The Seattle Times has a story that concerns the upcoming version of the Windows operating system which on paper, no one at Microsoft is talking about it, but on the ground, just about all of Microsoft’s engineering teams will be able to have a say in it. While the story focuses mainly on a couple of major personalities at Microsoft – the two corporate vice-presidents Joe Belfiore and David Treadwell, who happen to work in the operating system division, where Belfiore happens to be in charge over the user interface for Windows 8.1, Windows RT and Windows Phone, while Treadwell helms the core OS development that will also comprise of software used by the Xbox and Perceptive Pixel hardware.
Near the end of the story, a paragraph does mention how Microsoft’s engineering groups did make the effort to come together earlier in 2014 in order to work on a priority internal memo which will describe the full range of features that Microsoft will introduce into the next version of Windows. On paper, however, the memo remains prepared by the team that has Treadwell as the leader, but unofficially, it carries heavy input from the Azure, Office, Skype and Bing development teams.
This just goes to show how Microsoft’s divisions are mobile and flexible enough to be able to work on a single project, and Treadwell said, “Before, there was a Windows team, a Windows Phone team, an Xbox team. While there was general agreement of the value of (having a) common core and consistency of design, there were organizational lines that we had to cross to achieve that. There just aren’t these barriers now.”