Imagine, the boy next door heading Microsoft!
Imagine, the boy next door heading Microsoft. Microsoft is expected to announce its new CEO, only the third in the company's 38-year history after co-founder Bill Gates and current chief Steve Ballmer, this week.
Why Satya Nadella, outruns better-known candidates?
Microsoft is expected to announce its new CEO, only the third in the company's 38-year history after co-founder Bill Gates and current chief Steve Ballmer, this week. The emergence of city-based Satya Nadella for the top job at the world's leading technology company, appears unprecedented and reflects the growing number of India-born executives climbing corporate ladders globally. And as the news goes around, the city is already in jubilation.
There have been several potential successors named over the last few months. The search party's shortlist, made up by Microsoft board members, is said to include former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, Ford boss Alan Mulally, Skype leader Tony Bates, and Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf, and according to a report, another India-born contender Sundar Pichai, executive for Google Chrome and Apps, is also in the mid-way of the ladder.
Talking about, Satya Nadella, he has led the enterprise software and Cloud computing businesses at Microsoft, among the strongest and fastest-growing parts of the company. He joined Microsoft in 1992 from Sun Microsystems, and he has a deeper engineering background than many of the other internal candidates who have been considered.
Nadella held the position of senior vice president of R&D for the Online Services Division and vice president of the Business Division at Microsoft. There he worked to grow Bing into the search engine it is now. While Bing hasn't overtaken Google, Nadella helped it get off the ground considerably, forming key partnerships with brands, Yahoo, advertisers, and others.
His contribution to Cloud is noteworthy; Cloud Services grew to $20.3 billion in June 2013 from $16.6 billion when he took over in 2011.
In an international conference, Nadella was asked, what it was like to work at Microsoft while being a possible CEO candidate. He said, ““For me, it’s a great time to be at Microsoft for what we’re doing. And day to day, it is about getting focused on what I’m doing and I’m excited to be doing that," responded Nadella, who, in a seperate interview with Bloomberg, also said he would stay at Microsoft no matter what happened with the CEO search.
Is Nadella the right man?
Nadella will have a big task under his hands putting Microsoft back at full pace. He'll have the Nokia handset unit to grow and make Windows Phone a serious contender, continue growing the Xbox unit's place in the living room, keep refining Windows 8 and Windows 9 to make attractive to customers, and grow the Cloud services and enterprise business. According to a report in New York Times, ‘One reason Nadella, emerged as the board’s choice is the sheer vastness of Microsoft. The company has about 100,000 employees and will add another 32,000 through its acquisition of Nokia’s mobile phone business.’
Many advocates for change at Microsoft say the company’s leader needs stronger technical expertise than Ballmer, who has a sales background. Nadella, however, does not have a track record in consumer businesses, which are becoming a bigger part of the company’s focus through its Xbox game console and Surface tablets and the Nokia mobile unit. Rick Devine, chief executive of TalentSky, a firm that has recruited executives for Microsoft in the past, said he believed Microsoft already had the right strategy in place to improve its position in mobile and other markets. Devine, who recruited Timothy D Cook, Apple’s chief executive, to come to the company in the late 1990s, said Nadella was the most stable candidate for the board to pick.
“Satya is the stay-the-course guy,” Devine said. While, it must be understood that Microsoft does not have a great track record of embracing outsiders brought into executive jobs, “Microsoft chews up and spits out new hires in senior roles,” said Charles Fitzgerald, a former strategist at Microsoft. He added about Nadella, “He knows where the bodies are buried.” But there remains some concern that Nadella will be too beholden to Microsoft’s past, including Gates and Ballmer, the two previous chief executives. “We do not want to see a continuation of the existing direction for the business,” Rick Sherlund, an analyst with Nomura Securities, wrote in a research report on Friday. “So it will be important that Nadella be free to make changes.”
Who will be onboard if Satya reaches top?
If Nadella is appointed CEO, chief financial officer Amy Hood is likely to play a much larger role at the company. "We believe the combination of Nadella and Hood could be a recipe for successfully managing Microsoft's transition to a 'devices & services' company and, ultimately, driving better shareholder value," said Barclay Capital's Raimo Lenschow in a report in Pocket-lint.
"We think new CFO Amy Hood is very operationally focused, very bright and capable of managing costs and taking steps along with Nadella to both fix the business and enhance shareholder value," Nomura analyst and long time Microsoft watcher Rick Sherlund said.
Like father... like son
Nadella was born in Hyderabad in 1967 and went to the Hyderabad Public School. He pursued his Bachelors in Engineering from Manipal in Karnataka and later went to the US for postgraduate studies, a trajectory many engineering students from the state — the Telugu techies — follow.
Officials at the Microsoft’s swanky campus in Cyberabad (the city’s outskirts where IT firms are concentrated) refused to comment. A regular visitor to his city, Nadella has interacted with several executives. A senior manager, on condition of anonymity, agreed there was excitement on the campus; people were awaiting the Microsoft announcement.
“What can I say? He’s a great leader and a great colleague to work with. And yes, he’s a very nice person,” she beamed.
However, Nadella’s father B N Yugandhar, a retired IAS officer who now lives in the city is not entertaining requests for interviews. He said it was too early to comment. “Let the announcement come,” he insists. Yugandhar has been the Secretary to P V Narasimha Rao, Prime Minister of India from May 1995 - April 1997. Before that he was the Secretary of Ministry of Rural Areas and Employment. He has also remained as the director of Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration and Secretary to Government of Andhra Pradesh, Planning and Department of Industries and Commerce.
Coming back to the city, in selecting 46-year-old Nadella as Microsoft’s CEO, the US based company would be giving recognition to Hyderabad for the second time. It was the setting up of Microsoft’s first development centre outside the United States here in 1998 that began the transformation of the city of pearls into ‘Cyberabad’.
Satya Nadella or Sundar Pichai
But Nadella is not the only guy who is running to the top, a report has emerged saying, Google's Andorid head Sundar Pichai is also in the run for the CEO job at Microsoft.
Chennai-born Sundar Pichai, the 42-year-old head executive for Google Chrome and Apps, is the "top choice" for the position of Microsoft CEO and negotiations with him are on in full swing, reported SiliconANGLE, a media website.
"Many industry insiders like Satya Nadella for CEO because of his enterprise and Cloud background. However, Sundar Pichai is the leading external candidate and is in discussions with the hiring committee," John Furrier, founder of the blog SiliconAngle.com, said in a blog post.
Indian-origin Sundar Pichai, an IIT-Kharagpur alumnus, caught media attention in India when he was named as the new head of Google's Android division, making him one of the most powerful executives at the Internet giant, last year.
Sundar Pichai is currently the senior Vice- President of Android, Chrome and Apps at Google.
Pichai's success with the Chrome browser during the past four years has helped Google generate more revenue. He has a Bachelor's degree in Technology from IIT-Kharagpur, holds a Master's degree from Stanford University and an MBA from Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
"Microsoft could really move the ball down the field with Sundar Pichai in creating a new open operating system model for Cloud, mobile and social," Dave Vellante, chief analyst at Wikibon, was quoted as saying in the report.
The appointment of 46-year-old Nadella or Pichai would be a significant achievement for both, as they would join a circle of India-origin executives leading top global firms. While, we would prefer Nadella for he is more than just Indian origin.
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