Following last month’s shake-up of execs at Microsoft, another move has been made as part of Satya Nadella’s restructuring of the company. This involves Corporate Vice President, Panos Panay, formerly the head of the winning Surface line, taking over engineering of Microsoft’s premium devices: Surface tablets, Windows Phone, Xbox, Surface Hub, HoloLens and Microsoft band.

The news has now been made official by Microsoft, but the exact role of Panay has not been confirmed. The report comes by way of ZDNet and the sources of columnist Mary Jo Foley. Following the departure of Stephen Elop last month and Executive Vice President Terry Myerson being put in control of the Windows and Device’s group, it looks as though Panay has come in to take on some of Elop’s former duties. This will include product design, it’s reported, but not marketing and finance.

Despite heavy financial losses in the fourth quarter of Microsoft’s 2015 fiscal year, mostly due to the Nokia write off, Microsoft’s Surface line saw 117 percent growth – as was reported today by our own Duncan Riley. Microsoft’s Surface devices might have been slow out of the blocks in terms of profits, but with the success of the Surface Pro 3 and Surface 3  there has been quite the turnaround.

Another shuffle at the company includes veteran employee David Treadwell. Treadwell, formerly Corporate Vice President of Windows Engineering program management, will be replaced by Harvinder Bhela, another long-term exec at Microsoft who has worked predominantly on Exchange. Treadwell will work with Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise group, although his exact role has not been confirmed by Microsoft.

In an email to his group regarding his new role, Treadwell wrote that he loved working on Windows and was not keen at first on the change. Nonetheless, and somewhat predictably, he asserted, “Yet when the CEO calls, well, you take that call. I’m excited about what I’ll be doing next in C&E (Cloud and Enterprise), and I’m especially excited that I’ll be able to keep a strong connection to Windows from the cloud side.”

Photo credit: Todd Klassy via Flickr