Meet Arvind Krishna, IIT Kanpur Alumnus Who Will Take Over As CEO Of IBM From April

Debarghya Sil

January 31, 2020

After, Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadela, another Indian-origin technology executive Arvind Krishna, is all set to be the next Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of American IT giant – International Business Machines (IBM) from April this year.

The 57-year-old will take charge of IBM from the hand of its current CEO Ginni Rometty. Krishna is currently IBM Senior Vice President for Cloud and Cognitive Software and is expected to take the reigns of the company after Rometty steps down almost after 40 years.

Rometty said Krishna is a ‘brilliant technologist who has played a significant role in developing key technologies at IBM 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.’

‘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,’ Krishna said in a press statement released by IBM.

Krishna, 57, has an undergraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IITK). He later completed PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

He has also been conferred with distinguished alumni awards from IITK and the University of Illinois. He is also the co-author of 15 patents, the editor of IEEE and ACM journals. He has worked and published in multiple journals.

Krishan joined IBM in 1990. Currently, he looks after IBM Cloud, IBM Security and Cognitive Applications business, and IBM Research. He also oversees new technology such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, cloud platform services, blockchain, and nanotechnology.

Prior to that Arvind was a general manager of IBM Systems and Technology Group’s development and manufacturing organisation.

Krishna also played a crucial role in the company’s purchase of Red Hat at US$ 34 billion – the biggest purchase in its 108-year history. Red Hat is an open-source, enterprise software maker which has now become a unit of IBM’s hybrid cloud division. IBM has been a late entrant to the business of cloud services which is now dominated by Microsoft Corp and Amazon.com.

Also Read: Sundar Pichai To Become CEO Of Google’s Parent Firm Alphabet, After Co-founder Larry Page Steps Down

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