Ballmer on Microsoft: Nadella's Done Good, with Caveats

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By WindowsITPro

Steve Ballmer has never been one to be quiet, and his time since stepping down as CEO of Microsoft has been no exception. Even though he now describes himself as anoutsider at the company who sits down with his successor Satya Nadella a few times a year, he still has plenty of thoughts on how the company is doing — and where its head should be at.

In a recent interview with Business Insider, Ballmer admitted he can't say I'm checked out because I do spend lot of time thinking about the place as an investment.

I feel free to interject the things I can see from my vantage point, he said. Certainly I'm not shy about sharing those.

He's particularly bullish about Microsoft's forays into hardware.

I really think the work Microsoft's doing with Surface, with HoloLens, with Xbox, that stuff's absolutely essential to the company's future, said Ballmer. Because innovation in the future will either be from the cloud out to all devices, or from devices as supported by software in the cloud.

He's also impressed with Azure — with some small caveats:

He loves Azure so much, he finds he wishes he just knew a little more about it.

As a shareholder I have expressed my frustration with not getting more information about revenue and margins from the cloud, he said.

He also grumbled a bit about Nokia.

The board as I was leaving took the company on a path by buying Nokia, they kind of went ahead with that after I told them I was going to go, he told Rosoff. The company, between me and the board, had taken that sort of view. Satya, he's certainly changed that. He needs to have a clear path forward. But I'm sure he'll get there.

Read the rest of the interview at Business Insider.

This first ran at http://windowsitpro.com/industry/ballmer-microsoft-nadellas-done-very-good-job-few-tiny-caveats