Microsoft CEO Search May Be Nearing Conclusion

[Karloff]

Microsoft CEO Search May Be Nearing Conclusion

Satya Nadella is the man everyone's talking about, even the people who don't remember him.

Microsoft's CEO search may be drawing to a close, and Satya Nadella, current head of the cloud computing division, is the man everyone's talking about. Nadella's a twenty-year Microsoft man,and before joining the company in 1992 worked for Sun Microsystems as a technology staffer. He's the man behind all Microsoft's cloud services, from Skype and Bing to Xbox Live. He holds a a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Mangalore University, a master's degree in computer science from the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee and a master's degree in business administration from the University of Chicago.

He's also distinctly unmemorable, at least if you believe his former teacher. Manipal Institute of Technology director Vinod V Thomas, who taught Nadella many years ago at Mangalore, claimed not to have any clear memories of his former pupil. "I cannot vividly recall him as he didn't figure in either ends of the spectrum," said Thomas. "Records show he was a first-class student who achieved distinction."

That would fit with his current profile. He may be well known within Microsoft, but he's a cipher outside it. He's not what anyone would consider new blood. However gamers should take heart, as he's unlikely to want to Hopefully that's a good thing [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/129442-Microsoft-CEO-Struggle-Report-Elop-Would-Sell-Xbox].

Source: Guardian [http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jan/31/microsoft-ceo-ballmer-satya-nadella-gates]


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[Karloff]

Fun fact: when I google searched to see what he'd been up to, the first 10 pages or so were all 'this man may be MS' next CEO', followed by 8-10 more pages that basically said 'who the hell is this man?' I had to get to page 21 and beyond before I finally found anything that said 'this man has said [or done] X.' Imagine doing the same search on Peter Moore, or Yusuf Mehdi. OK, Mehdi's a marketing guy, you'd expect to see more of his face, but it's slightly odd to think that the next CEO of MS could be someone that nobody outside of MS and its investors knows anything about.

 

[Jumwa]

THE MAGIC OF THE CLOUD WILL SAVE MICROSOFT!

THE CLOUD, CEO of Microsoft.

Maybe if their CEO actually understands how cloud computing works they'll stop PRing about it as if it's some faerie dust.

 

[Mooboo Magoo]

Well hopefully this guy (or whoever becomes CEO) focuses on PCs like Microsoft should be doing. Leave consoles to Sony, Nintendo, and whoever you sell Xbox to, leave tablets to Apple, and for the love of christ leave search engines to Google.

They should be focusing on Office Suite because Microsoft Office is phenomenal. The business world built the Microsoft empire and it is there they should stay because it is there they are the best.

It would also do them well to focus some efforts on PC gaming, however. They currently have a massive install base of gamers because Windows is the only OS you can really game on. If Steam OS takes off, however, there isn't really any incentive to stay with Windows. Right now Microsoft is using DirectX as a sort of pseudo-carrot for OS upgrades. "Buy Windows Vista and get DirectX11! Buy Windows 7 and get DirectX 11.1! Buy Windows 8 and get DirectX....11.2! WOOOO!"

Hardly any games even use 11 as it is so it isn't even a very effective carrot. It is also kind of insulting to expect people to shell out hundreds of dollars for a new OS just to get an update you can do on the current technology anyway. If they want to keep that market they will need to seriously reconsider how they do business on that end.

Of course they could always just give up and hope Steam OS doesn't take off and focus 100% of their efforts on businesses.

Those are my two cents on what the next Microsoft CEO should do, anyway.

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

M$ here's a protip: Hire/promote a CEO that understands the current industry and its future while listening to your customers. I'm not saying he might not do a good job and does not had a good idea of how to turn M$ around, but promoting the guy from the cloud division worries me. Even if he knows how to properly utilize cloud computing, I'm can imagine other execs and investors forcing more him to emphasize the cloud in more of their products, since they have a "cloud expert CEO". Things like Office 365 being the sole license option or putting lots of basic Windows resources on servers instead of the install disc among other things will not sit well with the costumer base.

Who ever is chosen as the new CEO needs to fully acknowledge the Metro UI negatives, xbone's kinect bundle price disadvantage, the shrinking pc market thanks to tablets/Win8 hate/people not upgrading for shits and giggles anymore, XP's end of support despite running on many business machines(try giving them a win7/8 upgrade discount), and Steam OS taking decent chunk of their retail edition Windows sales away. They need to concentrate on at least a few of these points or M$ will have to downsize a bit(not enough to matter much to bigwigs, but many jobs will be lost) to fit in the evolving market.

 

[weirdee]

His background suggests that he is a cyborg created by Microsoft to lead them into the future, and that they falsified his records in order to give him plausible credentials to conceal that information, which is why nobody actually knows about him outside of Microsoft.

But that's just my crazy acting up again.

 

[Strazdas]

so im not the only one who went "wait, who is this guy". This is good considering its microsoft. a person who hasnt said anything bad at MS is already a step ahead those that did, so yeah, id like to see him as CEO. He also looks quite young which is a welcome change, and worked for a long time with hardware, including SUN, so should know how to run things on that perspective (rather, how not to do mistakes previuos CEO did).

overall, i think this is something positive about MS, and thats a great thing.