Who will head Microsoft after Ballmer? India's Satya Nadella a possibility - Times of India

NEW DELHI: Microsoft has announced that Steve Ballmer will retire within 12 months and the company is already looking for his replacement. There are a number of possible candidates who can replace Ballmer. One of them is Satya Nadella, a long-time Microsoft executive who currently looks after cloud and enterprise division within the company.

For a company that is putting in lot more resources into cloud-based offerings in a bid to catch up with Google, India-born Nadella seems to be a strong contender for the CEO post.

On the biography page of Nadella, Microsoft says, "The Cloud OS platform not only powers all of Microsoft's Internet scale cloud services (including O365, Bing, SkyDrive, Xbox Live, Skype and Dynamics) but also fuels global enterprises around the world to meet their most challenging and mission-critical computing needs."

As a man looking after the company's cloud offerings, Nadella may turn out to be the strongest internal candidate for Ballmer's job. It also helps that he has experience with dealing in enterprise services and business clients, which make most of the money for Microsoft. The software giant needs a CEO that doesn't rock the enterprise boat by focussing too much on consumer products, where Microsoft is struggling.

Before joining Microsoft in 1992, Nadella was at Sun Microsystems. A native of Hyderabad, Nadella has a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Mangalore University, a master's degree in computer science from the University of Wisconsin and a master's degree in business administration from the University of Chicago.

Mary Jo Foley, a long-time Microsoft watcher for ZDnet, recently wrote "Nadella definitely has cross-unit knowledge" to become a CEO.

Other internal candidates who could be picked as CEO are executive vice president of marketing Tami Reller, COO Kevin Turner and executive vice president Tony Bates.

Microsoft had announced that it is looking at both internal and external candidates to replace Ballmer. Stephen Elop, an ex-Microsoft executive who now heads Nokia, and Sanjay Jha, who earlier headed Motorola, are also considered strong contenders.

Long-time Microsoft watchers believe finding a replacement for Ballmer will not be easy. Peter Bright, who writes on Microsoft for ArsTechnica, wrote that Microsoft needs a CEO who probably doesn't exist.

"Steve Ballmer's replacement needs to bridge both the consumer and the corporate worlds. That person needs to have the influence and persuasiveness to redirect and focus the company's efforts when necessary, as Bill Gates did in the 1990s amid the rise of the world wide web and the Internet. He or she also needs to have the vision to devise compelling, market-defining products that resonate with consumers, as Steve Jobs did at Apple, but without Jobs' hostility to the enterprise. Rather than Ballmer's overwhelming confidence in the company's products, Ballmer's replacement needs the same critical eye that Bill Gates demonstrated," he wrote.

What goes against Nadella is that he doesn't seem to have the sort of technology vision that Microsoft needs right now to match the likes of Apple and Google in the consumer space. Technology world is full of start CEOs and even though Ballmer was not Bill Gates, he had enough of pull to give Microsoft a personality.

Microsoft's competitors have some big names as CEO. Apple has Tim Cook, who may not be an innovator like Steve Jobs but has a unique style of leadership and is authoritative. Google has Larry Page, who is considered an excellent manager as well as a visionary. Yahoo Has Marissa Mayer. Amazon has Jeff Bezos. And Oracle has Larry Ellison. All of these are star CEOs.

Microsoft would want a CEO that could match the leadership that other companies have. But finding such a CEO may not be easy.