Indian Born Satya Nadella becomes CEO of the Microsoft , Interview

Seattle, 4 Feb (Reuters) : Microsoft Corp (NSQ:MSFT – News) named company veteran Satya Nadella as its next chief executive officer on Tuesday, ending a longer-than-expected search for a new leader after Steve Ballmer announced his intention to retire in August. Nadella is only the third CEO in Microsoft’s 39-year history, following co-founder Bill Gates and Ballmer.

Indian Born Satya Nadella becomes CEO of the Microsoft

Microsoft also said John Thompson, lead independent director, would succeed Gates as chairman. Gates will assume a new role as technology adviser and retain a seat on the board, the company said in a statement.Shares of the world’s largest software maker were up 1.1 percent in premarket trading following the news. The choice of Nadella was widely expected, and investors and analysts are already weighing how effective the 22-year veteran will be in re-igniting the company’s mobile ambitions and satisfying Wall Street’s hunger for cash.
Microsoft faces a slow erosion of its PC-centric Windows and Office franchises and needs to somehow challenge Apple Inc (AAPL.O) and Google Inc (GOOG.O) in the new realm of mobile computing. At the same time, some investors are campaigning for retrenchment and a bigger cut of the company’s massive cash pile. Most agree that Nadella’s background in creating Microsoft’s Internet-based, or “cloud,” computing services makes him a safe pair of hands to take the company forward, but there remains a question over his ability to make Microsoft a hit with consumers or with impatient shareholders.(Reporting by Bill Rigby; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Lisa Von Ahn)
Nadella, a native of Hyderabad – where Microsoft has its largest non-U.S. research center – was promoted to run the company’s fast-expanding cloud, or internet-based, computing initiatives in July last year as part of current CEO Steve Ballmer’s radical re-organization of the company. Born in 1967 and educated in India and the United States, Nadella’s tech career started at internet software pioneer Sun Microsystems. He joined Microsoft in 1992 and quickly climbed the corporate ladder with leading roles in the Office and Bing search-engine teams.

CEO of the Microsoft Nadella’s first Interview

He was promoted to run the company’s server and tools unit in 2011. That unit now forms the backbone of Microsoft’s cloud-computing platform, which Nadella runs under his official title of executive vice president, cloud and enterprise.