Editor’s Note: Ballmer & Nadella

Steve Ballmer, in spite of his $21 billion of net worth, can sometimes seem like a tragic figure. In the year since he announced he would step down as CEO of Microsoft, he has faced a barrage of coverage criticizing his leadership of the company. Nobody will let him forget the way he dismissed the iPhone when it first came out in 2007. And his $2.1 billion acquisition of a Los Angeles basketball team has been regarded by some as a betrayal of an earlier interest in bringing a team to Seattle.

Yet Ballmers achievements far outweigh any shortcomings and he deserves to be celebrated for the enormous contributions he has made (page 41). Always bigger than life, Ballmer harnessed his intelligence, passion and competitive drive to help build a company that changed the world. I bleed Microsoft have for 34 years and I always will, Ballmer wrote in a farewell letter addressed to Satya Nadella, who replaced him as CEO.

Ed Lazowska, who holds the Bill & Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, says Ballmers role in building Microsoft was second only to that of Bill Gates. Matt McIlwain, managing director of Madrona Venture Group, points out that Ballmer, during his 13-year tenure as CEO, more than tripled Microsofts revenues and profits, and invested heavily to diversify, creating a successful gaming platform in the Xbox, and an enterprise and cloud business worth $20 billion that gives Microsoft more ways to sustain a leadership position in the tech economy for a long time to come.

Microsoft faces huge challenges as the power and profitability of its PC empire begin to shrink. Fortunately, in new CEO Nadella, the company has a leader who comes from the world of cloud computing, where Microsoft must compete to survive. Nadella (page 31) says he will focus on what Microsoft does best: developing complex platforms that integrate the many devices, apps, data and social networks proliferating throughout the world so people can get things done more easily, faster and more securely.

As Ballmer wrote in his note to Nadella: There are challenges ahead but the opportunities are even larger. No company in the world has the mix of software skills, cloud skills and hardware skills we have assembled.

We wish both men the best. In spite of the emergence in our region of a new generation of tech companies such as Amazon.com, F5 Networks and Tableau Software, Microsoft remains critical to the region. Its imperative that Nadella successfully complete the transition to mobile and cloud computing that Ballmer began.