Redmond (Washington) July 11, 2014: Microsoft Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Satya Nadella has laid out what can be termed as his strategy for the company in the coming years, with the core around helping people thrive in a mobile-first and Cloud-first worlds.
In an email sent out to employees on July 10, 2014, titled, “Bold Ambition & Our Core”, Mr Nadella said he was using the start of FY ’15 as an occasion to articulate and “synthesize” the strategic direction and massive opportunity that he had been discussing for the past few months and the fundamental cultural changes required to deliver it.
“On July 22, we’ll announce our earnings results for the past quarter and I’ll say more then on what we are doing in FY15 to focus on our core,” Mr Nadella wrote in the email.
What was of particular interest in the internal email is the CEO’s stress on the business opportunity that presented itself for Microsoft in the form of the Internet of Things (IoT). Mr Nadella said: In the coming years, the world will be awash with devices that communicate with each other and intelligence will be everywhere – say hello to the internet of things – but someone has to make the tools that make sense of it all if people and businesses are to remain productive.
The Microsoft head honcho pointed out that computing was ubiquitous and experiences span devices and exhibit ambient intelligence. Billions of sensors, screens and devices – in conference rooms, living rooms, cities, cars, phones, PCs – were forming a vast network and streams of data that simply disappear into the background of our lives.
“This computing power,”he wrote, “will digitize nearly everything around us and will derive insights from all of the data being generated by interactions among people and between people and machines. We are moving from a world where computing power was scarce to a place where it now is almost limitless, and where the true scarce commodity is increasingly human attention.”
In this new world, Mr Nadella pointed out, there will be over 3 billion people with Internet-connected devices – from a farmer in a remote part of the world with a smartphone, to a professional power user with multiple devices powered by Cloud service-based apps spanning work and life.
This combination of many devices and Cloud services used for generating and consuming data represented a unique opportunity for Microsoft, he said in his email.
” Microsoft was founded on the belief that technology creates opportunities for people and organizations to express and achieve their dreams by putting a PC on every desk and in every home. More recently, we have described ourselves as a “devices and services” company. While the devices and services description was helpful in starting our transformation, we now need to hone in on our unique strategy.
At our core, Microsoft is the productivity and platform company for the mobile-first and cloud-first world. We will reinvent productivity to empower every person and every organization on the planet to do more and achieve more,” the CEO wrote.
The Microsoft’s CEO’s views on the IoT vis-a-vis his company does not come as a surprise, say IoT analysts. Though a late starter as compared to say, Cisco, Microsoft has realised the potential presented by the IoT and Machine to Machine (M2M) communications, and thus decided to get in the thick of things.
In April this year, for example, Microsoft’s General Manager, Marketing, the Internet of Things, Barb Edson had told attendees at a conference in Sydney, Australia that the IoT was a cross platform play and it was also an ecosystem play. Part of the company’s strategy was the realisation that IoT was not only a Window’s world but a cross platform world. Barb added that Microsoft had to support all of the different platforms.
The email is available on the Microsoft News Centre website.
Image Credit: Microsoft
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