By Chidanand Rajghatta/ The Times of India

Microsoft’s board on Tuesday named Hyderabad-born Satya Nadella as chief executive of the legendary tech giant that has given the world products which have become household names like Windows, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook Express. The announcement elevates Nadella, an offspring of the Indian system, to one of the highest-profile corporate jobs globally. 

Nadella, 46, will be only the third CEO of Microsoft after founder Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, the man he is succeeding. 

The elevation of Nadella, a company insider for 22 years (he recently joked that he has also been married for 22 years), was expected once heavyweight outsiders like Ford’s Alan Mulally and Nokia’s Stephen Elop dropped out or were passed up. The names of Google’s Sundar Pichai and Motorola’s previous CEO Sanjay Jha also briefly made the rounds, serving to highlight the intensity of PIOs breaking the glass ceiling, something that began some two decades ago, but has become more pronounced now. 

In picking Nadella, Microsoft directors selected both an insider and an engineer. It has often been noted that Microsoft was more successful under the leadership of Gates, a programmer and its first chief executive, than it was under Ballmer, who had a background in sales.