India born IT executive Satya Nadella is likely to replace Steve Ballmer as Microsoft CEO, Bloomberg reports.
Microsoft has zeroed in on Satya Nadella an Indian who was born in Hyderabad and who completed his engineering from Manipal University before heading to the US for higher studies, because high profile CEOs of Qualcomm, Ericsson, GM, etc. rejected the offer earlier.
The Bloomberg report says the board was discussing replacing Bill Gates as chairman.
According to the report, insider Satya Nadella, who is currently leading Microsoft enterprise effort, is the likeliest internal candidate to prevail. That’s due to a number of reasons, including his familiarity with the company, where he has spent much of his career, as well as a strong technical background and a varied work history at Microsoft.
“The two other insiders – strategy head Tony Bates and Nokia leader and former Microsoft exec Stephen Elop – seem further behind.
Currently, Nadella is the president of server & tools business at Microsoft. Before that he was senior vice-president of R&D for the online services division and vice-president of the Microsoft business division. He has been with Microsoft for nearly 23 years and is considered a person who is familiar with the internal culture within the company.
