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Microsoft Corp.’s board of directors is preparing to appoint Satya Nadella on the position of the chief executive officer of the company, according to a news-agency report on Thursday. In addition, the company plans to replace chairman of the board, Bill Gates, with an independent director.
The candidate to succeed Steve Ballmer as the next CEO of Microsoft is Satya Nadella, the executive vice president of Microsoft’s cloud and enterprise group, reports Bloomberg news-agency. In addition, the board of directors is mulling to replace chairman Bill Gates with the lead independent director John Thompson, the agency claims.
At present Satya Nadella is responsible for building and running the company’s computing platforms, developer tools and cloud services. Mr. Nadella and his team deliver the “Cloud OS”, Microsoft’s next generation backend platform, which is designed for modern application needs. The Cloud OS is a platform that spans public, private and service provider clouds. Previously, Mr. Nadella was president of Microsoft’s $19 billion Server and Tools Business and led the transformation of the business and technology from client-server software to cloud infrastructure and services.
Satya Nadella, who joined Microsoft in 1992, has been considered as the most likely internal candidate for the CEO position for several months now. Since no likely external candidates have transpired on the radar, it looks like Mr. Nadella will almost certainly become the head of the world’s largest software developer.
Mr. Nadella is not only a Microsoft veteran with a good track record, but he is the person who is shaping the future of the software in general at the moment. He may have a lot of emotional ties to Microsoft’s products and initiatives, but he clearly knows where the software and the IT world are heading.
Microsoft did not comment on the news-story.
Kit Guru Says: It will be interesting to see how a software executive who has been primarily in the server business throughout his whole career will manage Microsoft’s own-brand hardware direction.
This is a “safe” choice but not necessarily the right one for MS to really turn the tables on the industry. MS focus on the enterprise space has always been good and that revenue stream rather constant and growing slowly as needed. That is an area of least turbulence. The consumer space is a different animal altogether. MS has had a rock start in mobile and still struggling. On Xbox, it has improved but can do more. Does it has the focus to diversify that market ?. On PC and tablet client side, it needs a radical change to its previous approach and a relook at their offering. Can they offer two or three rather different variants to the OS ?. But now they would have figured out that “one size fits all” does not work!. I say offer Win9A, Win 9B and Win9C variants. If one were Windows-on-Linux, it would turn the tables for the market!.
Also, Cloud computing does not work for all markets, some markets are not Cloud friendly for some years to come. MS need to offer clear choices for customers to fit the solution to their needs better. It can of course allow switching between then or have their virtualise several instances per physical hardware, if desired.
I do not think it is the lack of technology but the lack of will-power if the CEO to drive such an effort. They can have all the time in the world to do it right, rather than appears to (or actually) stumbling around.