Microsoft will quietly be reorganizing its internal business structure according to a new Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) report.
While Microsoft tends to do a big company reorg following one of its quarterly earnings reports during summer, this new reorg will seem to involve less hiring, firing and promotions than usual as the company seeks to make its business operations more transparent for investors.
Instead of shifting employee offices and responsibilities, Microsoft will instead shuffle its various business sectors under its current 3-pronged financial disclosure structure for its 2025 fiscal year of reporting.
Going forward, Microsoft’s Productivity and Business Processes division that’s normally charged with reporting on the company’s Office 365, Dynamics and LinkedIn businesses financials will now be broken into subcategories of the new Microsoft 365 Commercial and Microsoft 365 Consumer pillars with their associated cloud services and products as well as taking on Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS) and Nuance Enterprise from the company’s Intelligent Cloud pillar.
The new subcategories will be identified by whether Microsoft provides products in the Microsoft 365 cavalcade of services with a perpetual license or supports a subscription revenue model.
Another pillar of Microsoft’s reporting pillar is its more revenue volatile More Personal Computing sector that houses the company’s Windows, Search, Devices (Surface + HoloLens), Search and Gaming financials. The new fiscal 2025 reporting for this revenue section will now see its biggest contributor in the Windows Commercial business be removed and shipped off to Microsoft’s Productivity and Business Processes pillar under the company’s new Microsoft 365 Commercial cloud segment and stashed under Productivity and Business Processes reporting.
In the new reporting structure for MPBP, investors will finally need to seek out the Search business to continue to see into the investments Microsoft is making with Copilot Pro. Windows will still have a presence in reporting but will be consolidated from separate Windows and Devices business titles to a the more unimaginative header of Windows OEM and Devices with representative subcategories still getting pointed out.
This shift to bring over Copilot Pro while shipping Windows Commercial to different sector feels like a sleight of hand that is intended to buy the company some more time to develop the AI platform while suturing the hole left behind by losing one of its biggest revenue drivers.
Lastly, the company’s Intelligent Cloud reporting pillar looks to be largely untouched by the reorg for now. Aside from losing (EMS) and Nuance Enterprise revenue disclosure, the business sector will march on with reporting on the company’s biggest drivers in Azure and its supported cloud services portfolio.
As a result of the changes that retroactively took effect in July, Microsoft has provided an updated fiscal outlook for investors that incorprates the shifts and improves the revenue gains for Commercial, Productivity and Business Processes, and Intelligent Cloud while stemming the bleeding the from the Devices categories to “low to mid-single digits” growth going forward.
