Mary Jo Foley is reporting that Satya Nadella has been picked to run Microsoft's search effort. This moves him up and out of the Dynamics world. For now at least, Tami Reller gets Satya's job.
My first thought when I saw this was "What the..." but this is a family friendly blog so I won't finish that.
What does it mean? Who knows. I guess I Balmer's expression of confidence in Satya at the Convergence keynote was a little inside joke. There was certainly no scuttlebutt about this a week ago.
Tami's been around a long time, coming to MS as the CFO of Great Plains during the MS acquisition in 2000. She knows the history and the company. I'm sure she'll do fine whether the role is temporary or permanent.
Satya didn't even get a chance to really get his feet wet with Doug's departure. We've felt Satya's influence a lot in the products but I was interested to see what he would do at the helm.
Here's my big concern. MBS' CustomerSource/Partnersource search is terrible. Frankly, it sucks. I've blogged about it repeatedly. I've offered to help kidnap some folks from the Windows Live team, take them to Fargo and tell them they can't leave until they fix it. I've suggested the GP team put in a Google box to make a point to management. No luck so far. The GP team is way too addicted to food, clothing and shelter in my opinion.
So with Satya moving to search, will the good parts of Windows Live Search filter back to the Dynamics group or will the bad apple (pardon the pun) of Dynamics search further poison the Windows Live Search experience?
Update: eweek has the story now as well with more background.
You, Me and Dynamics GP
The premier information site for Microsoft Dynamics GP
