Microsoft Business Applications sales exec Vahé Torossian to depart company

Vahé Torossian, Microsoft sales executive for the Business Applications group, announced he is leaving the company after thirty years.

In a LinkedIn post, he emphasized that his departure has been planned for many months and is not part of Microsoft's recent layoffs. Rather than depart abruptly at the start of the fiscal year in June, he wrote, he worked with the company to "help land a new organization and Go-To-Market plans to enable the next growth cycle and push out my departure."

Torossian plans to embark on new ventures outside of Microsoft. In his post, he remarked not just on the past three years with the Business Applications group, but his range of roles leading regional organizations around the world.

Microsoft executive vice president Jean-Philippe Courtois added that he hired Torossian to lead channel marketing in France and described him as "a rare positive leader, who deeply cares about his people and customers, who carries a contagious positive energy day in and day out." Other comments in response to Torossian's announcement noted the positive impact his leadership had in their careers recently and in past decades.

Torossian took on sales leadership for Dynamics and Power Platform in the midst of the pandemic in October 2020 as part of a multi-executive shuffle, moving over from leadership of Microsoft in Western Europe, a role he had held since 2017.