Jan. 31 (UPI) — IBM announced Thursday that Arvind Krishna will replace the company’s president and CEO, Virginia “Ginni” Rometty.
Rometty will serve as executive chairman of the board through the end of the year before retiring and Krishna, who is currently IBM’s senior vice president for cloud and cognitive software, will take on the role of CEO effective April 6.
Rometty, 62, has served as chairman, president and CEO of IBM since 2012 and oversaw its acquisition of 65 companies.
In his current role, Krishna, 57, leads the IBM business unit that provides the company’s cloud and data platform.
“Arvind is the right CEO for the next era at IBM,” Rometty said. “He is a brilliant technologist who has played a significant role in developing our key technologies such as artificial intelligence, cloud, quantum computing and blockchain.”
IBM Senior Vice President and CEO of Red Hat James Whitehurst will take on the role of president on April 6.
“Jim is also a seasoned leader who has positioned Red Hat as the world’s leading provider of open source enterprise IT software solutions and services and has been quickly expanding the reach and benefit of that technology to an even wider audience as part of IBM,” Rometty said.
