Recently Microsoft re-organizes their Zune team (following their first ever company-wide layoff’s), and cemented the Team’s focus in their new directions.

The software and services portion of the Zune team–the bulk of its staff–will be added to the portfolio of Enrique Rodriguez, the vice president who currently runs Microsoft’s Mediaroom and Media Center TV businesses. The hardware team, meanwhile, will now report to Tom Gibbons, who also leads the hardware design efforts within Microsoft’s Windows Mobile unit.

Here’s Zune Insider’s take on the news:

• We are combining the Zune software team with the Connected TV organization (Windows Media Center, Mediaroom) to create a single group focused on creating software and services that enable great entertainment experiences across the PC, TV, mobile phones and Zune devices.
• The Zune device hardware team joined the mobile communications business group to create a centre of excellence in portable hardware. This will bring people who live and breathe hardware together.
• The priority now is to focus on delivering against our current product roadmaps across each team in the new organization. That means new software, services and devices for Zune customers.

Its good to note that it seems the teams are still continuing with their current roadmaps, so it seems none of the development plans were altered during the transition. We’ve been hearing for sometime now that this new focus for the team was coming up, and in the interview with Enrique Rodriguez, some interesting statements were made…

“Rodriguez wasn’t ready to offer details on when the Zune service would come, say, to Windows Mobile, but he did say to expect products within this calendar year that take the Zune service beyond just Microsoft’s own line of digital music players.”

Quite simply, this is more proof that the Zune service will supersede the Zune devices, and soon, though granted we already knew that. In what direction they will take this, dedicate hardware players, or software solutions for phones or Xbox 360 remains to be seen, but there’s definitely a lot of untapped potential here. Further to backup the idea of Xbox 360 integration (and Windows Media Center) is the following comment from the Insider blog,

“We’re looking at how the powerful features of Zune can be combined with the work in the TV space to deliver a broader entertainment experience.”

Seeing as Xbox 360 and Windows Media Center are Microsoft’s forefront TV space systems, it makes perfect sense that this is the direction they’re heading in.

Here’s another choice quote which not many people seem to have picked up on:

“Rodriguez said that a large part of the reorganization was about bringing more heads together to work on a unified entertainment approach, one that is headed toward a more cloud-based approach.”

We’ve already seen little glimpses of what Zune could be like with Live Mesh, syncing your entire music Library to your Zune device from anywhere with a wireless hotspot with your Music Library in the could (in turn synced from your computer), but this was over a year ago now, and we’ve heard nothing of it since (though Live Mesh and Windows Azure have slowly been evolving ever since). Seeing as it’s the underlying framework for much of Microsoft’s new cloud-oriented approach, maybe when the Live Mesh framework is completed, we’ll begin to see what role Zune has to play there. With the talent working for the Zune team and their desire to do something fresh, and the sheer amount of resources available to Microsoft, one can only dream of what’s possible.

[src: CNET]