His appointment is part of a new strategy for Microsoft to enable commercial and public sector customers and partners to combine their human capital with new AI capabilities to transform how they operate.
To achieve this, Microsoft said it will need to combine sales, marketing, operations and engineering to drive growth and strengthen its position as a global partner for AI transformation.
General purpose technologies like AI are continuing to drive significant changes in productivity and GDP growth worldwide. With this digital shift at the front of its mind, Microsoft has recognised an opportunity to help its customers digitally transform.
Satya Nadella, chairman and CEO at Microsoft, shared to company employees: “We are in the midst of a tectonic AI platform shift, one that requires us to both manage and grow our at-scale commercial business today, while building the new frontier and executing flawlessly across both.”
He added: “With this context, I have asked Judson Althoff to take on an expanded role as CEO of our commercial business. Over the past nine years, Judson has led our global sales organization and was the architect behind designing and building Microsoft Customer and Partner Solutions (MCAPS) into what it is today: the “number one seed” in the industry and our company’s most important growth engine.”
Althoff has worked with Microsoft for more than 12 years, most recently as its executive vice president and chief commercial officer. He has a lengthy background in sales, having previously worked at companies like Oracle and Dell EMC.
As part of the company’s strategy, Takeshi Numoto and his marketing team are joining the new organisation and will report directly to Althoff as CMO – in addition to reporting directly to Nadella on all-up business models, planning, consumer marketing and corporate brand and communications.
“Our operations organisation will also move to report to Judson. By bringing operations into the commercial business, we can tighten the feedback loop between what customers need and how we deliver and support them,” Nadella explained. “Carolina Dybeck Happe will continue to report to me, as she works on our overall company transformation and continues to closely partner with Judson.”
Althoff is also expected to lead a new commercial leadership team that brings together leaders from engineering, sales, marketing, operations and finance to drive Microsoft product strategy and governance, GTM readiness and sales motions with what Nadella described as “shared accountability for the rigour and executional excellence our customers expect”.
He said: “This will also allow our engineering leaders and me to be laser focused on our highest ambition technical work – across our data centre buildout, systems architecture, AI science and product innovation – to lead with intensity and pace in this generational platform shift.
“Each one of us needs to be at our very best in terms of rapidly learning new skills, adopting new ways to work and staying close to the metal to drive innovation across the entire stack.
“This isn’t just evolution, it’s reinvention, for each of us professionally and for Microsoft.”
