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Getting to know John Thompson, Microsoft's new chairman

Meet the former IBMer who is taking over the chairman role from Bill Gates after having only joined the board two years ago.

Mary Jo Foley
Mary Jo Foley has covered the tech industry for 30 years for a variety of publications, including ZDNet, eWeek and Baseline. She is the author of Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft plans to stay relevant in the post-Gates era (John Wiley & Sons, 2008). She also is the cohost of the "Windows Weekly" podcast on the TWiT network.
Mary Jo Foley
3 min read

As part of the CEO transition at Microsoft, via which Satya Nadella is taking over as the company's third CEO effective immediately, one of Microsoft's current board members, John Thompson is simultaneously taking on the role of Microsoft board chairman.

Thompson is replacing Gates as board chairman. Gates is remaining on the Microsoft board. Ex-CEO Steve Ballmer is staying on the board as well, a spokesperson confirmed. But Gates' new title is "founder and technology advisor." Gates will be advising Nadella on product direction and has freed up "over a third" of his time to potentially meet with product groups at Microsoft for some undisclosed length of time. (Yes, I admit I am skeptical about the realities of the greater Gates involvement part of this equation.)

Microsoft's new chairman of the board, John Thompson. Microsoft

Thompson has been a member of Microsoft's board for two years. He has also been leading Microsoft's CEO search for the past five months-plus. (In a new video clip of Thompson (below), which Microsoft posted today, Thompson claims Nadella was the search committee's "first and unanimous choice" after reviewing all the CEO candidates.)

He is the CEO of Virtual Instruments, a company that manages virtual-physical cloud migrations and an investor in a handful of early-stage tech companies in Silicon Valley. Thompson also served as CEO of Symanec for 10 years, through 2009, and on Symantec's board until 2011. Before that, he held a variety of management positions at IBM in sales, marketing, software development for a variety of products including (somewhat ironically), OS/2.

Thompson recorded a Microsoft Channel 9 video last August, on the day that Microsoft announced its most recent reorg, designed to facilitate the company's shift to a devices and services company.

In that interview, Thompson said he joined the Microsoft board because he had "admired Microsoft for many, many, many years." He said he considered Microsoft to be "one of the true, iconic companies in our country."