Microsoft Appoints New CEO And Bill Gates Steps Down As Chairman

Since Steve Ballmer stepped down as CEO of Microsoft in August 2013, the Redmond company has since been searching for a suitable replacement. It looks like today, however, that search is now over.
Microsoft has announced that it now has a new CEO and his name is Satya Nadella. Nadella was previously the Executive Vice President of Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise group and doesn’t come as a surprise. There had been weeks of speculation that hewas one of the front runners for the job.

Nadella joined the company back in 1992, and the now 47-year-old executive was responsible for building and running Microsoft’s computing platforms, developer tools and cloud services supporting Bing, Xbox, Office and other services.

Microsoft is one of those rare companies to have truly revolutionized the world through technology, and I couldn’t be more honored to have been chosen to lead the company,” Nadella said in a statement this morning. “The opportunity ahead for Microsoft is vast, but to seize it, we must focus clearly, move faster and continue to transform. A big part of my job is to accelerate our ability to bring innovative products to our customers more quickly.”

In addition to the CEO news, Microsoft also announced that its founder Bill Gates will step down as chairman of the board and take on a new Technology Advisor role to “devote more time to the company.” John Thompson, who led the new CEO search, will take Gates previous position on the board.
You can take a look at Bill Gates welcome message to Nadella as Microsoft CEO below:

The entire press release from Microsoft can be found here.