The company was still insular, blocking its tools from being used on other companies' operating systems and computers. Nadella, who had risen the ranks since joining in 1992, took over the company in 2014 right as those big questions about Microsoft's future were circulating. He laid off thousands of workers and shuttered work on the company's "Windows Phone" operating system, meant to compete with Apple's iOS and Google's Android. He told employees the company would need to be more open and struck a deal to get Microsoft Office tools onto Apple's iPads. "When Satya came on board, the first public announcement he made was to announce to the world that Office is going to come to other mobile platforms," Somasegar said. "That broke a lot of shackles on what people inside Microsoft thought they could do." The company invested heavily in the next big trend: cloud computing. Leaning on its existing business relationships, it expanded its "Azure" cloud business.