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 Windows Live is a discontinued brand name for a set of web services and software products developed by Microsoft as part of its software-as-a-service platform. Chief components under the brand name included web services (all of which were exposed ...

and

MSN MSN is a web portal and related collection of Internet services and apps provided by Microsoft. The main webpage provides news, weather, sports, finance and other content curated from hundreds of different sources that Microsoft has partnere ...

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

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

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

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

Life

He attended

George Mason University George Mason University (GMU) is a Public university, public research university in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States. Located in Northern Virginia near Washington, D.C., the university is named in honor of George Mason, a Founding Father ...

as an

Economics Economics () is a behavioral science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interac ...

major in

Fairfax, Virginia Fairfax ( ) is an independent city (United States), independent city in Virginia and the county seat of Fairfax County, Virginia, in the United States. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population was 24,146. Fairfax is pa ...

Microsoft

Taylor joined

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 Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

. Retrieved 2011-1-5 He spent the next several years helping redevelop

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

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

and

marketing, and oversaw the creation of

Windows Live Messenger MSN Messenger (also known colloquially simply as MSN), later rebranded as Windows Live Messenger, was a Cross-platform software, cross-platform instant messaging client, instant-messaging client developed by Microsoft. It connected to the now-di ...

(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 Vista Equity Partners Management, LLC is an American private equity firm that invests in software, data, and technology-enabled businesses. It is one of the largest private equity firms in the world, managing over $100 billion in assets. Vista Eq ...

References

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