Former Microsoft executive J Allard became an Amazon employee last month under the title of vice president within the devices and services division, alongside former Microsoft Surface hype man Panos Panay.
According to The Verge, Allard has confirmed he’s now an Amazon employee following his departure from Microsoft back in 2010 after a 20-year career with the company that spanned projects such as the maligned Courier, underrated Zune, and co-founding the Xbox division.
Based on reporting from Geek Wire, Allard will join forces with another high-profile former Microsoft executive in Panos Panay who had been the face of the company’s flagship Surface hardware efforts. Despite both working on high-profile hardware projects at Microsoft, Allard and Panay seemingly will be working together for the first time at Amazon.
Allard’s 2010 departure leaves a three-year window between Panay’s first appearance on a Microsoft stage in regard to the company’s first mass distributed computer.
Nevertheless, Panay will want to tap Allard’s working experience on developing the Xbox Live network, the precursor to the Surface Duo in the Courier, and the only other high-profile competitor to the Apple iPod, to power whatever they’re cooking up over at Amazon.
While Amazon has cut staff, trimmed its hardware offerings and is currently reexamining product line up in the face of an AI revamp, the company still seems committed to providing hardware to customers in some form or another.
For now, Allard does not have much to say on what it is he’s been tasked with over at Amazon, but om email to The Verge, he made clear the reason he came out of semi-retirement was that he wanted to work on “new ideas.”
