Tony Prophet, the former Hewlett Packard Senior Vice President of Operations for Printing and Personal Systems, is the new head of Microsoft Windows Marketing.

Microsoft officials confirmed the hiring of Prophet via an e-mailed statement from a spokesperson on April 24. The statement:

"We can confirm Tony Prophet will be joining Microsoft as corporate vice president, Windows Marketing, reporting to Chris Capossela. Tony will focus on growing the Windows ecosystem and enabling our partners to be more successful building on Windows."

Prophet is scheduled to start his new job in early May, officials said.

Prophet is replacing Thom Gruhler, Corporate Vice President of Marketing for Windows. Gruhler, who formerly headed marketing for Windows Phone, took over the Windows Marketing CVP job from Tami Reller last July. At that point, Reller became the head of cross-company marketing in July.

(Gruhler is moving to Microsoft's Applications & Services group in a new role that company officials are not yet specifying publicly.)

Microsoft announced Reller would be leaving the company in March 2014. She had been leading the central marketing group in conjunction with Chris Capossela before Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella decided to make Capossela the Chief Marketing Officer.

Prophet has been Senior VP of Operations with HP since March 2012. Before that, he was Senior Vice President of Operations with Carrier Corp., part of UTC that specializes in heating, air-conditioning and refrigeration systems, according to his LinkedIn profile.

The appointment to this role of an executive of one of Microsoft's OEM partners -- with whom the company's relationship has been strained in recent years due to decisions around Windows and Microsoft's decision to become a hardware maker in its own right -- is an interesting one.