Why Nadella's the smart CEO pick to lead Microsoft

Guest post: Satya Nadella is the right choice for Microsoft CEO, only the third CEO in the company's history, after Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.

2014 is a pivotal year for Microsoft, perhaps the most important year in the company's history. It's a year that the company needs to get right. The world has been changing fast the last five years. Technologies such as social, mobile, open source, and cloud, products like the iPhone, iPad, and Android, have completely transformed the tech landscape. Intense platform wars are raging as companies such as Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Twitter maneuver to establish and maintain leadership in this next generation of computing and communication. The winners get to drive new standards and reap massive riches, power and influence, as Microsoft did in the 90's and early 2000's with Windows, Office, and the PC platform. Microsoft has largely been absent from these new platform wars, and its diminished position in the industry reflects that.

Satya has reinvigorated Microsoft's server and tools business. He's done a remarkable job getting Microsoft to move fast on the cloud and begun to stake out a strong position, against difficult competitors such as Amazon. Most of all, he recognized that the world has changed and that to be relevant and become a leader again, Microsoft needs to embrace those changes and offer solutions for customers that fit in that new world. Whereas once open source was regarded as a cancer at Microsoft, Satya has found a way for Microsoft to add value while supporting new standards, like Linux, Hadoop, Ruby on Rails, and the like. It's exciting to see Microsoft play well in this new world and offer differentiated solutions.

Relevant not longevity, is what Satya said was important. I couldn't agree more, and when I read those words from him, I knew he was the right person to lead the company in this critical next stage.

There's no time to waste. As a 22-year veteran of Microsoft, Satya can hit the ground round. He has the trust of Bill Gates and the rank and file employees, which means he can hit the ground running. He knows how to make the sometimes Byzantine Microsoft organization sing. An outsider would take the next year learning the issues and establishing his legitimacy. Microsoft has not been kind to execs brought in from the outside, making such a choice ever riskier. Microsoft doesn't have the time for that; 2014 is the year where it needs to set the trajectory up and to the right, and Satya is the man to do that.

Kudos to the board for working through a difficult process and getting the right person.

Bio: Brad Silverberg is the co-founder of Ignition Partners, where he is an executive. He also is a former Microsoft executive.