Exactly one year ago, Satya Nadella took over as the third CEO of a laggard tech giant called Microsoft.
At the time, many wondered what Nadella could do to reverse the downhill course that Microsoft had taken under Steve Ballmer's regime. No one wonders now.
Microsoft's stocks alone paint a picture of Nadella's performance well into his first year at the helm of a company that was once largely disdained as a has-been or as a hulking old corporatist that pairs with startups only to crush them inside the partnership.
On Wednesday, Feb. 4, Nadella's one-year anniversary as Microsoft CEO, Microsoft stocks were up 14 percent from where they were last year. Shares hit an all-time high at $50.02 in November before sliding down recently, but the overall trend shows investors are happy with the changes Nadella has been instituting in a 40-year-old company marred by a broken culture and unwillingness to innovate.
It's not just investors showing how pleased they are with the new Microsoft. Silicon Valley and other major technology startup centers are looking at Microsoft in a whole new light, and most of that can be credited to Nadella, whose soft-spoken, calm demeanor is the complete opposite of Ballmer's oafish, bumbling ways.
"Under the leadership of Satya Nadella, the company has dramatically changed not only its tune, but its course as well," said Aaron Levie, CEO of Box, which directly competes with Microsoft's OneDrive. "This is a case study in a corporate reinvention."
One of the most striking changes under Nadella's leadership is Microsoft's newfound willingness to bundle its services with services offered by its competitors, a move that the old Microsoft would have never in a million years even considered doing.
Microsoft earned the love of Apple owners when it finally released Office for iPad, later followed by Office for Android, and made the basic versions free, something that the company should have done ages ago.
Of course, there is also Windows 10, which is actually getting developers excited much more than they ever did with the much-maligned Windows 8. Windows 10 has now more than 1 million people using the Technical Preview and is built on more than 200,000 pieces of feedback sent on the first 10 days.
Admittedly, Windows 10 is a Microsoft project that has been around long before Nadella, but with him as chief, it appears as though the years-long project is taking shape nicely.
What's more, Microsoft surprised the entire technology world when it recently announced that it will be making Windows 10 a free upgrade for current users of Windows 7 and Windows 8.1.
It's not all smooth sailing for Nadella, though, who effectively put his foot in his mouth at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference in October, when he said that women should wait for "faith" and "good karma" to give them a raise. Still, Nadella is not above admitting his erroneous ways and quickly made a sincere effort to clarify his support for equal pay for men and women in the industry.
Moreover, Microsoft continues to play a miniscule part in mobile, which is largely dominated by iOS and Android devices. Windows Phone, in contrast, owns only around 3 percent of the entire market share and continues to struggle.
This, along with the old Microsoft's tactics of co-opting growing startups, has cost Microsoft its position as an influencer, but Nadella has made it a point to renew ties with developers.
For instance, Microsoft last year participated in a networking session with startup executives at an event hosted by Madrona Venture Group, something that Madrona partner Matt McIllwain said he was unable to set up in the past because "we couldn't get through the bureaucracy."
The fruits of Microsoft's efforts to renew relationships with startups are starting to bloom.
Sunny Gupta, CEO of IT management software Apptio, said his company owes it to feedback from Microsoft officials that a new feature has been added to its service. This said feature allows enterprise clients to compare the cost of running their services on their own data centers versus paying to use different platforms.
"We wouldn't have done it had it not been for our relationship with Satya," Gupta said.
