Martin Andrew Taylor is an Operating Principal at Vista Equity Partners, as well as the President of Vista Consulting Group. He was the former senior executive Corporate Vice President of Windows Live and

MSN MSN (meaning Microsoft Network) is a web portal and related collection of Internet services and apps for Windows and mobile devices, provided by Microsoft and launched on August 24, 1995, alongside the release of Windows 95. The Microsoft Net ...

at Microsoft,''Vista Equity Partners'
http://www.vistaequitypartners.com
/ref> acting as

Steve Ballmer Steven Anthony Ballmer (; March 24, 1956) is an American business magnate and investor who served as the chief executive officer of Microsoft from 2000 to 2014. He is the current owner of the Los Angeles Clippers of the National Basketball Associ ...

’s Chief of Staff for many years. Retrieved 2011-1-5

Life

He attended

George Mason University George Mason University (George Mason, Mason, or GMU) is a public research university in Fairfax County, Virginia with an independent City of Fairfax, Virginia postal address in the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Area. The university was origin ...

as an Economics major in Fairfax, Virginia.

Microsoft

Taylor joined Microsoft in 1993 and rose to head of its Caribbean subsidiary. Retrieved 2011-1-7 During this period, Taylor worked closely on several occasions with

. In 2002, Taylor was hired as Ballmer’s chief of staff. Retrieved 2010-11-6 Later, he was named director of business strategy and contributed to the reorganization of Microsoft into seven business groups. In 2003, he became head of the team to steer Microsoft's David-and-Goliath battle against Linux. Retrieved 2011-1-5 He spent the next several years helping redevelop

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

software to better compete with Linux. His work to start a marketing campaign called “Get the Facts”. Retrieved 2011-1-7 The campaign mainly focused on cost of ownership, Retrieved 2011-1-6 but later included security, reliability, and interoperability. In March 2006, he was hired as corporate vice president of Windows Live and

marketing, and oversaw the creation of Windows Live Messenger (formally MSN Messenger) and the testing of over 20 new Windows Live services. In June 2006, just few months after the first official announcement of Windows Live and only days before the release of Windows Live Messenger 8.0, Microsoft announced they were "parting ways" with Taylor. Retrieved 2011-1-6

Vista Partners

In December 2006, Taylor joined Vista Equity Partners.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Taylor, Martin Andrew Living people American computer businesspeople Microsoft employees American Internet celebrities George Mason University alumni History of Microsoft Microsoft Windows people People from Redmond, Washington Year of birth missing (living people)