Cloud specialist Nadella named Microsoft CEO
Print Edition
Microsoft has named Satya Nadella, an executive in charge of the company’s small, but growing business of delivering software and services over the Internet its new CEO. Company founder Bill Gates is leaving the chairman role for a new role as technology adviser.
The software company announced yesterday that Nadella will replace Steve Ballmer, who said in August that he would leave the company within 12 months. Nadella will become the third leader in the software giant’s 38-year history, after Gates and Ballmer. Board member John Thompson will serve as Microsoft’s new chairman.
Indian-born Nadella, who is 46 and has worked at Microsoft for 22 years, has been an executive in some of its fastest-growing and most profitable businesses, including its Office and server and tools business.
For the past seven months, he was the executive vice president who led Microsoft’s cloud computing offerings. That’s a new area for Microsoft, which has traditionally focused on software installed on personal computers rather than on remote servers connected to the Internet. Nadella’s group has been growing strongly, although it remains a small part of Microsoft’s current business.
“Satya is a proven leader with hard-core engineering skills, business vision and the ability to bring people together,” Gates said in a statement. “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.”
The company said Gates, in his role as founder and technology advisor, “will devote more time to the company, supporting Nadella in shaping technology and product direction.”
Gates will also remain a member of Microsoft’s board.
Analysts hope Nadella can maintain the company’s momentum in the rapidly expanding field of cloud computing while minimizing the negative impact of Microsoft’s unprofitable forays into consumer hardware. They see hope in some of the businesses Nadella had a key role in creating.
Microsoft’s cloud computing offering, Azure, and its push to have consumers buy Office software as a US$100-a-year Office 365 subscription are seen as the biggest drivers of Microsoft’s growth in the next couple of years. Both businesses saw the number of customers more than double in the last three months of the year, compared with a year earlier.
Nadella is a technologist, fulfilling the requirement Gates set out at the November shareholder meeting, where the Microsoft chairman said the company’s new leader must have “a lot of comfort in leading a highly technical organization.”
Born in Hyderabad, India in 1967, Nadella received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Mangalore University, a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and a master’s of business administration from the University of Chicago. He joined Microsoft in 1992 after being a member of the technology staff at Sun Microsystems.
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