Former Microsoft Windows executive Bill Veghte is joining Hewlett-Packard as executive vice president of the tech company's software business.

What? HP has a software business? Yes. A $3.6 billion business, Veghte said. He starts on May 17 and called it an "adventure." "It is an opportunity to manage a business end-to-end, including R&D, sales and support," he said in a Wednesday interview.

Veghte was the senior vice president of marketing for the Windows division at Microsoft and a 19-year veteran of the software company. He left in January, a few months after another senior vice president, Steve Sinofsky, was named president of the Windows division. The latest major upgrade to Microsoft's flagship operating system, Windows 7, shipped in October.

He will work out of the Bay Area but keep a presence in Seattle, he said. HP is based in Palo Alto, Calif.

Veghte spent several months searching for his next job. "It was so much fun taking a step back and sort of saying, 'All right. What do I love doing? Where do I think the market’s going and who is well-positioned in that context? Then, where do I have a mindmeld with the management team, whether it’s the CEO and the board or with founders?' "

"HP was one of the very few companies that stood out because they’ve got such a great set of software assets, a world-class organization, they have a very good PC business, a very good server business and a very good software business."

Veghte says this dovetails with what he considers a major shift in how large corporations are using technology. "We’re going through with enterprise the biggest change in how enterprises consume and use information technology since client-server [change]. There’s a variety of reasons for that, whether that be rapid maturation of virtualization, the fact that the cloud is a very viable way of delivering a set of software services, or the fact that consumer experiences are finding their way into the IT environment."

HP makes PCs, other IT hardware and provides IT services. The company recently acquired Palm, the handheld device company. It has multiple partnerships with Microsoft to sell business software and is a major PC partner, also known as an OEM or Original Equipment Manufacturer. HP is also partnering with Microsoft to make the Slate, a tablet PC that will compete with the iPad.

HP made the announcement about Veghte's hire Wednesday.