Gates, Nadella Tandem in Microsoft, What to Expect?

Microsoft founder Bill Gates will be the adviser of the software company's new CEO Satya Nadella.

Gates was previously reported to step down as the chairman of the board at Microsoft. He will remain though as a director at the company and will be involved in the company's product development, especially when it comes to developing must-have merchandises, but not with running the company. He will be working at the office at least once a week.

Surprisingly, on Feb. 4, after introducing Nadella as the new CEO of the Redmond, Wash.-based company, Gates said that he would spend a third of his time advising Nadella on technology and product strategy.

But what should consumers expect from this tandem? Gates is well-known for delivering personal computers to the users, while Nadella was appointed to lead the company to a different path -- devices and services.

Some were happy with the announcement, but some see the move as a sign that the company is going to stick on its original plan and specialty, which is computer software.

"You cannot underestimate the importance of this," said Silicon Valley Ventures CEO David Levin to The Telegraph. "Bill being there three days a week is, to my mind, the same as him taking over again, but without the giant disruption of him actually taking the reins."

Even so, Nadella is already focused on making the company's machine learning and cloud technologies produce Windows merchandises -- devices, applications, and services -- that users can use in their everyday lives. Just like what former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is working on before he announced his retirement on August 2013.

He has also built a culture of agility in the members of the company's enterprise and cloud teams. He challenged workers who were used to have 18-month turnaround time to deliver continuous iterations weekly.

"It was unheard of in the enterprise server business. Nadella had to push people out, overrule people with big businesses," said Forrester analyst James Staten to Information Week.

Whatever the result of Gates and Nadella's tandem is, users will just have to wait and see.

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