Arvind Krishna named IBM CEO, to take charge on April 6

International Business Machines (IBM) has named Indian origin executive Arvind Krishna as chief executive officer, replacing CEO Virginia Rometty. Rometty will be executive chairman of the company. Krishna is currently IBM Senior Vice President for Cloud and Cognitive Software and was a principal architect of the firm's acquisition of Red Hat.

James Whitehurst, IBM Senior Vice President and CEO of Red Hat has been elected as IBM President. They will assume their roles on April 6, 2020, the company said. Krishna joins Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai among Indian origin CEO's in Silicon Valley.

Krishna graduated in 1985 from the IIT Kanpur and holds a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He joined IBM in 1990 and has served in several roles at the New York-based company, including as director of research and the head of the cloud and cognitive software.

"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 statement.

Meanwhile, Virginia Rometty, IBM Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, will continue as Executive Chairman of and serve through the end of the year, when she will retire after almost 40 years with the company.

"Arvind is the right CEO for the next era at IBM," said Rometty. "He is a brilliant technologist who has played a significant role in developing our key technologies such as artificial intelligence, cloud, quantum computing and blockchain. Arvind has grown IBM's Cloud and Cognitive Software business and led the largest acquisition in the company's history. Through his multiple experiences running businesses in IBM, Arvind has built an outstanding track record of bold transformations and proven business results and is an authentic, values-driven leader. He is well-positioned to lead IBM and its clients into the cloud and cognitive era."

She added, "Jim is also a seasoned leader who has positioned Red Hat as the world's leading provider of open source enterprise IT software solutions and services, and has been quickly expanding the reach and benefit of that technology to an even wider audience as part of IBM."