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Named one of The Hollywood Reporter's Top 35 Entertainment Execs Under 35 in 2003 Microsoft Corp.'s J Allard is recognized as one of the most promising young leaders in the entertainment industry.
Allard is currently responsible for driving Microsoft® Xbox 360 into the HD Era by creating experiences that are always connected always personalized and always in high definition.
Allard also oversees within Microsoft the industrywide XNA initiative - an ecosystem of interchangeable interoperable software tools and technologies from Microsoft middleware and game development companies.
As a founding member of the Xbox® platform project Allard drives digital entertainment initiatives by overseeing all design and engineering of the Xbox console development kit peripherals and the Xbox Live service.
In 1993 Allard with his memo to top executives called "Windows: The Killer Application for the Internet " led the Internet charge at Microsoft. Allard's recent efforts to expand the company's commitment to the Xbox platform prompted Business 2.0 to dub Allard a "Baby Bill " one of a handful of young Microsoft executives driving the company's future.
Joining the company as a new college graduate in 1991 Allard began his career by laying out the company's TCP/IP networking strategy and defining the Microsoft Windows® Sockets API the key API for Internet computing. Allard has participated in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) served on the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) and worked with other industry experts to design future Internet protocols such as IPv6 a key protocol for the next-generation Internet in concert with other industry experts.
Allard has a bachelor's degree in computer science from Boston University. In May 2003 he was awarded a Collegium and Academy of Distinguished Alumni award the highest honor the university's College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences confers on its alumni. | 