Jim Allchin Hangs Up His Microsoft Hat

While Windows Vista is probably the product Allchin will be most remembered for, given that it was his last, his legacy at Microsoft stretches all the way back to the formative days of Windows 95 and Windows NT.

In an interview with Allchin in late 2005 about his time at Microsoft, almost all of which was spent working on one version of Windows or another, he discussed, the good, the bad and the ugly of his tenure, including living through the U.S. antitrust case against the company.

He also told me how he was wooed from the company he helped start, Banyan Systems, to join the Redmond, Wash., software maker in 1990 after Chairman and former Chief Software Architect Bill Gates told him that no matter how good Banyan's software was, at Microsoft he'd be able to affect more people.

Asked what he thought of Windows when he first started working on it, Allchin said that "it was not a system that was designed and architected the way I would necessarily have done it. You had something that had great applications, but the architecture was not one designed for robustness and security and extensibility and high performance."

"There was also no path for us to get a server technology out of the Windows for Workgroups technology, and so, to me, we needed to align resources behind NT as fast as possible, even though it was going to be years and years and years before it was ready for prime time," he said.

Asked at that time what he would most like to be remembered for, he said as "a believer in quality, a driver of quality and a member of the team."

I received a farewell e-mail from Allchin today, and the passion and enthusiasm he always showed for his work, and Microsoft, seems as robust as it ever was.

"Microsoft is an absolutely amazing company -- full of such incredible people. In fact, when I came to Microsoft one of the things that struck me the most was just how many smart people there were ... Not only were they smart though, they had incredible passion for technology, for learning, for improving, and most of all for changing the world using technology to improve people's lives," he said.

Allchin was also upbeat about the future, noting that he was amazed by the fact that we are just at the beginning for what technology will be able to do.

"The next 50 years are going to be much more exciting than the last 50 (and that's saying a lot!) when you consider the potential impact technology advances will have on people and businesses," he said.

With his departure comes a new Windows management team, which will be headed by former sales chief Kevin Johnson, with development being led by Steven Sinofsky, who previously oversaw Office development.

I, for one, am going to miss the many candid exchanges Allchin and I had on all things Windows. He was a consummate professional and one of my favorite people -- and interviews -- at Microsoft.

While he has not said what his future plans are, I expect that we have not seen, or heard, the last of him.