Microsoft's Nadella Talks Windows 10, Cloud-First World

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was at the Gartner Symposium this morning, where he gave a clearer view of what he means by a "mobile-first, cloud-first" world view for the company, and answered a number of questions about how Microsoft will meet the needs of IT professionals going forward.

I've heard Nadella discuss his vision of leading with productivity in the mobile-first, cloud-first world before, but this time, he was much clearer about how Microsoft's vision differs from its rivals.

On mobility, for instance, Nadella didn't spend much time talking about Windows Phone, although he said he was happy to have Nokia and wants to gain share there. Instead, he said, Microsoft is focused on the mobility of the individual, not the device, and thinking about how the user will be interacting with a variety of computing platforms in the course of a day. Microsoft is indeed "in it to win it" but looks at mobility with the broadest of lens.

For instance, he noted that every mobile app connects to the cloud and requires a cloud back-end, where Azure has been doing well. And he said enterprises need a "control plane" to manage device management, policy, and security; where Microsoft offers its enterprise mobility suite. Office 365 will be everywhere, and Microsoft is looking at its SaaS applications in a "mobile-first" way, he said.

Still, "the real bet is Windows 10," he said, pointing to things like a recent Adobe Photoshop demonstration that worked with a mouse and keyboard and touch screen and stylus.

Microsoft Looks to Cloud Services
On cloud, Nadella said Microsoft is not just focused on one data center or service – its own Azure offerings – but on distributed computing that is really distributed, including hybrid cloud solutions.

Microsoft's cloud offerings include three things: SaaS applications; at-scale public cloud infrastructure; and support for hybrid cloud offerings. None of Microsoft's competition does all three, he said.

There are probably only two or three companies that will be megascale in offering cloud infrastructure services, and Microsoft is spending $4-5 billion per year in capital expenses to build out its cloud.

On the question of hybrid cloud questions, "you have to think about what is the edge of the cloud," Nadella said, positioning its Windows Server products there. While acknowledging that competitors have some features, he said only Microsoft offers servers and an orchestration plane designed to connect the public and private clouds. He also said the company planned an announcement on Oct. 20 on how it will allow other organizations and even nation-states to build their own clouds.

Nadella said Microsoft is focused on providing APIs around the data on the cloud, letting developers write applications with the Azure container, and focusing on hybrid services as differentiators against other cloud providers. He described the developer API inside of Office 365 as the company's most important API, and noted that with services such as Azure AD (Active Directory), you can start running AD in the cloud for identity and access services or single sign-on, while still managing everything else on premises, then migrate as you wish. He said Azure AD has had close to a billion authentications. In addition, he noted that with SQL Server 2014, you can set up Azure service as a high-availability or disaster recovery service.

In general, he sounded very bullish that Azure AD would become a control plane for identity and access management.

He even described Azure as Microsoft's platform for the Internet of Things, noting that Azure Intelligent Systems Service can bring in data from any Windows or Linux endpoint, while Azure ML (Machine Learning) can provide predictive analytics on that data.

Productivity, Platforms and Windows 10
All of this should be tied together through productivity services and platforms. But Nadella said his view of productivity is not just things like PowerPoint on a mobile phone, but more new services like Cortana, Delve, and Power BI. Nadella wants Microsoft to be "the best of the world at productivity," be it individual, team, and business process productivity (such as CRM).

On platforms, Nadella talked about needing to balance the needs of different constituents, creating consistency for end-users (albeit with different looks on different devices), consistency and control for IT, and opportunity for developers.

He described Windows 10 as the first step in a whole new generation of Windows, not just another release. He said the idea was to architect Windows so that at its core, it will run anywhere, not just on tablets, phones, and PCs, but also on sensors and the Internet of Things. Ideally, Microsoft will offer "one Windows that runs everywhere," but is factored and architected to run properly on the right devices with the right features. Attributes such as security and management are becoming more important in a world where hacking occurs via HVAC systems, he said.

On the user experience, he said it was important to keep it consistent, but adapt for multi-modal input. He admitted Microsoft "got it wrong" on Windows 8, but said he feels good about its progress for Windows 10, especially as an upgrade from Windows 7. A big part of this from an IT perspective is an "IT control plane," offering identity management, device management, and data security across devices. And he said the concept of "universal apps," where applications run from one store across all of Windows, is "fantastic for us and for developers."

Nadella answered a number of quick questions about Microsoft's plans and practices during the session, where he was interviewed by Gartner's Drue Reeves and Merv Adrian. Asked about the always-unpopular question of why licensing is so complex, Nadella agreed that Microsoft needs to make progress in that area, but said it got to the current state by trying to drive flexibility for its customers. Office 365 licensing is one area of transition, but Microsoft realized there are some customers who want perpetual licensing, he said.

The Xbox division has helped Microsoft in a number of areas beyond gaming, from machine learning and voice recognition led by Kinect to security features learned from gaming with virtual machines.

Nadella expects Microsoft's platforms to generate the lion's share of the company's revenues in five years, but said the company will reinvent its platforms for every generation, and will rewrite them as paradigms of change. As for Windows 9, Nadella said simply, "it came and went."