Muglia

Microsoft today announced that Bob Muglia, the president of its server and tools business, is stepping down and will be leaving the company sometime this summer.

In a memo to Microsoft employees, CEO Steve Ballmer said that Muglia will stick around for the transition as Ballmer does "an internal and external search for the new leader," and that Muglia would "complete additional projects for me."

The company would not comment on what Muglia plans to do next.

Muglia joined Microsoft in 1988. Before heading up the company's server and tools business, he was its senior … Read more

REDMOND, WA.--Microsoft is betting big on the cloud and wants businesses to do the same.

After two years of building Windows Azure, Server and Tools President Bob Muglia said yesterday that the cloud operating system is ready for business customers of all sizes to give it a try. At its annual Professional Developers Conference, Microsoft announced several new Azure features including the ability to move existing applications and virtual machines into Microsoft's hosted service.

In an interview with CNET, Muglia talked about the new cloud advances, small business server products, as well as the impact on Microsoft of … Read more

Microsoft's cloud-computing push, Windows Azure, was only launched six months ago and while it is still early days for the technology, Azure has already attracted thousands of users and could prove central to the software giant's technology plans.

Azure is Microsoft's cloud-computing platform, which provides its users with scalable computing power and storage, as well as a number of other online services hosted on Microsoft data centers.

While Microsoft has offered online services for some time with consumer products such as Hotmail and Windows Live, Azure aims to boost its software-as-a-service presence to cater to its enterprise … Read more

Although he's presided over the expansion of Microsoft's server business, Bob Muglia is ready to help companies move away from that same server software.

Well, he is at least as long as those businesses are moving to the Microsoft cloud-based services that are replicating the software that, at one point, ran only in a company's own data center.

In an interview, the president of Microsoft's server and tools business talked about the shifts to the cloud, Google's role in the enterprise and the future of Microsoft's server products, including the next version of Windows Server, which he said will be a major update.

Here's an edited transcript of our conversation.

You mentioned that Microsoft is pretty much doing everything for the cloud first. Does that mean that over time on-premises customers are actually going to be getting technology that's somewhat older, for better and for worse? Muglia: Well, I think the way to look at it is that we're able to use the cloud to do a lot more of our early validation than we've ever been able to do before. You know, you see us with labs, you know, Live Labs and things like that, being able to take ideas and put them up in the cloud. More and more what you'll see is the beginning of our beta processes will be run for new things up in the cloud, because our ability to get feedback from customers is so much more rapid if customers don't have to deploy the infrastructure themselves. So, there's a set of things that we can do, which will help to reduce our cycle time, and bringing new features to market.

I mean, in general our products run on two- to three-year cycles, and it very often takes customers at least that long to deploy them. I actually think the cloud will expedite customers' ability to get our software and our innovations, even if they run it themselves, because it will shorten our cycle for delivery, and also I think customers as they see these things available in the cloud will have a better understanding of the advantages they can get if they deploy it themselves. So, I actually don't think it slows down things at all for our customers that choose on-premises. … Read more

Although Microsoft won't say when it will arrive, the next version of Windows Server won't be another minor release.

In an interview on Monday, server and tools unit president Bob Muglia said Microsoft is sticking to a schedule set out several years ago in which the server and tools unit puts out alternating minor and major releases every two years or so. The most recent update, the server version of Windows 7, was a minor update--Windows Server 2008 R2--completed last year.

"There's no question you're due for a major release of Windows Server," Muglia … Read more

It's been a busy year for Bob Muglia.

Microsoft's server and tools boss shipped an update to Windows Server, got promoted to division president, and prepared Microsoft's operating system in the clouds--Windows Azure--for its commercial launch.

In what has become a bit of a year-end ritual, Muglia sat down with CNET for a year-end interview. We hit on a range of topics, from the future of Windows Server, to why his bank won't be moving to Windows Azure any time soon, to the changing life of an IT manager, to Microsoft's consumer future. (Spoiler alert: … Read more

One of the limiting factors for Windows Azure--Microsoft's operating system for the cloud--is that it only runs in Microsoft's data centers.

Some have wondered why Microsoft doesn't just package it up and offer it as something that businesses or hosters can run in their own data centers.

Server and Tools boss Bob Muglia said in an interview Tuesday that Windows Server will start to take on attributes of Azure, but said there are good reasons why Azure doesn't make sense as a standalone product.

The main reason, Muglia said, is that it isn't built … Read more

A long time ago, Bob Muglia worked on a Microsoft project designed to offer a variety of services in the cloud. That effort, known as Hailstorm, didn't exactly go gangbusters, and Muglia's career took a detour.

But both Muglia and Hailstorm are back. On Monday, Microsoft elevated Muglia to divisional president, a recognition of the success he has enjoyed as head of Microsoft's server software business.

As for Hailstorm, the name is gone, but many of the concepts are back, as part of the Windows Azure platform that Microsoft announced in October. Last month, I had a … Read more

Microsoft started off its new-year executive shuffling by promoting longtime Server and Tools unit head Bob Muglia to president, a title he shares with entertainment boss Robbie Bach and business software chief Stephen Elop.

It's a title elevation for Muglia, whose responsibilities remain the same. It also reflects the growing importance of the server unit, which accounted for $13 billion in revenue in the most recent fiscal year, now making up fully a fifth of Microsoft's total sales.

"The core of our success at Microsoft has always been great people--people who combine talent, drive, vision, customer focus, … Read more