Arvind Krishna To Lead IBM: 5 Things To Know About The IIT-Kanpur Alumnus

Arvind Krishna is currently IBM Senior Vice President for Cloud and Cognitive Software.

New Delhi: Indian-origin technology executive Arvind Krishna has been named Chief Executive Officer of American IT giant IBM. Mr Krishna, 57, succeeds Virginia Rometty, who described him as the "right CEO for the next era at IBM" and "well-positioned" to lead the company into the cloud and cognitive era. "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. With his appointment, Mr Krishna joins the club of Indian-Americans at the top of the biggest multinational companies.

Here are 5 facts on new IBM CEO Arvind Krishna:

Arvind Krishna, who joined IBM in 1990, is currently IBM Senior Vice President for Cloud and Cognitive Software. He has led the development of many of IBM's newer technologies like artificial intelligence, cloud and quantum computing.
Virginia Rometty, who will retire after almost 40 years with the company, described Arvind Krishna as a "brilliant technologist" who has helped IBM grow its Cloud and Cognitive Software business and led the largest acquisition in the company''s history. Mr Krishna was a "principal architect" of the company's acquisition of Red Hat.
Arvind Krishna has an undergraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
As head of the global IT giant, Arvind Krishna joins the club of Indian-Americans who have led biggest multinational companies. The list includes Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, MasterCard CEO Ajay Banga, PepsiCo's former CEO Indra Nooyi and Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen.
Mr Krishna is the recipient of distinguished alumni awards from IITK and the University of Illinois, is the co-author of 15 patents, has been the editor of IEEE and ACM journals, and has published extensively in technical conferences and journals.