Nadella Elevates Guthrie, Spencer to Top Cloud, Xbox Slots

Microsoft (MSFT) Chief Executive Satya Nadella has appointed two new top lieutenants, naming Scott Guthrie as Cloud & Enterprise Group executive vice president and Phil Spencer as Xbox boss, and officially announced Stephen Elop will run the vendor’s devices unit once its $7.2 billion deal for Nokia’s (NOK) cell phone business goes through later in April.

In a made-public letter to Microsoft employees, Nadella called Guthrie, a 17-year company veteran who’s been handling Nadella’s former Cloud & Enterprise duties for two months on an interim basis, a “public and passionate evangelist for many of our most important developer and infrastructure businesses.” He credited Guthrie with making “critical contributions” to .Net and other technologies and driving the “unprecedented growth” of Microsoft’s Azure platform.

Spencer, in a bit of a reorg twist, will head a newly combined unit comprised of the Xbox and Xbox Live, Xbox Music and Xbox Video development teams and the Microsoft Studios group. He will report to OS Group executive vice president Terry Myerson to “keep gaming close to the group developing operating systems across devices,” Nadella said.

“Combining all our software, gaming and content assets across the Xbox team under a single leader and aligning with the OSG team will help ensure we continue to do great work across the Xbox business, and bring more of the magic of Xbox to all form factors, including tablets, PCs and phones,” wrote Nadella.

In his new role, Spencer will continue to work with Yusuf Mehdi, who leads business strategy and marketing for Xbox, George Peckham, who heads third-party partnerships and Mike Angiulo, who leads Xbox hardware, Nadella said.

Nokia chief Elop will rejoin Microsoft as Devices Group executive vice president once the acquisition is finalized and will report directly to Nadella.

“I look forward to working with Stephen as a key member of the senior leadership team and welcoming the Nokia Devices and Services employees to the Microsoft family,” Nadella said. He said Elop will “partner closely” with Spencer and Myerson on Xbox and it will be his responsibility to unify talent from the existing Nokia Devices and Services organization and Microsoft’s Devices and Studios team.

Guthrie’s and Spencer’s ascensions come on the heels of the exit of Antoine Leblond, a 25-year company veteran and head of Windows Services, who is following two other veteran execs, Jon DeVaan and Windows testing head Grant George, out the door. The fortunes of all three executives waned when they were not included on the leadership list resulting from the One Microsoft reorganization last year.

Leblond’s leaving closely follows word of the impending departures of Business Development and Evangelism Executive Vice President Tony Bates and Marketing Executive Vice President Tami Reller, and a move by 20-year company veteran Julie Larson-Green from Devices head to chief experience officer (CXO) in executive vice president Qi Lu’s Applications and Services Engineering Group, ostensibly to make room for Elop.