Microsoft’s world may be turned upside down, or right side up, depending on what your perspective of the company is now, with CEO Steve Ballmer set to announce plans that would drastically change the company as we know it.

According to sources, the CEO is going to reorganize the company in both the consumer and business sectors.  The restructuring is an effort to create something called “functional coherence” to keep the product cycle going smoothly.  The thing is, keeping to a company’s product cycle is easier said than done and in Microsoft’s case, it may also mean an executive shakeup.

Reports also suggest that divisions will be restructured, some will be merged with others, while others may be abolished in order to prevent redundancy roles to be able to be more effective.  Bloomberg and AllThingsD projected that the top positions in the company will be given to a number of long-serving, high-ranking execs.

Some of the changes predicted include:

“A new cloud computing and business-focused products unit headed by current Servers and Tools head Satya Nadella; Online Services leader Qi Lu could add Microsoft Office and other apps to his portfolio that already includes the Bing search service; Julie Larson-Green, who now co-heads Windows efforts, is in line to be in charge of all devices from Surface tablet to Xbox game player, as well as music and TV services; and Windows Phone chief Terry Myerson is expected to take over Windows engineering and platforms.”

As for other execs, Windows CFO and CMO Tami Reller is expected to be given a larger marketing role; current Skype president Tony Bates gets purview over the company’s business development, corporate strategy and M&A, playing the role of outside guy to Silicon Valley and developers; while Microsoft Office president Kurt DelBene or Microsoft Business Solutions president Kirill Tatarinov could either be booted out altogether, or directed to serve under Qi Lu and Nadella, respectively.

Those expected to stay in their current positions are COO Kevin Turner, recently appointed CFO Amy Hood –  who may also serve a bigger role in the company – HR head Lisa Brummel, and Chief lawyer Brad Smith.

So what’s urged the Microsoft CEO to shake up his executive lineup?  Ballmer made clear his intent to shareholders last fall, but some are stating that the reshuffle may have been due to the influence of Ford CEO Alan Mulally –  a long time colleague of Ballmer who he has tapped to help with the turnaround.

“[Mulally] understands the fundamentals of business success as well as any business leader I know,” Ballmer wrote about Mulally when he was named as part of the Time 100 list in 2009.

Some sources are skeptical about the shakeup however, stating that such a drastic change is hard to pull off in a small organization, let alone a company as big as Microsoft, while another source added that, “If this is all about an org chart and not how to build great products, it does not matter what org chart Ballmer presents. Consumers buy products, not a management structure.”

Windows 8.1 Coming Next Month

For those dying to get to grips with Windows 8.1, a.k.a. Blue, the update to Microsoft’s operating system is finally coming next month – but only for manufacturers.  Yes, OEMs producing Windows 8 tablets and PCs will be the first to get their hands on Windows 8.1 in late August.  This is probably to try and boost sales of the upgraded devices.

Consumers seem to be excited about the update, as NetMarketShare previously reported that adoption to the platform has increased by 0.83 percent, increasing its market share to an all-time high of 5.10 percent.

As for the consumer release, it may come later than August, probably sometime in September, as those who have tested Window 8.1 reported that the platform is still quite buggy.

Office Store Rolls Out to New Markets

At the Worldwide Partner Conference this week, Microsoft announced that it will be bringing Office Store and SharePoint to a total of 22 new markets, whilst adding a new business tool to Office 365.  The introduction of Office Store and SharePoint to new markets is expected to broaden Microsoft’s developer userbase.  By giving developers more people to cater too, products are also expected to be improved greatly making them more flexible and extendable.

As for Office 365, Power BI, a set of tools, largely built on top of Excel that provides data query, mapping, improved data modeling, and interactive charting, has been added to the service.  Microsoft also claims that Power BI would provide “natural language query capabilities.”