It is official, Microsoft veteran Satya Nadella is the new Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft Corporation.
Nadella who was widely tipped by many to be outgoing CEO Steve Ballmer’s successor managed to top the search list of the panel that has for the last couple of months under the leadership of Microsoft board member John Thompson been searching for the right man to take over from Ballmer. The head of that search, John Thompson, now replaces long-serving Microsoft Chairman and co-founder Bill Gates as the Chairman of the board of the technology giant. As had been rumoured before, incoming CEO Nadella did indeed ask Gates to take a more influential and visible role in the company and Gates confirmed that he’ll be honoring that request by stepping down as Chairman in favour of a new role as a technology advisor.
Nadella’s appointment comes at a time when the company is just finalizing its acquisition of Nokia’s handset business and he’ll be a key figure in shaping the future of Microsoft’s mobile products alongside Redmond’s traditional products like Windows and Office as well as a continued onslaught on the global enterprise market which has so far been Microsoft’s cash cow.
Prior to his appointment, Nadella was the head of Microsoft’s cloud and enterprise group where his team was churning millions. With 22 years at Microsoft, the India-born executive has a lot to offer and is not only expected to spearhead Microsoft’s expansion in mobile but to shape its strategy as the world enters what former Apple CEO Steve Jobs termed as the “post-PC era”. Already, sales of PCs have been taking a dip year over year and it will be interesting to see what Nadella’s Microsoft will bring to the table.
While we have seen great success, we are hungry to do more. Our industry does not respect tradition — it only respects innovation. This is a critical time for the industry and for Microsoft. Make no mistake, we are headed for greater places — as technology evolves and we evolve with and ahead of it. Our job is to ensure that Microsoft thrives in a mobile and cloud-first world
Nadella’s mission is captured in his email to employees where in a few lines he captures what his intentions are:
What do we do next?
To paraphrase a quote from Oscar Wilde — we need to believe in the impossible and remove the improbable.
