Microsoft Names Bob Muglia President

He's kept Microsoft's server and tools business growing steadily and last year began reporting directly to the company's CEO, taking on some corporate responsibilities in the process. Now, Bob Muglia gets a new title to add to his growing portfolio: president.

Late Monday, Microsoft named Muglia as president of the company's server and tools division, making him one of only four executives with that title at the software company. Muglia's division, which includes industry-leading products like Windows Server, Visual Studio, and SQL Server, accounts for about 22% of Microsoft's total sales.

"Bob has built a culture of getting things done and done right," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said in an e-mail to employees Monday afternoon. "He has championed some of our most important initiatives and helped us successfully face some of our most important competitive challenges."

In the several years he's led Microsoft's server business, Muglia has had to contend with competitive threats from Linux and, more recently, companies like VMware. The server and tools business' annual revenue is more than $13 billion today, up from about $10 billion in 2005. Going forward, Muglia will have to look for ways to compete with cloud computing and push Microsoft to help companies set up their own internal cloud environments.

Muglia is one of Microsoft's longest-serving employees, having been with the company for 21 years. In that time, he's seen his share of ups and downs, having been demoted from VP of Microsoft's .Net services group after the 2001 failure of online services platform Hailstorm, an early online identity and Web services platform that would have powered Web apps like e-mail and e-commerce for businesses and consumers.

Muglia joins entertainment and devices chief Robbie Bach, business division head Stephen Elop, and Microsoft International exec Jean-Philippe Courtois as the company's fourth president.