New Delhi: The world's largest software company, Microsoft Corp is reportedly making Satya Nadella, the company’s India-born enterprise and cloud chief, its chief executive officer in place of retiring Steve Ballmer. In a large-scale shuffle expected to follow soon, the company's board is also discussing replacing Bill Gates as chairman. One person named for this top slot is Microsoft director John Thompson. Gates would remain a director. Microsoft's board is scheduled to meet in a couple of days to approve the name of Nadella (47), currently the executive vice-president of Microsoft’s cloud and enterprise group.
Nadella is an expert in the software giant's software business for server systems and the cloud computing services.
He will need to match the technological innovations of Google and Apple to retain his leadership. His challenges also include raising the acceptability of the touch screen Window 8 and dealing with tens of thousands of staff of the newly acquired Nokia.
It is widely believed that his affability and humility combined with a rich technical background contributed to his meteoric rise and will be an asset to the computer giant in tackling its human resources realations often marred by personality wars.
Nadella has acknowledged in the past his indebtedness to Ballmer and Gates for giving the opportunity to learn handson new technology and management skills when he joined Microsoft in 1992 from Sun Microsystems. His climb was quick in the corporate ladder, taking the leadership in the Office and Bing search-engine teams. His breakthrough in cloud service called Azure runs computing operations for other companies also.
Born in Hyderabad, India, he studied electronics and communication engineering at Manipal Institute of
Technology, India, and took a master's degree in computer science from the University of Wisconsin. He also
has a master's degree in business administration from the University of Chicago.
Satya Nadella is married with three children. The family resides in Washington state.
