Gurdeep Pall an Indian-American corporate and vice president at Microsoft, intends to retire from the company in September, a media report said. He is known for building and promoting Windows, Skype, and Bing.
According to the information, a Microsoft spokesperson verified his departure via email, describing it as “a long-planned retirement”.
Gurdeep Pall was born in Chandigarh and studied at Chandigarh’s St John’s school before finalizing his engineering degree in computer science from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani. Pall has also done a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Oregon. He is on the board of trustees of Ashesi University, Ghana.
He joined Microsoft in January 1990 as a software design engineer, and since then he worked on many breakthrough products in his term, he started with LAN Manager Remote Access Service.
Pall has worked with former CEOs Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer and current CEO and Chairman Satya Nadella, in his 33-year-long tenure at Microsoft.
Pall contributed to the integration of TCP/IP, the essential software protocol of the internet, into Windows which was a big breakthrough in his career. After 2005, he was primarily accountable for the product and R&D department, development and management of Skype, Teams, Microsoft voice, mobile search, and Bing Maps.
He also played a vital part in Microsoft’s project called Airsim which is a drone simulation software product launched in July 2022.
Microsoft however cut costs through layoffs on this project and its current development is not known according to the Information reported.
Named one of the “15 Innovators & Influencers Who Will Make A Difference” in 2008 by Information Week, Pall co-authored “Institutional Memory Goes Digital”, which was published by Harvard Business Review as part of Breakthrough Ideas for 2009, and subsequently presented at the World Economic Forum 2009 in Davos.