Meet the New CEO of Microsoft : Indian-born Satya Nadella

Microsoft Corp has officially named its top cloud computing executive Satya Nadella as the third CEO. Satya was previously, Executive Vice President of Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise group.

After Steve Ballmer announced his intention to retire in August last year, a lot of buzz was being created all over the world about who will be the new CEO of Microsoft and will lead the company. The company started its work to find the perfect match and had planned not to name Steve Ballmer’s successor until 2014.

For getting its perfect match, Microsoft identified a number of candidates and in December last year it narrowed the list to four key people, i.e. Ford CEO Alan Mulally, former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, Microsoft cloud and enterprise boss Satya Nadella, and former Skype president Tony Bates.

The announcement didn’t come as much surprise, as from the past few days it was speculated that Satya might replace Steve Ballmer.

Meet our new CEO, Satya Nadella: http://t.co/u5IGl1N78G pic.twitter.com/E319oC4yQh

— Microsoft (@Microsoft) February 4, 2014

“During this time of transformation, there is no better person to lead Microsoft than Satya Nadella,” said Bill Gates, Microsoft’s Founder and Member of the Board of Directors. “Satya is a proven leader with hard-core engineering skills, business vision and the ability to bring people together. His vision for how technology will be used and experienced around the world is exactly what Microsoft needs as the company enters its next chapter of expanded product innovation and growth.”

Indian-born Nadella, 46 and has worked at Microsoft for 22 years. He had joined Microsoft in 1992, and ever since then he has spearheaded major strategy and technical shifts across the company’s portfolio of products and services, most notably the company’s move to the cloud and the development of one of the largest cloud infrastructures in the world supporting Bing, Xbox, Office and other services.

With this, Microsoft also announced that Bill Gates, will assume a new role on the Board as Founder and Technology Advisor, and will devote more time to the company, supporting Nadella in shaping technology and product direction. John Thompson, lead independent director for the Board of Directors, will assume the role of Chairman of the Board of Directors and remain an independent director on the Board.