After months of speculation, Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) has finally named Steve Ballmer’s successor. The company decided to keep in the family when it named Satya Nadella today. The 46-year-old Nadella will take over, well, about 15 minutes ago as Ballmer will be allowed to retire immediately.
Nadella joined Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) 22 years ago and most recently served as the VP of its Cloud and Enterprise business. Despite suggestions since August that Microsoft was looking for someone outside the Redmond, WA company, that turned out to be mere speculation.
Satya Nadella to finish Microsoft’s restructuring, Nokia deal
While Microsoft had hoped to announce the decision before the end of 2013, the immediate nature of the succession will see Nadella at the helm to both finish Microsoft’s restructuring as well as the completion of the Nokia Corporation (NYSE:NOK) (BIT:NOK1V) (HEL:NOK1V) purchase.
Nadella, who was born in India before moving to Madison, WI to study computer science at the University of Wisconsin, once worked at Microsoft rival Sun Microsystems. Following a short stay with Sun he moved to Washington to work for Gates and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT).
Nadella has worked on Microsoft Office and was involved in the creation of Microsoft’s search engine Bing. But his biggest contribution to the company was the transformation of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)’s cloud computing business as well as its Servers and Tools Division.
While Nadella has little experience as an executive, much less a chief executive, he has an awesome understanding of the computing and engineering that drives Microsoft’s products. In a way, that is closely reminiscent of Microsoft’s first and most successful CEO, Bill Gates.
While perhaps not a household name, he is clearly an in-house name that is trusted to drive Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)’s future.
