Reports Say Satya Nadella Is Microsoft's Next CEO 177
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."
Re:I'll vote for him (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:here's a suggestion (Score:3, Insightful)
And, if you're in a car accident, if we just let you bleed on the street, we'll have saved a few bucks too.
Re:here's a suggestion (Score:3, Insightful)
Birth control and education are some of the major problems he's addressing, and that doesn't lead to more starving, suffering kids.
They should move away from consumer products (Score:5, Insightful)
"pivot to Devices and Services" -- That's Ballmerese for "doubling down on your core incompetencies"
Why is Microsoft trying so hard to compete against highly capable Apple and Google? It's a symptom of 15 years of typical Ballmerist "ooh, shiny.. gimme! I want one too!!!"?
They just aren't institutionally set up to do so.
Plan for incoming Microsoft CEO:
0) Assume your predecessor was wrong about everything until proven otherwise.
1) Halt the re-org until you know what you're doing.
2) in addition to "Devices and Services", how about, uh, ***Business Software***???? Now that I work in a mid-large company there is all sorts of ugly and junky application software whose capabilities and quality makes Microsoft Office seem like, oh, a properly-working HAL 9000.
Instead of throwing themselves up in a pathetic siege against highly capable, wealthy and motivated, Apple and Google, why not shoot for a much softer target: Oracle (other than the relational database). People hate them more than Microsoft and their products are poor.
Microsoft's primary focus should be "Diversified Business Software": there is a large range of software across many areas with much lower existing standard capability and quality than in the consumer market. MS has the scale to attack this heavily, could actually be good here, and make money consistently.
3) Windows. Oy vey. Microsoft will remain a primary business software company forever. Deal with it. So, a plan.
* Release Windows 7.5, backporting all the internal improvements of the Win 8 series which can fit, keeping the Win 7 interface. Expect all your business to upgrade to this, and skip Win 8. It will be the new XP, and you'll support it for at least a decade. Deal with it.
* Release Windows 8.5 with slightly-less bogosity, and lower your expectations.
* Much more seriously, go to the Research group and academia and work exceptionally hard to make a truly great, innovative, non-touch desktop interface, possibly including other physical input modalities (alternate mice, hardware, who knows?) Make Windows 9 (or 10) a really big deal. Not different for merely the sake of difference, but unmistakably GOOD. Recognize the physical realities of the world and humans.
Re:here's a suggestion (Score:4, Insightful)
This is blaringly obviously NOT EFFECTIVE. Those people are so poor that fucking is about the only thing they can do. It is free and because they have little education, they evidently can't figure out that is what gets you pregnant until it's too late. I'm middle aged, so my history on the plight of Africa doesn't go back very far, but I recall the plight of Africa gaining mainstream attention probably around the mid 80s with that whole Sally Struthers campaign. Since that time a lot of charity and aid has been sent and I think overall analysis concludes that their situation has been getting better- at least Jimmy Carter thinks so. Well what did we do before we starting sending all this aid? I'm guessing we used your proposed method which was ignore them, let them fend for themselves, and if they die, they die. Firstly that proposal is morally reprehensible to me. I don't just let people die if I can help them. But morals aside, just ignoring the situation made the problem worse. With nothing better to do they just keep pumping kids out regardless of if they can feed them or not. It has been shown historically time and time again when a nation becomes wealthy, birthrates plummet and mortality increases. Being a callous bastard as you propose would get us nowhere. The person you replied to had a better solution though I can't tell if they were joking or not (my sarcasm meter is on the fritz).
THIS is a much better solution! If the desired outcome is to reduce the number of children who will die of starvation or disease, and because of political reasons just throwing food and vaccines at them isn't working, then the next best approach is preventing the pregnancies in the first place. A condom is a fine way to do this. Throw a good helping of Nature's best medicine -education- on top of that and progress will be made. It actually can be a win-win for all concerned. We stop the suffering of others (especially the children!), we reduce or eliminate the problem of having kids one cannot support, overall health and quality of life will go up, and to appease you racist fuckers there will be fewer brown people around since instead of having 20 kids they only have 2 or 3. You can have a heart full of hate or a heart full of love and nothing I wrote above sounds bad. It's good for everyone.
I will also point out that the solution to your problem, the hateful racism eating away at your being, is also EXACTLY the same! Contraceptives and education. We reduce the chances for you to spread your malformed genes and with education, you can stop fearing the unknown and passing that message onto the kids you do have. A WIN-WIN AGAIN!
Re:John Thompson as Chairman? (Score:3, Insightful)
Bullshit on the resistance to oils. There is no magic to make them go away. They can't do anything but sit there. It's just that some weirdos have hardly any oil on their skin. Probably no tears in their eyes or snot in their nose either. Fine for freaks of nature, sheesh. Not so great for the rest of us.
As for the fat ugly finger on the display: it is about the crudest instrument that can be imagined. A mouse pointer is just a much more precise "finger" on the display, one that can't smear. Any drag or gesture you can make with your finger can be made much more precisely with a mouse, without a big hand getting in the way of visibility. It doesn't do much for two-finger gestures, but those feel as awkward as the vulcan live-long-and-prosper sign to me. I cam't do either one.
RE: MS SQL is a fork of Sybase (Score:2, Insightful)
They United States is a fork of England, and thus must be equivalent, yes?
MS SQL left Sybase in its dust a *long* time ago.