Friday, August 23rd 2013
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to Retire Within 12 Months
Microsoft Corp. today announced that Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer has decided to retire as CEO within the next 12 months, upon the completion of a process to choose his successor. In the meantime, Ballmer will continue as CEO and will lead Microsoft through the next steps of its transformation to a devices and services company that empowers people for the activities they value most.
"There is never a perfect time for this type of transition, but now is the right time," Ballmer said. "We have embarked on a new strategy with a new organization and we have an amazing Senior Leadership Team. My original thoughts on timing would have had my retirement happen in the middle of our company's transformation to a devices and services company. We need a CEO who will be here longer term for this new direction."
The Board of Directors has appointed a special committee to direct the process. This committee is chaired by John Thompson, the board's lead independent director, and includes Chairman of the Board Bill Gates, Chairman of the Audit Committee Chuck Noski and Chairman of the Compensation Committee Steve Luczo. The special committee is working with Heidrick & Struggles International Inc., a leading executive recruiting firm, and will consider both external and internal candidates.
"The board is committed to the effective transformation of Microsoft to a successful devices and services company," Thompson said. "As this work continues, we are focused on selecting a new CEO to work with the company's senior leadership team to chart the company's course and execute on it in a highly competitive industry."
"As a member of the succession planning committee, I'll work closely with the other members of the board to identify a great new CEO," said Gates. "We're fortunate to have Steve in his role until the new CEO assumes these duties."
"There is never a perfect time for this type of transition, but now is the right time," Ballmer said. "We have embarked on a new strategy with a new organization and we have an amazing Senior Leadership Team. My original thoughts on timing would have had my retirement happen in the middle of our company's transformation to a devices and services company. We need a CEO who will be here longer term for this new direction."
The Board of Directors has appointed a special committee to direct the process. This committee is chaired by John Thompson, the board's lead independent director, and includes Chairman of the Board Bill Gates, Chairman of the Audit Committee Chuck Noski and Chairman of the Compensation Committee Steve Luczo. The special committee is working with Heidrick & Struggles International Inc., a leading executive recruiting firm, and will consider both external and internal candidates.
"The board is committed to the effective transformation of Microsoft to a successful devices and services company," Thompson said. "As this work continues, we are focused on selecting a new CEO to work with the company's senior leadership team to chart the company's course and execute on it in a highly competitive industry."
"As a member of the succession planning committee, I'll work closely with the other members of the board to identify a great new CEO," said Gates. "We're fortunate to have Steve in his role until the new CEO assumes these duties."
74 Comments on Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to Retire Within 12 Months
I was quite happy when Sinofsky was let go. That man was a poison who needed to be ejected from Microsoft.
You all need to chill. Steve Ballmer was a great CEO for Microsoft. He oversaw the launch of most of Microsoft's key products and technologies.
Its hard to progress/improve and still please the traditionalists but with 90% market share, windows for desktop didn't need a UI overhaul. An OS with a "desktop mode" and "modern/touch mode" would have been a better idea.
The problem with WHS, and why I can see why they are cancelling it, is it doesn't appeal to most people and a large majority of the functionality is already built into standard versions of Windows. 99% of home users can easily just use a Windows 7 Pro computer as their home server.
I personally am not cheering his decision. He wasn't the most charismatic person unlike Bill Gates, sure, but he wasn't all that bad. After all he was with Microsoft almost from the very beginning and he was running several other successful divisions in the MS past... And he was leading MS for 13 years so that's not exactly a short time even though he could run it for longer. It's his decision.
Obviously, Ballmer didn't design anything but a decision about a major design change would have to be signed off from the top. It was a major design change away from the ubiquitous windows desktop that has dominated the world for 20+ years.
I agree though, that the treatment is harsh, after the guy has been their for years and had a lot of success, but when the company loses heaps of cash from a design decision , the shareholders go nuts and want blood.
Anyway, don't feel too sorry for him. He is like a gazzillionaire, he can sit on the beach sipping cocktails!!
One thing is a CEO in a small firm that only makes Android apps and another a CEO in a corporation that makes anything from phones, operating systems to consoles and office suites...
Ballmer was a good CEO who failed to see what was happing in the mobile world. Where people are buying tablets instead of buying laptop PCs. Laptops are being bought at longer transition cycle as compared to tablets and its hurting PC profits. Everything Microsoft has done has been very good in my opinion. I think it was a more of a it's time to try something new rather than you have done a bad job.
As to doing everything my W7 can do, no not really. Most things, yes, but with more effort than WHS took, and you're running a lot more OS overhead than you really need. As to W8, even its functionality in the backup arena isn't quite there. Believe me, there have been a number of people on We Got Served, including both the website and the forums that configured storage spaces to use W8 as a backup server, and it works...just not quite as well, and with a much greater investment in time. And the server app support isn't there either. The real successor is Server Essentials, which operates the same way, but at considerably more investment. WHS just..worked, almost out of the box. but when you don't support your own product and promote it, it's tough to get more than 2-3% of the user base to adopt.
But I do see a lot of Microsoft's failures as correctable, and truly hope his replacement walks in willing and capable of fixing the platforms that are struggling. Surface Pro is certainly a product they would be foolish to kill off, especially considering that Haswell finally delivers a platform that can fit into tablets without sacrificing battery life or performance. Some of these new chips have an SDP rating as low as 6w. Higher end A15-based SoCs like Samsung's Exynos 5250 reach a peak TDP of about 8w. And the upcoming Atom evolution will certainly make it possible to have a "semi-pro" surface tablet that could very easily balance price and performance in a perfectly usable product.
And I think Windows Phone would find greater traction if Microsoft leveraged their position and integrated cross platform features with Windows and the xbox. They could do so many great things but thus far its more gimmicky than anything truly ground breaking.
And I do admit my experience with WHS is very limited, as my own servers are linux based - but I do think Microsoft could take a page from Apple here. With Apple, you can go buy any OSX powered mac (the mini is popular choice) and hop into the App store and pay $20 for an upgrade to OSX Server edition. Microsoft could easily do this, and just offer the best features of WHS as a software stack and perhaps throw in some code to remove the bloat you wouldn't need in transitioning from a desktop version of Windows to a home server version. I'm sure there will be limitations in such a product, but over time Microsoft would be able to address those and grow the feature base just as Apple has done since removing their $500 OSX server and making OSX server an addon for standard OSX.
If Microsoft find's a replacement who is actually interested in improving the products, it could be a very quick turn around for them. But I really hope they don't bring in a cost cutting machine who just wants to slash projects left and right in an effort to save money.
www.computerworld.com/s/article/9241867/Ballmer_forced_out_after_900M_Surface_RT_debacle
Maybe he's not retiring.
The idiots removed the Clear Type antialiasing on all the fonts, and now all the Word documents are almost impossible to edit to due incredible font blurring/aliasing/pixelations/etc. This is by faaar THE WORST doing of MS...
Update your specs.
:D