SAN FRANCISCO-IBM Corp. ushered in Virginia Rometty as the company's first-ever female CEO yesterday, as Sam Palmisano stepped down from the position. Palmisano, who turned 60 this year, has been CEO for nearly a decade. He will stay on as chairman. Virginia "Ginni" Rometty, 54, is in charge of IBM's sales and marketing, and has long been whispered about by industry watchers as Palmisano's likely heir. With Rometty's appointment, effective January 1, women will be in charge of two of the world's largest technology companies. Last month, Meg Whitman was named CEO of Hewlett-Packard C Whitman joined eBay Inc. when it was a fledgling startup during the dot-com boom and guided it to become an Internet auction powerhouse and later ran for California governor.
While Whitman's HP is a sprawling company in disarray, Rometty will inherit a finely tuned IBM whose focus on the high-margin businesses of technology services and software has helped it thrive. Palmisano in a statement said that Rometty has led some of IBM's most important businesses, and was instrumental in the formation of IBM's business services division. She oversaw IBM's $3.5 billion purchase of PricewaterhouseCoopers' consulting business in 2002, which is a key element of a strategy that has made IBM a heavily copied company. She is "more than a superb operational executive," Palmisano said.