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Microsoft ousts CIO

Linda Tucci, Senior News Writer
Microsoft Corp. said Tuesday that it had fired its CIO, Stuart L. Scott, for violation of company policies. The Redmond, Wash.-based company did not elaborate on the wrongdoing.

Scott joined Microsoft in July 2005 as co-CIO. He was promoted to CIO in October 2006,, with full responsibility for delivering IT services to the company's 340,000 computers. Scott, 41, joined Microsoft after 17 years at General Electric Co., where he was CIO for several divisions.

Scott, who reported to Microsoft's chief operating officer, Kevin Turner, was the software company's third CIO in four years. Shahla Aly, a general manager, and

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Alain Crozier, a corporate vice president, will take over his duties until a replacement is found, a company spokesman said.

Scott's corporate biography touts him as a "champion of IT as a value-added business for Microsoft." In a company interview posted on the Microsoft Web site a year ago, Scott said he expected IT to be an integral part of Microsoft's push into Software as a Service. Another component of his IT vision was "getting the business to operate in real time as it relates to market information and customer feedback," he said.

The firing was a hot topic on Microsoft-centric blogs yesterday, with lots of gossip about the nature of the policy violation and jokes about how the "deadly boring" job of "inflicting the newest, buggiest software on colleagues" might drive someone to pursue extracurricular entertainment.

According to the company Web site, Scott earned bachelor's and master's degrees in engineering, mathematics and computer science from the University of Louisville, as well as an MBA from Vanderbilt University. A Six Sigma black belt, he lives with his wife and seven children in Washington.

Let us know what you think about the story; email: Linda Tucci, Senior News Writer


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