Jeff Raikes, the Microsoft executive most closely associated with the emergence of Office, has described the rise of the product as the highlight of his long career at the software maker, which will come to an end in September.
In an interview with ZDNet.co.uk's sister site CNET News.com on Friday, Raikes noted that Office didn't exist when he left his role as a Visicalc engineering manager at Apple in 1981 to join Microsoft. Now it has more than 500 million users, while Microsoft has grown from 100 employees to 70,000.
"It's been an incredible 26 years," Raikes said. "I couldn't be more proud of my team and where we've been able to take the business... I've truly lucked out."
To replace Raikes as head of its Business Division, Microsoft has gone with an outsider. Former Macromedia chief executive Stephen Elop was head of sales at Adobe following that company's 2005 acquisition of Macromedia and, most recently, was chief operating officer at Juniper Networks.
Elop's hiring is certainly interesting, in a time of growing competition between Microsoft and Adobe. In mid-2007, Microsoft released its Expression line of design software, and its Silverlight directly targets Adobe's Flash in the market for web graphics.
The transition also comes at a time when Microsoft's traditional way of doing business is undergoing significant changes. Rivals such as Salesforce.com are offering business software over the internet, as is Google in the consumer space.
Raikes has been among those championing Microsoft's response, which it calls "software-plus-services". The strategy is based on the idea that both businesses and consumers are best served by technology that can run either locally or from the internet cloud. He has also been leading his unit's push into unified communications, where Microsoft is hoping the convergence of voice and data networks will allow it to grab a significant chunk of the business telephony market.
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For now, though, Office and related products still account for 90 percent of the business division's revenue, according to Microsoft's most recent annual report. In fiscal 2007, the unit saw its revenue climb to $16.4bn (£8.4bn), up 13 percent from the year earlier.
Raikes said that he had been talking with chief executive Steve Ballmer about his departure for quite a while. "Steve and I have been talking for some time [about when best to retire]", he said, adding that the hiring of Elop came after he had made his decision to step down.
On the question of wht he planned to do next, Raikes said he had not decided, saying he planned to focus on Microsoft until he leaves this autumn.
"I've made no decision, but it would likely [be]outside tech, something fairly different," Raikes said. As for the company he will leave, he said he is confident Microsoft is headed in the right direction — Google Apps notwithstanding. "Sure there will be curveballs that will be thrown at us... I think we'll hit them out of the park," he said.
CNET News.com's Michelle Meyers contributed to this report
