Microsoft reportedly ready to name new CEO, may replace Bill Gates as chairman
After months of searching, Microsoft is reportedly on the verge of naming Satya Nadella as CEO, while the company's board mulls replacing Bill Gates as chairman.
Citing people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reports the seat left vacant by former CEO ">Steve Ballmer will be filled from within by Nadella, the Redmond, Wash., tech giant's head of enterprise and cloud operations.
While plans are not finished, Nadella was revealed as a candidate at the end of 2013 and sources claim he is one of the stronger picks to come out of Redmond's stable.
If Nadella is named CEO, it will end a months-long search headed by lead independent director John Thompson. A number of high-profile candidates were passed over for the role, including Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop and Ford CEO Alan Mulally. Considered one of the top outside picks, Mulally ultimately removed himself from the running.
In addition to the CEO nomination, Microsoft's board is also considering a replacement for co-founder Gates, who is currently acting as company chairman. Details are scarce, but the publication mentions independent director John Thompson as a possible candidate for the role.
Gates may not be completely locked out Microsoft, and he could remain active in the company as long as the board and as-yet-unannounced CEO deem it appropriate, sources said.
Citing people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reports the seat left vacant by former CEO ">Steve Ballmer will be filled from within by Nadella, the Redmond, Wash., tech giant's head of enterprise and cloud operations.
While plans are not finished, Nadella was revealed as a candidate at the end of 2013 and sources claim he is one of the stronger picks to come out of Redmond's stable.
If Nadella is named CEO, it will end a months-long search headed by lead independent director John Thompson. A number of high-profile candidates were passed over for the role, including Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop and Ford CEO Alan Mulally. Considered one of the top outside picks, Mulally ultimately removed himself from the running.
In addition to the CEO nomination, Microsoft's board is also considering a replacement for co-founder Gates, who is currently acting as company chairman. Details are scarce, but the publication mentions independent director John Thompson as a possible candidate for the role.
Gates may not be completely locked out Microsoft, and he could remain active in the company as long as the board and as-yet-unannounced CEO deem it appropriate, sources said.
Comments
Microsoft is in a terrible position right now. They are making decent profit on business tools/services, but consumers are going elsewhere.
I think we are at the peak of microsoft, and the decline is about to hit hard in the coming 10 years. It does not matter who leads msft, it´s monopoly is falling apart without them being able to control or stop it. It´s done.
I know. Isn’t it great?!
This would make Microsoft fanboys happy as they wanted an engineer at the top and Nadella is an engineer. Cloud is huge right now and is a Microsoft business that is doing well so it sounds like a good pick.
But does any of that really matter in the end? MS makes money licensing Windows and Office. That's it. They've tried many, many different ways of changing their model, but it will never change. If legacy enterprise users keep paying for Windows and Office, they will be fine. If, some day, that stops happening, they will be dead.
That's pretty much it. You could choose a random person off the street to run the company, and things would be no different.
So exciting!
Which one will it be?
It's got to be tough - to be a company stuck holding up a big portion of the enterprise IT market, unable to change even if they wanted to. MS can't change how they do things because they have created this monster that is enterprise IT - those people working directly in EIT and the multitude of businesses built specifically around servicing this market will not change. There is too much at stake for all the stakeholders in EIT.
It's why IT departments fought the use of employee iPhones and computers - but begrudgingly are beginning to succumb because the finance people see the immediate benefit. This whole chain of people want systems to be over-complicated, full of bugs, unintuitive - because they make their living "fixing" things.
Even MS having to hold onto legacy systems is painful to think about. Consumers and businesses alike need to move on from the 10 year old systems and software they're using. There just isn't a good excuse for not upgrading computers, systems, apps. Sure, there may be a couple of titles of software where the sw company itself hasn't upgraded, but they should be punished for not doing so. Keeping customers working on software and/or hardware that is 5 or 10 years old is inexcusable.
As much as I would like for them to fail, I don't think this will happen anytime soon. Or later. They have an astounding way of doing business, selling software updates that don't do much, but corporate needs to upgrade their software nonetheless.
Consumers weren't much of a good stream of income anyway. Their Windows/Exchange/CAL business is. But I agree with the wish for their failure in the future, just like TS: they've waisted too much of people's time with their mediocre software and time waisted in trying to get the bloody thing to work again.
OT: I think this guy might be a good pick: their Enterprise business is doing great (revenue wise) and Cloud is something that's here to stay. So if he has experience in both of them he could prove to be a good choice. But I know nothing about him, if he turns out to not be the man for the job and MS won't ever fid the the right person, in what kind of config would we be in? A world without Windows/Exchange? Where everyone will be on their own tablet/smartphone, using industry standards for communication and document format protocols? Would such a world be a possibility?
So exciting!
Which one will it be?
Tough call. Swedish Chef is tough to pass over but I think Beaker would just rock the house.
Microsoft seems to be doing really well with their cloud and server offerings. They had a great quarter even though Windows didn't do that well.
See, I disagree that "Windows didn't do that well." MS has never been about the consumer business. Even with crashing PC sales, they still are selling licenses for both Windows and Office on a gazillion machines. All of the rest of this stuff is pretty irrelevant, when it all comes down to it.
I don't see MS reinventing itself.
It's built on subpar products and rode a wave for a long time...too long.
Best.
I miss Balmer. I never laughed so hard as when he was doing his Balmer thing.
Truthiness.
Thank you for this informative bit of news, Microsoftinsider. Oh wait...
I don't know much about Nadella, but from what I've heard he's a good choice.
Microsoft can't do anything right, I don't see how this guy is going to change anything. Consumers have moved on to the post-PC era while Microsoft is still peddling a PC interface.
They still dominate the business world and will continue to dominate the business world, whether you believe it or not. So they are doing something right with their "peddling a PC interface". Many people still prefer using PCs, whether you believe it or not.
They still dominate the business world and will continue to dominate the business world, whether you believe it or not. So they are doing something right with their "peddling a PC interface". Many people still prefer using PCs, whether you believe it or not.
They said the exact same thing about mainframes... Look at IBM from 1960-1990, and look at IBM today. That's the trajectory Dell and HP want to take and that may be what ends up happening to Microsoft. The big factor was that IBM was vertically integrated... software (OS and application), hardware (chips, hard drives, tape and computers), and support. Microsoft isn't in that position.