J Allard

During his nine years with the company, J Allard has been a major influence on Microsoft's Internet strategies. He joined the company out of college in 1991 and drove the company's TCP/IP networking strategy, defining the key APIs for Internet computing and working with the IETF to develop several industry standards in order to drive widespread adoption of TCP/IP and the World-Wide-Web. Prior to joining the Xbox team as General Manager, Allard helped establish the strategy for Microsoft's .NET initiative.

At the end of 1999, J decided to return to his computing roots - videogames. An avid gamer, J has owned over 20 game consoles starting with Pong and Oddessy which sparked his interest in computing. When an Atari 2600 appeared one Christmas morning he became permanently addicted to what would eventually become his career.

As General Manager for the Xbox platform, J's focus is on empowering the world's best game developers with the services, libraries, tools and support to create intense, action-packed experiences for gamers. J's group is responsible for the building the operating system, creating the development libraries, producing development kits, adding networked functionality and supplying technical support to the development community. As the head of the Third Party Relations team J also manages the title portfolio for Xbox working with publishers on world-class titles from concept approval through launch.

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