at the start of a new fiscal year, what Seliger calls a “more protracted, structured integration” began for the rest of Sentillion’s people, products, and technologies. That integration is still in process, under the watch of Neupert, who heads up the Health Solutions Group (HSG).
On how well that integration has gone so far: “It takes at least a year before you can really answer,” Seliger says. Still, he says, “There’s been an amazing amount of team integration, which I think has been very positive. Our mantra has been, ‘One HSG’…and I think we’ve done a really good job of creating One HSG.”
“Now, we’re starting to get into doing really interesting things—innovating the technologies that Sentillion brought in along with the technologies that Microsoft Health Solutions Group already had. That process is locked and loaded, but it’s going to take time before the market sees the output of that.”
On whether Sentillion’s work has expanded under Microsoft’s ownership beyond its core single sign-on technologies: “Yes, but in ways I’m sorry I can’t comment on just yet.” Seliger did say that a “very exciting” collection of products and technologies has been brought together from the integration of the two companies, and that “there are some really interesting, leveraged uses of that underway.”
On the expansion of his own role: Seliger joined as a HSG general manager with the job of surveying the wide array of businesses and areas where Microsoft’s health technologies fit in—including the consumer and enterprise businesses and even life sciences—to try to figure out gaps in the product line and identify other areas to work on. “It was a great way to get to know many, many people, many, many topics of conversations,” he says.
Early this October, he was given the title of general manager of product management for all of HSG. “I oversee all of product-related strategy and requirements and definition of what it is we actually bring to the market in terms of products and services,” Seliger says. “It is every product in our portfolio—HealthVault, Amalga, things we’re working on that we haven’t talked about yet, everything.”
On maintaining and growing Microsoft’s strengths in a nascent market: “My Sentillion colleagues and I talk about this all the time—just how many incredibly smart and gifted people there are in Microsoft. And it’s clearly, clearly part of Microsoft’s secret sauce.” This produces an array of great ideas and potential products. But with so many great ideas coming forth, he says, “You have a different challenge, which is how to pick the ones that you want and harness them to take forward into the market.”
