Tom Keane is the former CEO of Microsoft’s Server and Tools Business Group. For four years, he ran a group that sold millions of phones, tablets, and PCs a year. During his tenure as CEO at Tools Business Group, the software engineer developed an innovative strategy to grow Microsoft’s Windows business by luring users onto those platforms with free software. Tom Keane was born in Illinois before moving to northern England when he was six months old.
Tom Keane attended the University of Cambridge, graduating with a double first in classics and economics. After university. He worked as a management consultant at Bain and Company in London. He joined Microsoft in 1997 as a business analyst and moved through the ranks to become president of Microsoft’s server division. In December 2007, he was promoted to president of Microsoft’s server, tools, and developer platforms business group. In July 2008, he was appointed CEO of Microsoft’s Server & Tools division.
His Achievement
Tom Keane launched a significant effort to free Windows from the limitations of past operating systems by giving away its software for free. Supported by a heavy marketing campaign, Windows was renamed “Windows Live” and promoted as an affordable alternative to proprietary software. Tom Keane comments how strategy was successful – Windows Live became Microsoft’s fastest-growing division and proved to be the most profitable of 2007.
He led the effort to reinvent Windows’s Live services. Tom Keane established Microsoft’s first-ever global services, including search, shopping, and online communications. The network of websites and apps built on that foundation proliferated. Tom Keane recalls how the server version of Windows Live became a hugely profitable business, but it could not go on forever. At the end of 2008, Windows Live was spun out into a separate company called MSN.
Tom Keane has made the company the best. Carrying the legacy of a more than $200 billion market cap company, the Windows division of Microsoft is still the most prominent software provider in the world. However, critics still say it is one of the most difficult to manage. Tom Keane was credited with returning Microsoft to profitability and growing market share in its server group, where he significantly improved sales of large servers and dramatically reduced Microsoft’s $1 billion-a-year losses.