Founder of Office 365 and Microsoft Entra ID
David Howell
Partner
About Me
With a blend of deep technical knowledge and business acumen, I am a technology leader and entrepreneur with experience creating flagship solutions for emerging areas. I have envisioned and led new product lines from inception to scale, focusing on identity, security, managed services, cloud services, and collaboration software products. I have co-authored and contributed to multiple patents, acquisitions, and strategies that helped establish Microsoft as a leader in the identity, security, and collaboration markets. I enjoy solving business challenges with innovative and scalable solutions that empower clients, and I try to envision new opportunities before they are fully realized by the market. I also develop and write full stack applications.
Experience
Executive Roles
Microsoft
Partner General Manager, Teams Managed Services
Partner Group Product Manager,
Internet of Things and Cloud Security
Partner Group Product Manager,
Identity and Azure Active Directory
Director of Product Management,
Office 365
Group/Lead Product Manager,
Unified Messaging, Exchange
Career Highlights
I was a founding product leader for Office 365, from inception to worldwide release. This was an intrapreneurship effort that transformed Microsoft into a business cloud service provider. I led the product development for the major functional areas of Microsoft’s cloud identity system (Azure Active Directory, now Entra), which has become the largest enterprise identity solution in the market. I pioneered Microsoft’s identity-driven security strategy, laying the groundwork for Microsoft’s zero trust architecture, and led a major acquisition in the cloud security space. Recently, I have been focused on incubating a consumer start-up and software development.
My experience guiding industry-leading solutions from inception to completion, combined with my bilateral business and technical skills, gives me a unique perspective on product innovation informed by the hard-won lessons of hyperscaling. I have provided my expertise and guidance on scale-out identity and security products and projects for a variety of clients from startups to multinational enterprises.
Techquity Solutions
I am passionate about helping companies establish the right identity security solutions for their needs and ensuring they have a robust security infrastructure based on zero-trust principles. I love to work hands-on, envisioning and building products, building teams or reengineering from within, and helping clients take ideas from concept to a meaningful product and ultimately to largescale success.
Innovation & Impact
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Founded a software startup that is building toward commercial adoption
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Microsoft’s lead for the acquisition and integration of Microsoft Cloud Application Security, formally Adallom
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Pioneered identity-driven security solutions, laying the groundwork for zero-trust architecture
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Held every product leadership role in Azure Active Directory (now Entra), at different times running the Directory, Authentication/Access, and Security groups.
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First Product Manager of Office 365- pitched initial design, built the product management team, and managed the release across multiple business units at Microsoft
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Lead Product Manager for Exchange Unified Messaging and Outlook Web Access for mobile devices
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Software developer responsible for the Exchange SMTP stack and DNS resolver, the most widely used SMTP stack on the planet
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Microsoft Network performance lead analyst
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Awarded 15 patents
Why Techquity?
I thrive on building products and teams from scratch. I joined Techquity to continue to help customers innovate compelling solutions and improve their security posture.