Microsoft Taps Industry Veteran To Lead North America Sales Biz

In addition to being named president of North America sales and marketing, Youngjohns also becomes a corporate vice president at Microsoft. He fills a position that has been vacant since February 2007, when Bill Veghte left to oversee business management and strategy for Microsoft's Windows business.

Michael Park, corporate vice president of the U.S. Small and Midmarket Solutions and Partners Group (SMS&P), and Jens Winther Moberg, corporate vice president of the U.S. Enterprise and Partner Group, had been sharing the position on an interim basis, much to the surprise of some of the vendor's customers and partners.

Youngjohns, 56, will take over on Dec. 3 and report to Microsoft COO Kevin Turner. He'll oversee a staff of 8500 salespeople and be responsible for sales of Microsoft's technologies and services in the U.S. and Canada.

Youngjohns' 30-year career includes a decade-long stint at Sun Microsystems, where he was executive vice president of global sales at the company, overseeing the entire Sun sales team. Youngjohns also spent 18 years in various roles at IBM.

He left Sun in May 2005 to become president and CEO of Callidus Software, a San Jose, Calif.-based vendor of sales performance management software.