Ondrej Holzman Microsoft has just announced the name of its new CEO, the outgoing Steve Ballmer will be replaced by Satya Nadella, a long-time employee of the company from Redmond…
The new head of Microsoft has been looking for more than half a year, Steve Ballmer his intention to leave the position of CEO announced last August. The 46-year-old Indian Satya Nadella is only the third CEO in the history of Microsoft after Ballmer and Bill Gates.
Nadella has been with Microsoft for 22 years, previously holding the position of executive vice president for cloud and enterprise services. Nadella was one of the main candidates for the vacant position of executive director, which Steve Ballmer will remain until his successor is found.
In the end, the company's search for a new boss took a little longer than it had anticipated and planned, but Nadella is taking the job just in time - before the deal with Nokia and also during a major reorganization that is taking place inside Microsoft.
Nadella becomes the executive director with immediate effect, and will also join the company's board of directors. At the same time, Microsoft announced that Bill Gates is stepping down as chairman of the board, to be replaced by John Thompson, the former CEO of Symantec.
The Microsoft co-founder will now serve on the board in a consultant role, and Nadella already does he called, to participate more actively in the development of new products. Bill Gates will work at Microsoft three days a week, he will continue to devote himself to his foundation Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. "I am thrilled that Satya has asked me to be more active and to significantly increase my time at Microsoft," Gates said in a brief video, in which he welcomes Nadella to the role of executive director.
While Nadella has earned a lot of respect within the company for more than 20 years of hard and quality work, he is practically unknown to most of the public, as well as most businessmen. Only the following weeks and months will show how, for example, the stock market will react. During his career, however, Nadella has focused exclusively on the corporate sphere and technical matters, and has practically not interfered with Microsoft's hardware and mobile devices.
At the same time, the mobile future and its solutions presented by Microsoft will be a key point of Nadella's tenure. The business world, software and services, where Nadella excels, is where Microsoft thrives. However, in a completely new role where Nadella has never led any publicly traded company, the new Indian head of Microsoft will have to prove that he has the skills to steer the company in the right direction also in the mobile sphere, where Microsoft has so far lost significantly to its competitors.
I am looking forward and very curious to see how Microsoft will prosper under his leadership.