14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft continues the search for a new CEO, but people familiar with the matter suggest that the selection process is almost over and cloud boss Satya Nadella should be crowned Microsoft CEO anytime soon.
In an interview with GigaOM, Satya Nadella talked about the challenges of becoming the next Microsoft CEO and although he didn’t mention specifically that he would be the one to replace Steve Ballmer at the helm of the company, he did hint at some of the changes he might make in the near future.
“I’d say our current challenge and our current opportunities are the following. You look at, let’s divide it into two parts, on the enterprise side I actually think we’re playing offense. We have a big business, the business I’m associated with closely is 20 plus billion dollars but guess what, there’s two trillion dollars that play in this move to the cloud, so we’re playing offense all the time,” Nadella explained.
“In fact, all of today’s announcements are all about, ‘Hey, the data center of the future, device management of the future, date management, big data, and so on,’ so I feel like we have only things to gain and we’re already in there. So it’s not as if you’re talking about the future that’s some time in the distant future but it’s today.”
Satya Nadella could also focus a little bit more than his predecessor on the consumer side of the business, including on the Windows operating system that’s set to receive an update in the coming months.
“Then on the consumer side, you could say we have devices today and we have a new operating system that we launched, that’s a pretty radical set of bets,” Nadella continued.
Of course, he also pointed out that touchscreen would remain a key focus, while the transition to devices and services would continue under his supervision.
“New silicon, new UI, new app model, and the fact that we had had tremendous success with the desktop, people look at that and say, ‘Hey, instantly why is this not at the same scale?’ But we’re not confused that it’s touch first and big screens are all important and we’re coming at it and you’ll see us to continue to innovate on our devices front. So the challenge really, and the opportunity is the devices and services and making progress on it.”