The end to a long CEO search is getting near, as reports are piling up from the other side of the planet that Satya Nadella, a senior VP who heads the enterprise and cloud business at Microsoft, is all set to become the new third CEO, after his predecessors Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. It’s been a long while since Ballmer announced his retirement from the CEO position, with pressure from investors mounting as Microsoft fumbled its mobile and tablet strategy, the two fastest growing consumer electronics markets. However, under the same leadership, Microsoft became a company with a diversified portfolio, with hit consumer products like Xbox and the fast growing enterprise products like Office 365, a key initiative by Satya Nadella. This might be one of the biggest reasons why the Board members are narrowing down on Nadella to be the next CEO, he is the moneymaker in Microsoft’s wealthy still-growing division.
Bloomberg first broke the news that Microsoft are looking at Satya Nadella as their next CEO and added that Bill Gates may quit his Board Chairman post as soon as the CEO is replaced. While the former news is as surprising, the latter is even huge. If Bill Gates decides to leave his post as the Chairman of Microsoft, it will officially be the end of the Gates-Ballmer era. They were the only two CEOs of the company and with both of them set for retirement from the company, this might be the sea change the investors really want. However, the grapevine is abuzz with reports of a bigger Gates influence on product development and so forth.
Coming back to the new CEO, the Indian-origin Hyderabadi has been working at Microsoft since 1992, a long time veteran. He joined the Redmond company from Sun Microsystems, which is now a part of Oracle. After having worked on various divisions including Bing, Ballmer promoted Nadella to the senior VP of Microsoft’s Enterprise businesses and the Cloud, where he oversaw the explosive growth of products like Azure and Office 365, which have gained a mass following in their respective segments. Nadella is known to be responsible for the big changes in Windows Azure that eventually pitted it directly against upstarts from Amazon and Google, and is now seen as a great alternative to Amazon’s offerings, reportedly.
While his Enterprise track record is glowing, his views on consumer technology, the biggest space where Microsoft is lagging behind, is not well known to the outside world. His talks have been mostly on the cloud and the enterprise part of Microsoft, which he led. Contrary to the earlier decision for an outsider CEO, there are reportedly more reasons for choosing Nadella from the inside.
A company as huge as Microsoft, which is bang in the middle of a tumultuous transition led by Ballmer, if opts for a new guy from the outside, who doesn’t have the necessary know-how, will probably make the tough transition even worse, for decision making. But Satya Nadella, a guy with 22 years of Microsoft experience, a person who has already led many divisions, including the money making Enterprise part, seems like the right person for this job. He is also reportedly the least controversial, with many employees approving of this preliminary decision from the board, as he is well known to rally different Microsoft divisions to work together on several occasions. This will be paramount to Ballmer’s “One Microsoft” strategy. One other reason for his selection might be, yes, Steve Ballmer. He believes that Microsoft’s Consumer technology largely benefits from the work they have done in Enterprise, which may seem hard to comprehend at first, but hold on to that thought till the official announcement.
Satya Nadella, who has got a deep understanding of technology thanks to his Engineering background, will be leading Microsoft through its transition from a software major to a devices and services company, with Bill Gates reportedly leaving the chairman post behind and possibly getting more influential on product development. Will this be enough for Microsoft to turn itself into a success in key consumer markets? We can’t wait for the official announcement to see what the new CEO has in store for Microsoft, and eventually the consumers. We hope his main agenda includes improving Windows Phone at a rapid pace. One can hope, right?