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."

Re:Moving away from consumer products

[Anonymous Coward]

"This Swiss army knife sucks because the blade is not as sharp or long as this one". Apple and Microsoft are different platforms; not every problem has a simple or elegant solution. Question: What would Mac be if Microsoft didn't release Office for Mac?

IBM Failed because they sold their business units one by one to China and without the hardware sales, they couldn't push software and services; companies wanted a complete package. HP, Dell, Acer, they all did the same thing. Management sold the companies down the river.

MS has lost no ground on the enterprise front; part of that is closing technet and training people to use Azure cloud for labs, thus conditioning a new generation of no-nothing idiots as sales people while at the same time alienating long-term Microsoft zealots. Their development pace has picked up to such a speed that certs are now created, offered, and die before school curriculum can be put together and taught. Tech-net is effectively killing "hiring for the skill" for MS.

Building a walled garden has alienated the ecosystem they once relied upon; that ecosystem is now in full revolt. Mobile Entertainment killed using windows for Entertainment. Now companies are building purpose-built linux VM's to run their games. That trend will spread into enterprise applications, eventually.

John Thompson as Chairman?

[darylb]

Thoughts on all of this:
1. John Thompson (former Symantec CEO) as Chairman? Oh no. Symantec produced more steaming piles of crap called "software" than any company really has a right to. This wouldn't bode well.

2. People can say what they want about consumer devices, but enterprise software is worth LOTS of money. Having a guy like Nadella that understands a lot of the enterprise angle running things is a good idea. Yeah, you can sell people a phone (with a final cost of some $500), and a bunch of $1 and $2 applications, and some fraction of a $50 monthly cell bill. OR, you can sell them an OS for each computer in the place at a cost of $30-$50, an indispensable office suite for $150 per seat, client licenses for file servers, active directory, databases, web servers, and the like, PLUS the costly licenses for the server software, PLUS annual maintenance. It's easy to see where the cash is, and it's not in consumer devices.

3. 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. As for usability, Apple is on a downward slide, IMHO. We're getting nothing but gratuitous changes in every release now, and Mavericks positively ruined an otherwise serviceable 5-year-old MacBook by destroying its performance. Windows Phone 8 is really nice, especially in the way it emphasizes the productivity uses of the phone over games and glitz. It's a lot tighter resource-wise than Android for sure.

4. Microsoft spends like four times as much on R&D as Apple does. Apple's a rather minor player in this regard.

I think Microsoft could be positioned for a real resurgence with the right leadership.

Let's Hear It For More of the Same!

[organgtool]

For a little while, I was afraid that Microsoft would choose someone from outside of their own toxic corporate culture and regain at least a little bit of the dominance they once had. Now that it seems likely they will choose someone who has been drinking the Microsoft KoolAid for several decades, I am suddenly much less worried. Then again, these "leaks" could just be schemes from the board to get the press, business writers, and public at large to critique each candidate for them like one giant focus group.