Microsoft has realigned a pair of business units to
reflect an expansion of its plans to manage every piece of a
customer's hardware from the PC to servers and storage
systems.
The company has rebranded its Management Business group as the
Enterprise Management division. Along with the renaming, this move
will place three management products formerly shepherded by the
Windows group under the charge of Bob Muglia, a senior vice
president at the company and head of its storage unit.
"We have moved the products out of Windows where they lived into
a brand-new division," Enterprise Management division director
David Hamilton said.
"This was an opportunity to broaden Bob's perspective and take
on a different responsibility. It definitely shows that we have a
wider ambition."
Microsoft has long eyed a bigger role in the data centre as it
attempted to compete with the likes of IBM and Sun Microsystems,
which sell servers running the Unix and Linux operating systems. It
has worked to boost its upcoming Windows Server 2003 operating
system as part of this effort but has also added to other parts of
its product line.
Muglia was appointed to head its storage division last year. The
executive has talked about adding new features into Windows that
would allow Microsoft to manage storage hardware in a similar way
to existing third-party software suppliers.
Muglia will now also be in charge of the Windows Systems
Management Server (SMS), Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) and
Applications Center products.
Microsoft will provide more details on these changes at the
Microsoft Management Summit being held next week in Las
Vegas.