Bryan Crynes, Chief Information Officer for Starbucks, the multi-national coffee giant based out of Seattle, Washington, finds himself out on the street today as part of a general corporate shake-up initiated by the return of chairman Howard Schultz to the role of CEO. Crynes, CIO since 2001, is replaced temporarily by Chris Bruzzo, former VP of Digital Strategy and the company's newly appointed CTO.

Other than the fact of the changes there isn't a lot of information available on the restructuring and the departure of Crynes and Senior VP of Corporate Responsibility (well, maybe that on is obvious) sandra Taylor, but some clues may be gleaned from the FAQ posted on the Starbuck's press website regarding Schultz's return. "Too much bureaucracy" appears to be one significant factor and Schultz's letter to employees cites re-aligning the organization to ensure that back-end IT systems are effectively dedicated to the "customer experience." That sounds to me as if corporate IT had been suffering from too much internal focus.

Or perhaps Schultz was just tired of seeing blue-screened iTunes kiosks in the local Starbucks stores (note to Apple: why on earth are you letting a public facing representation of your service run on Windows? Even when it isn't crashing and making you look bad, what does it say about confidence in your platform when you can't achieve the same thing with a Mini shoved under the counter somewhere?)