The Open Compute Project Foundation (OCP) announces that Mike Neil will serve on its Board of Directors. Mike replaces Bill Laing, who has served since 2014 when Microsoft joined the Board. The OCP Foundation would like to thank Bill for contributing his time and talents to the OCP Community.
The OCP Foundation and Community is effective because our board members, volunteer leadership, and Community members give their time and talents to help promote open solutions; driving innovations forward at a pace that simply could not occur if attempted alone. They lead by example and they lead with passion. The Foundation, the Community, and our many collaboration partners are better together.
Mike joins board members Andy Bechtolsheim, Jim Hawkins (Rackspace), Joshua Matheus (Goldman Sachs), Jason Waxman (Intel), Rocky Bullock (OCP), and Mark Roenigk (Facebook), who serves as Chairman.
“We truly appreciate the contributions Microsoft has made, and Bill had been a steady leader for many years, helping propel our growth. We are excited for Mike to help lead OCP into the next evolution of how we drive forward innovations in the data center industry” stated Mark Roenigk, Chairman and President of the Board for the Open Compute Project Foundation.
About Mike Neil
Mike Neil is a Corporate Vice President in the Azure Hardware & Systems Group at Microsoft Corporation in Redmond, Wash. Mike oversees future hardware development for Azure. Prior to AHSG, Mike ran the Azure Enterprise Cloud Group engineering Azure Stack, Operations Management Suite (OMS), System Center, Microsoft’s Cloud Platform System, and StorSimple. Mike was previously the Director of program management for Windows Azure and helped double Azure year over year. Before Azure, Mike oversaw the planning, execution and delivery of Windows Server 2012 and 2016 and was responsible for Microsoft’s server and PC virtualization efforts since 2003.
Mike joined Microsoft as part of Microsoft’s 2003 acquisition of Connectix Corp. Mike also was one of the founding members of Pixo, a Silicon Valley start-up company that developed operating systems and applications for handheld devices, the most notable of which is the Apple iPod.
After attending the University of Michigan, Mike joined Apple, culminating as the integration lead and technical lead for Apple’s Macintosh OS.