IT giant IBM (International Business Machines) has announced its new CEO, Arvind Krishna, who will be succeeding in the legacy of Virginia Rometty. The Indian-origin technology executive is an alumnus of IIT-Kanpur and holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois. He joined IBM in 1990 and is working as a Senior Vice President at IBM where he works extensively on the cloud, research, security and cognitive applications business.
In a press statement released by IBM, Arvind Krishna expressed- “I am thrilled and humbled to be elected as the next Chief Executive Officer of IBM, and appreciate the confidence that Ginni and the Board have placed in me,”
Virginia Rometty was all praises for Arvind saying that he would be the right CEO for the coming era of IBM and will lead the company into the cloud and cognitive era.
As told to PTI, Rometty said Krishna is a – “brilliant technologist who has played a significant role in developing our key technologies such as artificial intelligence, cloud, quantum computing, and blockchain. He is also a superb operational leader, able to win today while building the business of tomorrow.”
Rometty will be continuing at IBM as the Executive Chairman of the Board and will retire by the end of the year. The companies’ acquisition of the red hat and growth in the cloud market was achieved by Krishna which contributed heavily to the decision of making him CEO. Along with him, James Whitehurst has been elected IBM Senior Vice President and CEO of Red Hat, as IBM president.
With this appointment, the club of Indian-origin executives heading global companies grows with existing CEOs such as Satya Nadella Microsoft CEO, Sundar Pichai Google and Alphabet CEO, Shantanu Narayen Adobe CEO, etc.