Recent rumours in the tech blogsphere, of a "major restructuring" being planned have been heating up, with sweeping changes to the company's overall structure now expected to become known before the end of its financial year on July 1st.

Publications including Bloomberg, The Verge and All Things D have reported on the suspected happenings, with trusted inside sources of the latter, anticipating a major shake-up that allegedly has a lot of high-ranking Microsoft managers uncertain of their future at the company:

That prospect has many top managers at the company worried, since Ballmer has been making these significant plans with limited consultation with the wider leadership group at the software giant. Instead, he has been working with only a small group of his direct reports and also some Microsoft board members, numerous sources said.

That has meant that most senior execs have largely been left out of the decision-making process related to Ballmer’s goal of solidifying Microsoft into the “devices and services company,” that he wrote about in his annual shareholder letter last October.

The impending changes — and the lack of information about them — has made for some level of discomfort inside Microsoft, where many high-ranking managers have been at the company for a very long time.

“It feels like it is going to be titanic — that Steve is doing this change for his legacy,” said one person close to the situation. “And it’s the first time in a long time that it feels like that there will be some major shifts, including some departures.”

The Verge describes four separate divisions as a likely outcome, being enterprise business, hardware, applications and services, as well as an operating systems group, which would further the alignment of the currently disparate Windows and Windows phone platforms.

We'll refrain from any direct speculation, but should the rumours prove to be true, we will be very interested to see where the Xbox brand winds up in the scheme of things, particularly given the miss-steps made by the executives in that space of late.

Microsoft's annual Build developer conference kicks off later this week in San Francisco.