Microsoft To Name New CIO

Microsoft is expected to name a new CIO today, according to sources both of the blog and word-of-mouth variety. He's Tony Scott, most recently CIO of Disney.Microsoft has been without a CIO since Stuart Scott was fired last November for "violation of company policies," according to a company spokesperson at the time.

The CIO position at Microsoft has been something of a moving target. Stuart Scott was recruited by Microsoft in 2005 from General Electric, where he was a divisional CIO. For a while Stuart Scott shared the CIO position with Ron Markezich, who held the CIO role before Scott. Markezich is now head of Microsoft's online services group.

Most likely Tony Scott will report to Microsoft COO Kevin Turner, as did Stuart Scott. Turner himself was a CIO at Wal-Mart before coming to Microsoft.

The Disney connection would seem to reinforce Microsoft's increasing emphasis on consumer-oriented technology, exemplified by the success of its Xbox 360 video game player over the holidays.

In a recent interview on CIOs Uncensored, Tony Scott talked about innovation in the software industry and the need for software companies to establish meaningful brands. "In the rest of the world, brands really have meaning and stand for something, and you know what you are going to get when you buy that brand," he said. "I think in the software industry, we're still establishing a lot of that and there's probably a lot more room to grow."