Microsoft Hong Kong appoints new general manager

After serving more than four years as general manager of Microsoft Hong Kong, Horace Chow will be appointed as chief operating officer (COO) of Microsoft China, effective immediately.Cally Chan will be succeeding Chow as general manager starting 2 August. Chan will be responsible for overall strategy, business operations and outreach for the company in Hong Kong and Macau. She will lead the executive team responsible for Microsoft’s business in Hong Kong including key customer organisations, business and marketing groups, and technical support and consultancy services.Chan comes from Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), where she most recently served as vice president of enterprise group and managing director for Hong Kong and Macau. She has more than 26 years’ experience with HP, spanning a variety of management roles across technology services, outsourcing services, enterprise infrastructure, IT consulting and more.Alain Crozier, corporate vice president, chairman and CEO of Microsoft GCR, said, “Horace is well known in the industry throughout the region and respected as a trusted advisor to customers. He has proven to be a strong people manager and business manager, striving to empower companies to transform through cloud. I could not be more pleased that he will be serving the company with a bigger responsibility in his new capacity to help our customers and partners on their digital transformation journey in China.”“Digital transformation in China is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and no business is in a better position to seize this opportunity than Microsoft. I am honored to have been asked to lead our teams’ efforts to help our customers and partners to align their businesses around data, intelligence and the future of technology with Microsoft,” said Chow.Meanwhile, Microsoft will undergo a global reshuffling that will affect its sales and marketing departments. This was made known to employees by company executives yesterday.According to Reuters, the reorganisation will impact staff members under Microsoft’s CMO Chris Caposella and executive VPs Judson Althoff and Jean-Philippe Courtois. While all three have sent messages to their teams explaining how the reshuffling will work, they did not state layoffs.However, there are media reports citing layoffs are being planned, in a bid to offer global sales teams with more technical and industry-specific expertise, so as to attract more customers in areas such as artificial intelligence and cloud services. The reshuffling marks the some of the most significant in Microsoft’s sales force in years and will also affect “local marketing efforts in various countries”, reported Bloomberg.