IIT Kanpur passout Arvinda Krishna to be new CEO of IBM; Ginni Rometty to move on as Executive Chairman

International Business Machines Corp.(IBM) has promoted its long time senior vice president for cloud and cognitive software Arvind Krishna as the CEO with effect from April 6, 2020. Arvind Krishan will replace Ginni Rometty who has decided to move on as executive chairman till her retirement at the end of this year. The 57-year old former IIT Kanpur alumnus was one of the main dealmakers for the company’s acquisitions of Red Hat. He had proposed the plans for acquisition to the then CEO Ginni Rometty and the board, suggesting hybrid cloud was the best bet for IBM to come up terms with the new age technology and sustain growth over a long period of time. His role was also instrumental for some other project developments at IBM such as artificial intelligence, cloud and quantum computing.