at General Motors.
