Microsoft CIO Talks Innovation, Career Growth, and Dogfooding

J im DuBois’ CIO role at Microsoft is unique in ways many tech professionals don’t think about. Sure, he’s responsible for applications, infrastructure, and solutions. Yes, he leads the company’s information risk management and manages processes that keep the lights on for more than 127,000 employees in more than 110 countries. And of course he manages an IT organization with several thousand people and rather complex relationships with suppliers that are often key Microsoft customers and partners. All of this is important stuff. Yet what makes his role extremely interesting is that his team deploys the pre-release versions of Microsoft’s products directly into the company’s production environment. His team and Microsoft’s 100,000 employees provide the proving ground for products like Microsoft Office and Azure before they are released, which means the company is running on software that sometimes isn’t quite ready for prime time. Nevertheless, DuBois’ team makes it work while providing direct feedback to the Microsoft product groups so they can improve and enhance the products before their commercial release. A 20-year Microsoft veteran, DuBois became CIO on 1 Jan. 2014, after serving as the interim CIO for seven months. A graduate in computer science from the University of Washington, DuBois spent seven years at Accenture before following his mentor to Microsoft. Although he relished the consultant’s life, after the birth of his second daughter, DuBois was looking for a more stable work life, and Microsoft offered some interesting challenges. Although Microsoft moved DuBois around with tours in Tokyo and London, he was able to take his family with him. He wasn’t intentional about getting international experience so he could become a CIO, but in retrospect, it provided him with great perspective about local and regional organizations that have helped inform his views on IT management.