Microsoft CIO Tony Scott Leaves Company; Jim Dubois Named Interim Information Officer

It was leaked over the weekend that Microsoft's Chief Information Officer (CIO) Tony Scott had left the company. News first broke about Scott's departure when his personal LinkedIn profile listed him as the company's former CIO. In addition, the company website no longer listed him among senior leaders as of Sunday according to Seattle tech news site GeekWire.

Microsoft finally acknowledged the rumors in a statement to the public: "Tony Scott decided to depart Microsoft to focus on personal projects. While at Microsoft, Tony was a strong IT leader passionate about taking Microsoft's technology to the next level and using our experiences and learnings to help customers and partners. We thank Tony for his contributions and wish him well."

Insider rumors report Jim Dubois, the company's vice president of IT product and services management, has been named interim CIO.

The timing of Scott's departure came as a shock to some as it comes right on the eve of the company's TechEd conference for IT pros and enterprise developers.

Despite the bad timing, Scott confirmed via e-mail to GeekWire that his departure from the company was completely his choice and his reasons were personal: "My dad passed away at Easter time, so taking a little time to get my mother re-settled, get my instrument rating done (I'm a pilot), and work on a couple of other long delayed personal projects. Will go back to 'work' (in some form) in a few months, but right now just focusing on the above."

Scott has worked for companies like General Motors and Bristol-Meyers Squibb. He joined Microsoft in 2008 after serving as Disney's CIO.

The departure of the CIO is significant largely because of the role that the IT department has in rolling out new products. They are the first customers of the company's business groups. They test everything that comes down the pipeline prior to its release to the public. GeekWire reports that the process is commonly referred to as "dogfooding."

Scotts replacement might have a different role in helping this. Rob Helm, research director at the independent Directions on Microsoft research firm says "Customer-facing services like Office 365 play a much bigger role testing new products now, making 'dogfooding' less critical than it was."