MugliaCo. Move Into Microsoft Business Division

Muglia and his group, which includes the SQL Server, Visual Studio franchises, had been in Kevin Johnson's Platform and Services group. Muglia will keep his existing direct reports and add Sanjay Parthasarathy, who leads the platform and development evangelism team.

A Microsoft spokeswoman said the move reflects the company's "go-to-market" strategy for both partners and customers. "They're bringing all the business products together and now platform and services can be platform and services," she said.

This may be splitting hairs, but the company has been positioning its database and tool suite as platform components for some time. Oh well.

Microsoft's server business is nothing if not malleable. A few years back, Content Management Server made a similar jump into the then Information Worker Group (now part of MBD) from ServersTools. It has since been subsumed into the SharePoint portfolio. Microsoft appears to be on a similar glidepath now for Commerce Server, the latest version of which shipped last summer.

The company will not talk about releases post the current Commerce Server 2007. Asked about the lack of roadmap, a spokeswoman recently said that Microsoft

One Commerce Server VAR apprised of this statement said: "Sounds like an end-of-life announcement to me."