No. 49<\/a> on CRN\u2019s 2025 Solution Provider 500, said she expects him to have a significant impact on Microsoft and its partners going forward.<\/p>\n\u201cComing into the commercial CEO role\u2014bringing in that sales expertise and really how to bring that business value\u2014is great, especially since Microsoft is an engineering, product company,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
When Althoff joined Microsoft in 2013 as president of its North America business, Mulholland was a senior partner channel marketing manager in Microsoft\u2019s OEM division, driving co-marketing programs with partners to grow market share and revenue growth across Windows, Office and Server products.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow being on the channel side and as a partner, what I do really value with him is that he will listen and he will always respond and engage,\u201d Mulholland said. \u201cThere\u2019s this level of, call it, \u2018intensity\u2019 and \u2018commitment\u2019 that he personally will provide and he follows up on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Current colleague Nicole Dezen, Microsoft\u2019s chief partner officer and corporate vice president of global channel partner sales, was six years into her Microsoft career when Althoff joined.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve had the privilege of working with Judson for many years,\u201d Dezen told CRN in an interview. \u201cJudson is ambitious. He’s tenacious and, I will say, a massive supporter of the partner business. I get the joy of a front row seat to that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Potential Impact Of The Commercial CEO Role<\/p>\n
When Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella disclosed Althoff\u2019s promotion in a blog post Oct. 1, elevating him from the executive vice president and chief commercial officer role he held for about four years, he cited Althoff\u2019s work leading Microsoft Customer and Partner Solutions, making it over nine years into the \u201cNo. 1 seed\u201d in the industry and Microsoft\u2019s \u201cmost important growth engine.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a reflection of the importance of partners to Microsoft from the top down, Nadella called out that Microsoft\u2019s ability to succeed in AI \u201cdepends on enabling commercial and public sector customers and partners to combine their human capital with new AI capabilities to change the frontier of how they operate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Althoff\u2019s new position frees up Nadella to focus on data center buildout, systems architecture, AI science and product innovation, which Mulholland said is a smart move. Nadella is innovative and an executive who thinks years ahead, she said, and \u201cthis race that these companies are in will require that dedicated focus.\u201d<\/p>\n
Microsoft\u2019s move to align a variety of its operations under Althoff is also a plus for the \u201chighly matrixed organization,\u201d Mulholland said. Having so many divisions can make it challenging for partners to stay updated on the latest innovations.<\/p>\n
Dezen said solution providers should already feel the benefits from Nadella\u2019s new engineering focus.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou see the massive amount of innovation that the company is announcing,\u201d she said. \u201cOur announcements are a constant stream of capability right now. This is like a holiday gift for partners. Partners are taking all of that new innovation, new capability, packaging it, making it their own, using our skilling, using our go-to-market assets to deliver the full suite of value to customers [in] every segment, every industry, every geography.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With his promotion to commercial CEO, Judson Althoff is positioned to shape the course of AI success for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52734,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[405,407,11119,420,7829,223,320,419,7828,417,404],"class_list":["post-52733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-microsoft","tag-ai-agents","tag-ai-infrastructure","tag-ai-pc","tag-azure","tag-azure-ai","tag-generative-ai","tag-microsoft","tag-microsoft-365","tag-microsoft-ai","tag-microsoft-solutions","tag-saas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52733\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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