Microsoft Leader Muglia to Step Down

Microsoft is soon to have a new division leader, according to a PC World report. Bob Muglia, the company’s long-time executive and president of the company’s server and tools business, will step down from his role later this year. This announcement was part of a memo issued by Steve Ballmer (News - Alert) to company employees.

According to Ballmer, Muglia will continue to run the Server and Tools Business (STB) until his replacement is found. Ballmer noted that Muglia plans to step down this summer, indicating his departure will occur sometime between June and August.

Ballmer’s memo also praised Muglia for his considerable accomplishment of building the STB division into a $15 billion a year business. At the same time, Ballmer also suggested that someone else may be needed to handle the division going forward.

"Bob Muglia and I have been talking about the overall business and what is needed to accelerate our growth. In this context, I have decided that now is the time to put new leadership in place for STB," Ballmer wrote in his memo as reported by PC World. "This is simply recognition that all businesses go through cycles and need new and different talent to manage through those cycles."

In his 23 year career with Microsoft, Muglia has been at the head of development efforts in Microsoft (News - Alert) Office Windows NT and online services businesses. In his role as president of STB, Muglia oversaw the company’s development and infrastructure products, such as Microsoft Windows Server, SQLServer, Visual Studio and System Center products, among others.

Most recently, Muglia guided Microsoft’s entry into cloud computing, as well as the company’s rollout of the Azure platform in November.

In other Microsoft news, TMCnet recently reported that the company is analyzing a bug reported by a Google engineer, and is reviewing the report from Google’s (News - Alert) Michael Zalewski. The bug was one of some 100 found by Zalewski using a "fuzzing" tool. IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera each had vulnerabilities.

The company also announced that Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is tentatively set to be released in mid-January. This release coincides with Microsoft’s worldwide launch of its on-demand offering, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, which will be released in 40 markets and 41 languages.