Microsoft announced its third CEO in about 40 years history of the company, after Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, former Executive Vice President of Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise group, Satya Nadella.
Steve Ballmer announced back in August his retirement and Microsoft planned to look for his successor along 2014 but Nadella’s background supported the decision to invest on him as the new CEO sooner than expected. Not to mention that Nadella is going to help concluding the Nokia’s acquisition by Microsoft having worked on the development of cloud infrastructures including Bing, Xbox, Office and other services.
Nadella, was born in India, possesses a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Mangalore University, a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Wisconsin and an MBA from the University of Chicago. He is 46 years old and spend almost all of his working life at Microsoft, having joined the company 22 years ago, he served the software giant along his career as senior VP of R&D for the Online Services Division and VP of the Business Division, later on he was part of the team who contributed to create cloud computing services as president of Microsoft’ Server and Tools Business.
John Thompson will take over the position of Chairman of the Board of Directors that was of Bill Gates who will instead embrace a new role of Founder and Technology Advisor.
The decision of a new CEO who comes from Microsoft’s cloud and enterprises group might be very strategic for the company to climb the mobile market after struggling for years with Apple and Google competition. Nadella will face a lot of challenges to keep Microsoft’s names among the biggest is a constantly changing market and the deal with Nokia’s mobile phone needs to be successful for both to overcome the battle against Apple and Samsung.
Bill Gates, commented the announcement of the new CEO:
During this time of transformation, there is no better person to lead Microsoft than Satya Nadella, Satya is a proven leader with hard-core engineering skills, business vision and the ability to bring people together. His vision for how technology will be used and experienced around the world is exactly what Microsoft needs as the company enters its next chapter of expanded product innovation and growth.
Nadella, who wrote a long mail to Microsoft’s employees on first day as new CEO, said:
Microsoft is one of those rare companies to have truly revolutionized the world through technology, and I couldn’t be more honored to have been chosen to lead the company, the opportunity ahead for Microsoft is vast, but to seize it, we must focus clearly, move faster and continue to transform. A big part of my job is to accelerate our ability to bring innovative products to our customers more quickly.