Intel announced today that the board of directors has unanimously elected Brian Krzanich as its next chief executive officer (CEO), succeeding Paul Otellini. Krzanich will assume his new role at the company’s annual stockholders’ meeting on May 16.

Intel has been rebooting internally since the market is transforming to lower power processors and low latency real time mobile applications.  Intel didn’t miss the cloud but many analysts are saying they could have been faster with ARM in the datacenter.  Wikibon’s analyst Dave Vellante told me “Intel is fighting many key battles one being the ARM in the datacenter while having many key initiatives including their own distribution of Hadoop.”

Brian Krzanich was Intel’s chief operating officer and will become the sixth CEO in Intel’s history.   Many Intel insiders that I spoke with told me that they think Intel was too slow to miss the “intelligent edge” and that Andy Grove would have been all over trends like Apple/Android/Open Compute way earlier.

Brian is known inside Intel as a strong leader with a passion for technology and deep understanding of the business.  People feel that he has the right combination of knowledge, depth and experience to lead the company during this period of rapid technology and industry change.”  Krzanich, 52, joined Intel in 1982.

In the same announcement Intel’s board of directors elected Renée James, 48, to be president of Intel. She will also assume her new role on May 16, joining Krzanich in Intel’s executive office.

James, 48, has broad knowledge of the computing industry, spanning hardware, security, software and services, which she developed through leadership positions at Intel and as chairman of Intel’s software subsidiaries — Havok, McAfee and Wind River.  Renee was chief of staff for former Intel CEO Andy Grove.