He is the perfect transition guy, who is likely going to be replaced in a few years time when MS decide they want to capitalize on the money they spend on a un-profitable but popular service.

Which is a pattern we have seen from their takeover of hotmail and more recently with skype, where they also waited a few years before starting the transition from independent brand to a sub brand under one of Microsoft estates.

What you are going to see when MS is done integrating the leadership of github into MSFT and Nat have been replaced by a next phase CEO, is that githubs CI hooks will become more and more symbiotic with azure, and the a lot of the documentation tools offered will hook directly into office365 tools, which will require a synchronization of accounts with MS other SaaS offerings.

I think everyone can agree that Microsoft is going to push Azure very hard once they start sinking their teeth into GitHub-- that's not surprising.

However, I'm very skeptical about the idea that GitHub is going to somehow become an Azure-only walled garden. It makes little sense business-wise. The entire point of buying GitHub was to acquire an audience that they are aware is not necessarily interested in Azure or their stack. Forcing it on them will only cause them to leave (there is plenty of competition in the code hosting space now), which will in turn reduce revenue. I give MS enough credit to know that the only way they succeed in this space is to provide value, not vendor lock-in. This is true now, and it will be even more true in 5 years when other big companies inevitably start following Microsoft into this space and competing for market share.

If they wanted to just sell services to people already using MS products, they already had VSTS for that.