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WASHINGTON: The American media has welcomed the appointment of India-born Satya Nadella as the CEO of Microsoft, noting that the technocrat has an enormous task ahead of him.

With Nadella now becoming the most powerful Indian- American chief executive in the IT Sector, the media was quick to reflect on the increasing influence of this small ethnic community in the country.

"The appointment of Mr Nadella, who is 46 years old and leads the Microsoft division that makes technology to run corporate computer servers and other back-end technology, is considered a safe choice. It comes after a lengthy search during which the company considered a long list of external and internal candidates," The Wall Street Journal wrote.

"It's hard to imagine Nadella drawing that sort of ire, but his triumph in the US comes at a moment when NRIs are flocking back to India, drawn by opportunities in their rapidly-changing homeland. The rise of India's economy has created a new domestic confidence and swagger," The Time magazine said.

According to The Washington Post, the decision culminates a lengthy search that reportedly focused on outside candidates who could infuse the tech giant with a new vision.

"But Nadella emerged as a top internal candidate after his success in navigating some of the company's main business customers into the cloud era," it wrote.

Business Week said the new CEO needs to turn Microsoft more like Google.

"Of all the questions that Satya Nadella, Microsoft's new chief executive officer, will face, the most pressing one may well revolve around deciding whether or not Microsoft still wants to be an arbiter of technology," it said.

By selecting an insider after a search that lasted more than five months, the company signalled that it likely won't pursue the kind of radical makeover that some on Wall Street had wanted, The Los Angeles Times wrote.

Nadella is a well-respected executive dubbed by many analysts as a "safe" choice, it said.

Seattle Times, however said, Nadella has two major drawbacks in the field.

"First, he lacks experience with consumer devices ? an area Microsoft is struggling (Xbox aside) to gain traction in," it said.

It's important for Microsoft to gain market share in tablets and smartphones, lest customers completely abandon Windows-based devices in favour of devices running Apple's or Google's Android operating systems, it wrote.

"Second, he's never been chief executive of a company as big and complex as Microsoft," Seattle Times wrote.

Nadella, only the third person to head the 78 billion USD tech giant in its 38-year history and first Indian to do so, earlier vowed to "ruthlessly" remove any obstacles to innovation in the world's largest software firm.