Bill Gates Successor Quits Microsoft

High-profile executive and software visionary Ray Ozzie has announced he is leaving Microsoft.
It's a move that has prompted great speculation in the tech industry, including whether or not the
company will remain effective in its plans for online computing.

Ray Ozzie a Key Figure of Microsoft

Ozzie was Microsoft's Chief Software Architect. That's not a precisely defined term, but one
could draw conceptual parallels with the work of a traditional architect: a software architect
makes the key design decisions about how software should be built and how it will operate.
Given Microsoft's line of business, it could be argued that Ozzie was one of the most important
people in the company when it came to production. He had taken the role over from Bill Gates,
who held the position since 2000 when he decided to put more focus into the software rather
than the business side of the company.

Ozzie Helped Bridge Microsoft + Could Computing :snckr: (Typo - Cloud Computing) :snckr:

Ozzie had previously worked for and helped organize several software firms. One of his most
notable achievements includes developing Lotus Notes, somewhat of a forerunner to Microsoft
Outlook and Microsoft Exchange.
During his time at Microsoft, Ozzie concentrated mainly on cloud computing: the system by
which data and even applications themselves run on remote servers over the Internet, rather
than on a user's physical machine.
He'd been closely involved with not only the development of cloud software, such as the Windows
[font="Comic Sans MS"]Azure platform, but also the construction of Microsoft datacenters, including finding more
[font="Comic Sans MS"]energy-efficient ways to run the facilities, which traditionally guzzle power both for the server
[font="Comic Sans MS"]equipment's operation and the cooling measures needed to prevent overheating.

[b][font="Comic Sans MS"]Reason for Microsoft Departure Unknown [/font][/b][font="Comic Sans MS"]

[font="Comic Sans MS"]Why Ozzie is really leaving (in what the 54-year-old has described as a retirement) is the
[font="Comic Sans MS"]question puzzling the tech world.
[font="Comic Sans MS"]According to a correspondent at Microsoft's "local" major newspaper who regularly covers
[font="Comic Sans MS"]the company, it's a culture clash: he believes Ozzie's emphasis on the importance of cloud
[font="Comic Sans MS"]computing didn't fit the more corporate structure of Microsoft, where other managers
[font="Comic Sans MS"]still believe in traditional models of hardware devices running on-board software.
[font="Comic Sans MS"](Source: [url="http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/archives/225403.asp"][font="Comic Sans MS"][color="#ccc899"]seattlepi.com[/color] [/font][/url][font="Comic Sans MS"][font="Comic Sans MS"])
[font="Comic Sans MS"]But a rival theory has it that it's simply a matter of personality. The argument goes that Ozzie
[font="Comic Sans MS"]has done everything possible to bring Microsoft into the cloud computing age from a technical
[font="Comic Sans MS"]perspective and that his departure will allow other senior figures to turn his work into a
[font="Comic Sans MS"]business success. (Source: [url="http://rcpmag.com/blogs/lee-pender/2010/10/ray-ozzie-and-microsoft-job-done.aspx"][font="Comic Sans MS"][color="#ccc899"]rcpmag.com[/color] [/font][/url][font="Comic Sans MS"][font="Comic Sans MS"]) [/font][/font][/font][/font][/font][/font][/font][/font][/font][/font][/font][/font][/font][/font][/font][/font][/font][/font][/font]