Jim Allchin

Allchin was a member of the Senior Leadership Team at Microsoft – a small group responsible for developing Microsoft's core direction along with Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates. He was claimed to be blunt, technical, and "straightforward." Bill Gates complimented him:

Today, Allchin devotes his time to music, technology, and charity work. He released his first album, Enigma, in 2009 calling the album a beta test. Then in September 2011, Allchin released his first widely distributed blues-themed album: Overclocked. The album Q.E.D. was released in September 2013 and Decisions followed in June 2017. Prime Blues, his latest album is scheduled to be released September 2018. Overclocked, Q.E.D., and Decisions all received widespread acclaim especially for Allchin's guitar work. Overclocked, Q.E.D., and Decisions were featured on iTunes as New and Noteworthy and all reached in the top 10 on Internet Blues Radio. Decisions was the #1 Blues Album in Washington State for 18 weeks starting in June, 2017. And Decisions was in the 10 top Blues Rocks album nationally for 14 weeks.

According to exhibits filed in 2006 by the plaintiff in the case of Comes v. Microsoft, Allchin wrote a memo to Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer in January 2004, one which was critical of Microsoft and Longhorn. The letter said that Gates and Ballmer had lost their way and compared them to Apple who he believed had not.

On September 20, 2005, Microsoft announced that Allchin would become co-president of a new Platform Products and Services Group, which combined the old Platform Group, Server and Tools Group, and the MSN Group. Microsoft also announced that Allchin would retire after Windows Vista shipped, leaving Kevin Johnson as the president.

Allchin was diagnosed with cancer in late 2002 and took a leave of absence for part of 2003. Gates suggested that Allchin stay for a while.

In May 2002, Allchin testified before Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly during the settlement hearing between Microsoft and the nine states (as well as the District of Columbia) involved in the United States v. Microsoft antitrust trial. Allchin was called to testify on two issues, the first of which gained the most publicity. In relation to the issue of sharing technical API and protocol information used throughout Microsoft products, which the states were seeking, Allchin's testimony discussed how releasing certain information could increase the security risk to consumers.

He assisted Microsoft in creating many of the system platform components including Microsoft Windows, Windows Server, server products such as SQL Server, and developer technologies. He is best known for building Microsoft's server business. He is also known for his leading role in the architecture and development of the directory services technology Banyan VINES. He has won numerous awards in his career such as the Technical Excellence Person of the Year in 2001. Jim Allchin led the Platforms division at Microsoft, overseeing the development of Windows client from Windows 98 to Windows Vista, Windows Server from NT Server 4.0 to Windows Server 2008, as well as several releases of Microsoft server products as well as Windows CE and Windows Embedded line of products. After serving sixteen years at Microsoft, Allchin retired in early 2007 when Microsoft officially released the Windows Vista operating system to consumers. He is now a professional musician.

In 1999, Microsoft re-organized its corporate structure. The Consumer Division, which maintained versions of Windows for home users and the Business & Enterprise Division, which maintained Windows NT, were combined into a single operating system division: the Platform Group. Allchin became the vice president of the new combined group. This promotion put him in charge of the development of both the home and business versions of Windows. With the release of Windows XP in 2001, both business and client versions of the operating system utilized the same code base. The server business grew substantially during this period of time.

In August 1998, Allchin asked an engineer named Vinod Valloppillil to analyse the open source movement and the Linux operating system. Valloppillil wrote two memos which were intended for Senior Vice-President Paul Maritz who was the most senior executive at that time after Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. Both memos were leaked and popularly known as the Halloween documents.

On September 29, 1998, Allchin was deposed to respond to the testimony of Professor Edward Felten. Later he testified in court from February 1 to 4, 1999. Some of his testimony were centered on the possibilities of removing Internet Explorer as stated by Felten. While Allchin proved his written testimony was correct in court, a video-taped demonstration created by Microsoft attorneys, which supposedly illustrated Allchin's points, was shown to be misleading. David Boies believed it was an avoidable mistake made by the Microsoft attorneys.

Allchin's first high-profile project at Microsoft was the Cairo technology, which was intended to add on to Windows NT to create the next version of the operating system. At the NT Developer Conference in July 1992, Allchin gave a presentation about the future Microsoft operating system. One of the main goals for Cairo was the ability for users to locate files based on their content as opposed to their name. Users would also have access to files stored on other machines on a network as easily as they had access to files on their own hard drives. Cairo was scheduled to ship as a single package in 1994. After several delays, it was finally released in pieces; the technology was shipped in successive operating system releases. The Cairo and Windows NT groups were combined, and Allchin created a new client and server organization focused on business and IT users. Allchin replaced Dave Cutler as the lead developer on Windows NT version 3.5 onwards. This led to conflict with Vice President Brad Silverberg, who was in charge of the development of Windows 95, the operating system which was aimed at the personal computer market as opposed to Windows NT's business computer market.

Brad Silverberg, the Microsoft executive, who had been responsible for Windows 95, emailed several people in Microsoft September 27, 1991:

During the Caldera v. Microsoft case, emails from Allchin to Bill Gates were introduced as an evidence. One email, from September 1991, included Allchin telling Gates that "We need to slaughter Novell before they get stronger."

Bill Gates tried to recruit a reluctant Allchin to join Microsoft for a year and successfully convinced him in 1990. Gates told him that whatever he created would have a wider customer base through Microsoft than anyone else.

In 1983, Allchin was recruited to Banyan by founder Dave Mahoney, eventually being Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer. During his seven years at Banyan, he created the VINES distributed operating system, including the StreetTalk directory protocol.

Allchin returned to his studies, earning the degree of MS in Computer Science from Stanford University in 1980. Allchin wrote a language-independent, portable file system while at Stanford. While pursuing his PhD in Computer Science at Georgia Institute of Technology in the early eighties, he was the primary architect of the Clouds distributed object-oriented operating system; his PhD thesis was entitled "An Architecture for Reliable Decentralized Systems".

While fixing equipment on the farm, Allchin developed an interest in engineering. He studied Electrical engineering at the University of Florida, but dropped out to play in a number of bands. He later returned to the university and graduated with BS in Computer Science in 1973.

James Edward Allchin (born 1951, Grand Rapids, Michigan, United States) is an American guitarist, computer scientist, and philanthropist. He is a former Microsoft executive.

Allchin was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1951. While he was still an infant, the Allchin family moved to Keysville, Florida, where his parents worked on a farm. Allchin grew up in a tin-roof house built by his father. Later, Allchin and his older brother Keith also worked on the farm to support the family financially.