The much-publicized executive job in the tech industry for the past few days is the Chief of Microsoft. Since when
Steve Ballmer announced his retirement next year, the industry is all vibe in guessing who might grab the role of leading one of the biggest tech companies.
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| Steve Ballmer |
There has been few extended discussions and debates on who would be the "next-CEO" of Microsoft. A betting company in UK, Ladbrokes has also started a betting on the topic with a list of
25 potential candidates. Here I am going to pursue a similar discussion. These would be my views on few of the industry's big guns. I would also discuss few potential candidates for the role but why I think they might not fit the shoes.
Satya Nadella: Satya Nadella (Executive Vice President of Microsoft) is a MSFT veteran of more than 20 years and has turned around the cloud division of Microsoft. Though Mr. Nadella is a potential CEO candidate its hard to understand if Nadella has knowledge about the entire technology stack that Microsoft is dealing with.
Kevin Turner: Kevin Turner might not have been with Microsoft for long but as a COO he might have deep knowledge in things that are happening within Microsoft. Turner has an impressive track record of executing excellence and improving efficiency and driving customer satisfaction in his role at Microsoft. But Turner doesn't have a technical degree which might be considered as one downside in choosing him for the role of CEO.
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Kevin Turner (left); Satya Nadella (right)
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Tony Bates: Tony Bates is a string viable candidate for the role of Microsoft chief. He joined Microsoft because of the $8.5 billion skype acquisition. But soon Bates was promoted as executive vice president of Microsoft’s Business Development and Evangelism group. This role would have given Tony a good handle on most of the Microsoft partners, customers, developer community, etc. This is an important asset which he can bring to the table as a CEO of Microsoft.
These 3 are my top list of candidates from within Microsoft.
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| Tony Bates |
There have been talks in the media that a Googler might be hired for the Microsoft chief role, the likes of
Vic Gundotra is top on the list
. Vic is an Ex-Microsoft general manager, but has been a Googler since 2007. Mr. Gundotra is currently responsible for the social division at Google. Though Vic has excelled as a great technologist within Google, his focus has been primarily with Software and Social networking which might be enough to handle the CEO role at Microsoft which has various other divisions which requires a turn around. Though Vic has tried to revolutionize the ecosystem of the Google social division, it might be hard for him to set strategic goals and achieve them at Microsoft which includes a huge array of technology stack.
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| Vic Gundotra |
The other top candidates for the role would be
Julie Larson-Green, head of Windows,
Tami Reller, head marketing at Microsoft. Microsoft had recently restructured the executive team after the exit of
Steven Sinofsky from Microsoft. So, it will be hard for one of these people to again get promoted to a different and more challenging role. Though if such a decision happens, Microsoft will be force to restructure different organizations again, which in my opinion might end up in chaos.
Microsoft is a tech mogul which is a big player in a variety of domains. So, it will become extremely hard for an outsider to get into the mood and start being productive right away. I am guessing, Microsoft will go for someone like Tony Bates from within Microsoft as a new boss. Nevertheless, I wont be surprised if the board appoints an interim CEO for sometime to search for a more ideal candidate. Anyways, the wait is going to be less than a year when Steve Ballmer bids adieu and Microsoft has a new CEO.
