14 DAY TRIAL // Steven Sinofsky, the former Windows boss who decided to leave Microsoft after the launch of Windows 8, won’t come back at Microsoft in the CEO position.
Sinofsky, who recently announced that he would be joining Andreessen Horowitz as a part-time board partner, revealed today that he would also work as an advisor for cloud storage startup Box.
Sinofsky is expected to use this 20-year Microsoft experience to support the growth of Box and continue the company’s accession in a market that’s getting bigger every day.
“Steven has a stronger and more fluid vision for the future of computing than almost anyone I’ve met. As we kept talking and sometimes meeting over Pho, I realized we had to get him involved with Box,” Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box, said.
“Steven has spent much of his career thinking about technology transformations, navigating them, and — in many cases — helping to drive them. In this role, he’ll lend his experience and insights as we take Box’s product and platform strategies and organizations to the next level.”
Sinofsky is still being considered one of the potential replacements for Steve Ballmer, the outgoing Microsoft CEO who will leave the company once a successor is found.
Ballmer has decided to leave the company for yet-to-be-disclosed reasons, retiring in the middle of a huge transformation process that’s supposed to push the Redmond-based technology giant closer to a devices and services approach.
While no specifics have been provided on Ballmer’s retirement, sources from within the company hinted that ValueAct Capital, the firm that recently purchased a $2 billion (€1.5 billion) stake in Microsoft, insisted for letting the CEO go.
At this point, a newly-founded committee, which includes Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, is looking into a high-profile executive from both inside and outside the company.