Here’s my top 7 list you should know about the incoming Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella.
1. He’s been with Microsoft a long time Nadella is as insider as Microsoft insiders get, which may disappoint pundits hoping for an outsider CEO capable of breathing fresh life into Microsoft’s complex business.
The India-born Nadella is an electronics engineer who also holds a degree in business administration. He started his career at Sun Microsystems before joining Microsoft all the way back in 1992. Since then, he’s held several executive-level roles, including management of Microsoft’s Server and Tools division, which generated double-digit billions in revenue, and most recently the company’s Cloud and Enterprise group. But not all of his work has focused solely on business: Nadella is credited with transforming Windows Live Search into Bing, which now provides the informational backbone to a wide range of Microsoft services.
2.People at Microsoft like him.
Though he may not be particularly well-known outside the company, multiple reports note that he is well-liked and well-respected within Microsoft and within the industry at large.
3.His vision for the future of tech: better UI, better backends
During an interview last year at the Le Web conference, Nadella offered some thoughts on tech trends he expects to see over the next decade.
“My feeling is if you look at the broad stroke of technology shifts, it seems like at least on the device side or on the client side, it’s the changes in UI, or input and output, it’s touch or ink or voice or gesture, that’s going to be the next big revolution,” he said at the time. “Then on the backend, I’ve always noticed that it’s all about the factor of production, an improvement of utilization… What happened with virtualization was that you could get more done with less. What’s happening with cloud is you can get more done with less.”
When pressed about whether Microsoft could get out of its own way to grab the future, he added the following: “We wouldn’t be here 30 years since our founding if we were not able to ride the new waves of technology, some more successfully than others. There’s no question of that. The fact that we have the capability that allows us to go and hunt for the new concept is the key for this business and longevity.”
4.He is a family man and bibliophile
“I am 46. I’ve been married for 22 years and we have 3 kids. And like anyone else, a lot of what I do and how I think has been shaped by my family and my overall life experiences.
“Many who know me say I am also defined by my curiosity and thirst for learning. I buy more books than I can finish. I sign up for more online courses than I can complete. I fundamentally believe that if you are not learning new things, you stop doing great and useful things. So family, curiosity and hunger for knowledge all define me.”
5.He’s an engineer.
Unlike Steve Ballmer, who was an assistant product manager at Procter & Gamble before joining Microsoft in 1980, Nadella started out as a technologist. He holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Manipal University and a master’s in computer science from the University of Wisconsin.
6.But also a business type.
In addition to his technology-oriented degrees, he has a master’s in business administration from the University of Chicago.
7.He’s currently responsible for a huge, largely invisible part of Microsoft’s business.
Among the products Nadella heads up: Windows Azure, Windows Server, SQL Server, System Center and the software-development tools which are Microsoft’s original business, dating all the way back to 1975. Consumers have no reason to pay attention to these areas, but they’re thriving — a big reason why Microsoft just posted robust quarterly results despite the PC industry’s struggles and Windows Phone’s failure, so far, to make much of a dent in Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS.
He does have some consumer background. Though Nadella’s career has skewed towards the business-y side of Microsoft, he’s also worked on some offerings used by folks in their personal lives, such as the Bing search engine.
First interview as Microsoft CEO
source: pcworld, techland, crn, mashable
