By SHIRA OVIDE
The shake-up of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows division leaves the future of the company's flagship software in the hands of two women: One an engineer who upended the design of several Microsoft products, and the second a finance veteran who started her computing career as a part-time receptionist.
Microsoft tapped Tami Reller, the chief financial officer and head of marketing for Windows, to run business operations for the division, while Microsoft veteran Julie Larson-Green will take over responsibility for the technical features and product blueprints for Windows software and hardware such as the Surface tablet computer.
Julie Larson-Green, here with former Windows chief Steven Sinofsky at a Microsoft event last year, is taking over the division with Tami Reller.
The pair will have to work together to steady Windows following the abrupt departure of Steven Sinofsky, the 47-year-old president of the Windows division and a nearly quarter-century employee of Microsoft with ties to co-founder Bill Gates.
Their high-stakes partnership underscores what people familiar with the matter say was an overriding factor in Mr. Sinofsky's departureâ€"Chief Executive Steve Ballmer is determined to get Microsoft's sometimes-warring development groups working more closely with each other and external partners.
Mr. Ballmer has been stressing to employees and investors his vision of making Microsoft's products, such as Windows for computers and smartphones, Xbox and Office software suite work more seamlessly together.
Mr. Sinofsky, who had just completed the launch of Windows 8 less than three weeks earlier, was strong at leading product development but was widely seen as a polarizing figure whose style was not conducive to collaboration.
Following the Windows 8 launch, people close to the company said, Mr. Sinofsky had a chance to consider his own future at the company, where the only obvious step up would be chief executiveâ€"and it became increasingly clear he wasn't likely to succeed Mr. Ballmer.
People familiar with the situation said the early reception to Windows 8 wasn't a factor in Mr. Sinofsky's departure. One of these people added that Mr. Gates, the Microsoft chairman and significant shareholder, didn't play a significant role other than to support Mr. Ballmer's decision.
In an email to Microsoft employees late Monday, Mr. Sinofsky said the decision to leave Microsoft was a "personal and private choice that in no way reflects any speculation or theories one might readâ€"about me, opportunity, the company or its leadership." Efforts to reach Mr. Sinofsky on Tuesday were unsuccessful.
It's unclear whether the duo will run Windows together on a permanent basis, or if Microsoft will search for a single executive to replace Mr. Sinofsky.
Ms. Larson-Green, who is 48, joined Microsoft in 1993 after failing to land a job on her first try after she graduated from college.
She is best known for pushing through changes to the look and feel of two key Microsoft products, Windows and the Office suite of business software where she first worked for Mr. Sinofsky.
Some of the product changes she advocated have been controversial, including the "ribbon" interface introduced with the 2007 version of Office that was intended to slim down the traditional array of menus for features such as bolded text.
Some Office diehards disliked the changes, but Ms. Larson-Green told Newsweek in a 2006 interview, "People didn't feel a sense of mastery over the product; they didn't know everything that was in it; they didn't know how to use all the features efficiently."
Ms. Larson-Green joined the Windows group under Mr. Sinofsky's leadership, and she helped create new looks for Windows 7 and Windows 8, which has been greeted with a mixed reception from users and reviewers. In an interview earlier this year with tech website Gizmodo, Ms. Larson-Green repeated what she said was Mr. Sinofsky comparison of remaking widely-used Microsoft software to the tough task of "ordering pizza for a billion people."
Patrick Moorhead, president of research firm Moor Insights & Strategy, credited Ms. Larson_Green with doing "an absolutely magnificent job of giving people confidence in Windows 8 just by her public presence." Mr. Moorhead said he believed the sole head of Windows was "Larson-Green's to win or lose."
Under her watch, analysts and tech-industry executives believe Windows will need to move away from the typical three-year gap between new versions of the computer-operating software, and adopt more frequent, incremental updates typical to smartphone software.
Ms. Reller joined Microsoft as part of the company's 2001 acquisition of Great Plains Software, a business-software company.
The North Dakota native started work at Great Plains at first as a part-time receptionist in the 1980s while she pursued a mathematics degree from nearby Minnesota State University Moorhead.
Ms. Reller also helped sell companies on Microsoft software to manage sales leads and corporate-accounting functions, a relatively small piece of Microsoft's business. Ms. Reller joined Windows in 2007 under Mr. Sinofsky.
The expanded role for the pair also caps a prominent past year for women in technology leadership roles. Women like Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman, new Yahoo Inc. CEO Marissa Mayer and Facebook Inc. Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg have played key leadership roles in their companies in the last year.
Some analysts on Tuesday worried about the change at the top of Windows at a crucial time for Microsoft's attempt to establish footholds in areas, such as tablet computing and smartphones, in which Microsoft is playing catch up to Apple Inc. and other tech companies.
Worries about the leadership overhaulâ€"along with fears that Mr. Sinofsky's departure was a sign of poor market reception to Windows 8â€"contributed to a 3.2% drop in Microsoft's stock price to $27.09 on Tuesday.
"While the departure of Sinofsky is just one additional data point, it is a negative and further calls into question the early momentum of the Windows 8 ecosystem," Barclays Capital analyst Raimo Lenschow wrote in a research note.
Write to Shira Ovide at shira.ovide@wsj.com
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