Earlier this year, Satya Nadella completed 10 years as Microsoft CEO. Nadella took over as Microsoft CEO in February 2014. Soon after taking over the helm, Nadella is said to have rapidly overhauled the almost 40-year-old company. Nadella is reported to have “pushed Microsoft to embrace cloud computing and open-source software that customers could freely adapt to.” Nadella introduced a wave of open-source technologies, supercharging Microsoft’s cloud business.
Under Nadella’s leadership, Microsoft has more than doubled the market share in cloud computing over the years, placing it at No. 2 behind Amazon, where it remains to this day, followed by search giant Google.
A recent report in New York Times talks about various deals which the company has made under CEO Nadella including $7.5 billion acquisition of developers platform GitHub. Nadella reportedly ‘sealed’ deal in 20 minutes.
“In 2018 he needed only 20 minutes to greenlight the acquisition of the world’s most important open-source company: GitHub, the site where developers shared and collaborated on software code,” said the report.
According to Nat Friedman, who was a Microsoft executive for five years under Nadella, on one day last year, he pitched the idea after executives spent years mulling over it, to Nadella and other senior leaders at an annual executive retreat in the Suncadia Resort in the Cascade Mountains, New York Times has reported.
“Do we have the right to do this?” Nadella reportedly asked. “In other words: Would people still use GitHub if it was run by Microsoft?” The executives are said to have debated the question for 20 minutes, Friedman said. “Then Nadella slapped his hand on the table and said, “We should do it.” Report adds that within weeks, Nadella agreed to buy GitHub for $7.5 billion in June 2018.
“We will accelerate enterprise developers’ use of GitHub, with our direct sales and partner channels and access to Microsoft’s global cloud infrastructure and services,” Nadella had said on the acquisition.