IBM names Arvind Krishna as CEO, starting 6 April 2020, following the retirement of Virginia Rometty. One of the most prominent female tech leaders, Rometty stays at Big Blue as Chairman of the Board until end 2020.
"Ginni has provided outstanding leadership for IBM, substantially transforming the company and ushering in a new cloud and cognitive era," the company says. "She has taken bold strategic actions to reposition IBM for the future, shedding businesses and growing new units organically and through acquisition, all while achieving record diversity and employee engagement and setting the industry standard for responsible technology ethics and data stewardship."
Krishna is currently senior VP for cloud and cognitive software, and was the principal architect behind the 2019 acquisition of Red Hat. He is also responsible for the IBM Cloud, IBM Security and Cognitive Applications business, as well as IBM Research. An IBM veteran since 1990, he also built and lead many data-related businesses at Big Blue.
Also getting a promotion to president is SVP and Red Hat CEO James Whitehurst. An advocate for open software as catalyst for business innovation, he joined Red Hat from Delta Airlines and, prior to that, the Boston Consulting Group.