Microsoft has announced that Barrie Sheers will take over as managing director of New Zealand from current MD Paul Muckleston.

Sheers will officially join the New Zealand subsidiary on July 6, and will report directly to Cesar Cernuda, Microsoft Asia-Pacific president, as part of the APAC leadership team.

Muckleston says he will soon be making an announcement about the next steps in his own career, but confirmed that he will be staying with the company.

Muckleston has served as Microsoft NZ's managing director since 2010, and says the company is implementing a planned and structured transition from his leadership to Sheers' and that they will be working closely together over the coming months during the induction process.

“The New Zealand subsidiary has gone from strength to strength locally as Microsoft has been changing and growing globally with an ambition to be the productivity and platform company for a mobile-first, cloud-first world,” Muckleston says.

“There is a transformation happening at Microsoft right now. You can see it in the accelerated pace of innovation, the renewed passion and energy of our people and the value that customers and partners tell us we are delivering to them.

“I am looking forward to building on the successful foundations already in place and helping to accelerate our current transformation,” says Sheers.

Most recently Sheers was vice president and general manager for the Software Group of Dell for Asia Pacific and Japan.

Cernuda says he has been ‘impressed' by Sheers' achievements in building, managing and developing high performance teams in multiple businesses across the European and Asia Pacific regions over the past two decades.