Reports Say Satya Nadella Is Microsoft's Next CEO

Nerval's Lobster writes "Microsoft's next CEO will be Satya Nadella, if current reports prove accurate. According to Re/code, which drew its information from "numerous sources close to Microsoft," Nadella could officially assume the role in early February. Meanwhile, anonymous sources speaking to Bloomberg suggested that co-founder Bill Gates could be forced to give up his longtime chairman role. Nadella (again, if confirmed) seems a logical choice for Microsoft. He's been with the company for more than twenty years, eventually becoming executive vice president of its Cloud and Enterprise division. The enterprise remains a key—perhaps the key — customer segment for Microsoft, especially as its mobile and consumer efforts (excluding the Xbox) have floundered in recent years; in order to retain those business clients, Nadella and his team embarked on the creation of 'Cloud OS,' the platform that powers Microsoft's large-scale cloud services such as SkyDrive, Azure, and Office 365. Under his guidance, Microsoft's revenue from cloud services has grown by several billion over the past few years, so he's shown that he can expand a business. In addition, his technical background could afford him a measure of respect from Microsoft's legions of engineers and developers. But if he's ultimately tapped for the CEO seat, Nadella faces one of the toughest jobs in the technology industry: not only does he need to craft a plan that will allow Microsoft to grow and prosper in an integrated, holistic manner—he'll need to do it while guiding the company through the massive internal reorganization initiated by his predecessor, Steve Ballmer."

Comments

Re:here's a suggestion

[xfizik]

I think he's too busy designing ultra-thin condoms for Africa - a way more important job in the grand scheme of things for humanity.

Re:John Thompson as Chairman?

[Alomex]

I can see why people might prefer Windows 7 to Windows 8, but most of the time people are speaking from ignorance, never having used Windows 8 (or having used it only with a mouse). It's a different beast entirely with a touch screen.

Windows 8 sucks for reasons much beyond the metro interface. Here's an example: no matter what your personal settings about half of the windows updates will override them and randomly change your logon background page and the presence of the logon page itself.

Here's another one, when you open a picture with the new built in photo app, none of the obvious commands advances you to the next picture in the file folder.

Another one, once you set icon sizes to your own preference, every time you restart they may revert back to the original size, and then back to small size, with no apparent pattern for its change of heart.

I can go on and on. The whole thing is a kludge.