Microsoft’s search for a new CEO is over. The 46 year old server and enterprise wizard Satya Nadella has been appointed the CEO to replace Steve Ballmer. Since this decision is effective immediately, their previous CEO, Steve Ballmer, is going to retire early.

Nadella had this to say regarding his new role:

“Today is a very humbling day for me. It is an incredible honor for me to lead and serve this great company of ours … This is a critical time for the industry and for Microsoft. Make no mistake, we are headed for greater places — as technology evolves and we evolve with and ahead of it. Our job is to ensure that Microsoft thrives in a mobile and cloud-first world.”

Nadella will be taking over alongside CEO and co-founder Bill Gates, who will be taking the new position of founder and technology advisor. Gates had this to say regarding his new role as well:

“I’m thrilled that Satya has asked me to step up, substantially increasing my time at the company. I’ll have over a third of my time available to meet with product groups and it’ll be fun to define this next round of products working together.”

Here’s the first interview of Satya Nadella:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8JwNZBJ_wI

Nadella has been at Microsoft for over 20 years, and he hails from India, where he was born in 1967. His work at Microsoft helped boost their profitability via his efforts with the server and tools business. Before his new appointment, he was working on Microsoft’s cloud businesses, promoting their infrastructure into services like Bing, SkyDrive, Xbox Live, and so on.

Although Nadella is known for being a highly intelligent and charismatic leader, he lacks the experience of running a publicly traded company. We’ll see how he fares in the future, although his appointment has been received with a whole heaping mess of praise.