PCWorld Mar-14

IT’S OFFICIAL: SATYA NADELLA is the new CEO of Microsoft, and Bill Gates will become his technology mentor. Nadella has worked at Microsoft since 1992 in a variety of roles, including as leader of the team that transformed Windows Live Search into Bing. Before assuming the CEO role, Nadella was the executive vice president of Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise group. That the new leader of Microsoft comes from a cloud-focused role seems appropriate, as Steve Ballmer—the man Nadella is replacing—made a concerted effort to push Microsoft away from being a creator of stand-alone software and toward becoming a devices-and-services company. This move was highlighted by the rise of cloud-friendly endeavors like Office 365 and Windows Azure. Both became billion-dollar businesses for Microsoft in 2013. Watch the video at go.pcworld.com/nadelvid Ballmer’s retirement marks the end…

AT LONG LAST, after an exhaustive search, a flood of whispered rumors, and more than a little journalistic hand-wringing, Microsoft has found its new CEO: Satya Nadella. Unless you’re a die-hard Microsoft observer, however, the name probably doesn’t ring a bell. So who is the man who now becomes Microsoft’s guiding light for the foreseeable future? Here are the ten most important things you need to know about 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 back in 1992. Since then,…

NEW MICROSOFT CHIEF executive Satya Nadella has promised a “mobile first, cloud first” strategy that will carry over the “devices and services” strategy of outgoing chief executive Steve Ballmer. Nadella, in a question-and-answer session with Susan Hauser, the head of Microsoft’s enterprise sales team, laid out his priorities while talking rather conservatively about how he plans to move Microsoft’s business forward. As many observers suspected, Nadella’s vision appears to be an extension of Ballmer’s, but with Nadella’s own strengths in data and services guiding Microsoft ahead. “We have sort of talked about how our strategy going forward is about devices and services,” Nadella told Hauser and the Webcast audience. “This business of ours is exciting, because we don’t really respect tradition and what we’ve done in the past; it’s really about innovation, and…

WHEN MICROSOFT ANNOUNCED that Satya Nadella, a longtime employee, would follow in the footsteps of Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates as CEO—the third one in the company’s history—Nadella sent an email to the troops to introduce himself in more detail and to explain his plans for the future direction of Microsoft. Here is a copy of that email. Today is a very humbling day for me. It reminds me of my very first day at Microsoft, 22 years ago. Like you, I had a choice about where to come to work. I came here because I believed Microsoft was the best company in the world. I saw then how clearly we empower people to do magical things with our creations and ultimately make the world a be.er place. I knew there…

ONE THING WE already know about Microsoft’s new chief executive, Satya Nadella: He doesn’t do Twitter. At least, not really. The last post on his Twitter account was in 2010. But Twitter sure does him, as everyone from partners to pundits opined about what Nadella would mean for Microsoft. The tech world turned to Twitter to weigh in. Nadella won an immediate endorsement from Jack Welch, the former head of GE, who clearly favored promoting from within. But others weren’t so sure. The tech industry has had its share of revolving-door CEOs.…

Watch the video at go.pcworld.com/fbat10. ON FEBRUARY 4, 2004, Harvard University student Mark Zuckerberg launched TheFacebook.com, a way for college students to seek each other out for friendship, or, you know, whatever. Its design was as basic as its purpose—no News Feed, no Timeline, no photos save for your profile pic, and no status updates. There wasn’t even a Like button until 2009. Facebook wasn’t about sharing content back then. How times have changed. Facebook has a much more sophisticated look on its tenth birthday, not to mention a grander mission: to connect the world to the Internet. Zuckerberg was 19 when he created The Facebook, and he and his company have matured together. How Facebook succeeded in spite of itself The road from rudimentary online directory to billion-dollar ad network has been bumpy. Facebook…