Fired: Microsoft CIO Violated Company Policies

Without much explanation late yesterday, Microsoft notified the press that it had terminated the employment of its Chief Information Officer, Stuart Scott, for violation of its corporate policies. This after having appeared on stage just seven weeks ago to hold up Microsoft's IT department as a role model for, as he described it, stamping out "shadow IT" agents within corporations, so that they can do more with less.

Scott may have done exactly that for Microsoft during his short tenure there. In 2005, he was brought onto the CIO role from General Electric, only to find that Microsoft already had somebody called "Chief Information Officer" reporting to a different department. That person was Ron Markezich, whose role was described at the time as "chief beta tester." Since that time, Markezich has shifted to Vice President of Managed Solutions, with his awkward co-CIO role having effectively been stamped out.

The CIO role Scott held was somewhat different, having been described not as a testing operation or as a "guinea pig" for Microsoft's corporate customers, as was Markezich, but instead as a role model for the company's "best practices."

Last June, the company began rolling out new policy-based administrative software, including its Solution Accelerator for Business Desktop Deployment, whose aim was to help IT departments implement business, information, and communications policies that were said to be modeled by the IT department that Scott led.

In a prepared Q&A published by Microsoft in December 2005, a few months after his being hired, Scott outlined that role: "More and more, the CIO needs to lead the way in building an organization's information 'intelligence.' Because CIOs manage applications that often span the company, they gain a unique perspective into the challenges that touch multiple functions across organizations and often have a clearer view of upcoming needs and opportunities. Also, CIOs have the advantage of overseeing the alignment of business process and IT, so they can drive business strategy down to ledger-based business results."

While Microsoft had been demonstrating some of that "business process alignment" through its TechNet IT workshops, a check of its online workshop list this morning shows Scott's contributions have apparently been removed. Scott's corporate bio remains visible on Microsoft's Web site, although it was edited to note his employment termination.

Although Scott had repeatedly told reporters his mission as Microsoft CIO was to more closely tie the IT department to the company's line of business, in a September Computerworld interview, he admitted that whether he personally is perceived as tied to the rest of the company depends on his day-to-day performance.

"Enabling people still means making sure that their equipment works well and is economical," he told Computerworld. "It's not about command and control anymore. At the same time, you don't let go completely. Because if e-mail is not up 24/7, then I don't get invited to the product strategy meetings."

Microsoft has not said, and may never say, whether his termination is connected to the performance of the software he chose for his IT department.