Windows 10 to usher in new era of personal computing, says Nadella at Microsoft Conference

Orlando: Underscoring three bold ambitions for Microsoft, the tech giant’s India-born CEO Satya Nadella on Monday said the company will focus on personal computing, reinvention of productivity and business process and building an intelligent cloud platform. Nadella, 47, was addressing over 12,000 Microsoft partners, senior company executives, technology experts and analysts during the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2015 at the sprawling Orange County Convention Centre in Orlando, Florida. Noting that Microsoft is focused on helping its customers achieve “greatness through digital technology,” Nadella, who took over as the third CEO in the history of the tech giant in February 2014, gave the audience a glimpse of the mission and “sense of purpose” driving the company going forward. [caption id=“attachment_2199310” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Satya Nadella. IBNLive[/caption] Listing the three “bold ambitions” for Microsoft, Nadella, said one ambition is personal computing, which is “the very core of our company.” “Windows 10 is going to usher in this new era of more personal computing. We couldn’t be more excited, three weeks away from launch. It is not just the technology but what Windows means for this ecosystem is what is driving us,” Nadella said in his keynote address at the conference. He added that Windows 10 is going to run on everything from phones to tablets to surface hubs as well as to the HoloLens, Microsoft’s first fully untethered, see-through holographic computer. He said through Windows 10, there will be “one unifying platform, one unifying experience” and “that to me is the clear differentiator of what Winsdows stands for”. He said Windows 10 will enable users to interact with it in the “most natural way” and they will be able to speak to it touch it and use it seamlessly in their personal and professional lives. “The natural interaction is going to be a unique capability of this one operating system. We will also lead the way in the management and security of windows devices,” he said. Highlighting the second ambition for the company, Nadella said it will be the reinvention of productivity and business process. “Central to this ambition is the reinvention of even the category definition of business process and productivity. We don’t think of these things as separate things anymore. We want to bring together everything that is related to core creation, communication, collaboration in business process and blend them together,” he said. The other ambition that the company is focused on is building an intelligent cloud.  In this context, Nadella announced the Cortana Analytics Suite, a fully managed and comprehensive set of services to help businesses transform data into intelligent action. The suite integrates with Cortana, Microsoft’s digital personal assistant. The suite brings together leading technology infrastructure including machine learning, big data storage and processing with perceptual intelligence such as vision, face and speech analysis. Dressed in grey suit, Nadella said one of the dreams he had for a couple of years is to “question what is the frontier of this, what are the possibilities as we look out”. Stressing that the past year has been a “tremendous year of progress and transformation” for Microsoft, Nadella said that over the years, many technologies have come and gone, many business models have changed and customer expectations have changed. “Our mission is empowering every person and every organisation in the plane to achieve more. And now we move forward to a mobile first cloud first world,” he said. With regard to cloud first mobile first, Nadella said the future will see computing that users will be able to interface with seamlessly. Such computing in “our lives is going to ubiquitous,” he said, adding that this will involve sensors that recognise a user, computers that people are going to wear on them and computers that they can touch. As the cloud technology permeates everyday lives, we have to think about a distributed cloud infrastructure, he said. The conference was the first major company event following the announcement on 8 July that Microsoft would be cutting 7,800 jobs and write down $7.6 billion, all related to its Nokia business. The Partner Conference is held annually by Microsoft for its partner community, where they learn about Microsoft’s roadmap and ambitions for the year ahead, product innovations and learn new skills and techniques. The event also features keynote addresses from Microsoft’s top executives and hundreds of sessions. PTI