Exclusive: How Windows Changes to Work With Everything

Satya Nadela

"We are the Windows company, after all," Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, told to Dieter Bohn from the Verge in exclusive interview.

Bohn was on the Microsoft campus in Redmond, a week before the Build Developers Conference, and wanted to know what was happening with Windows after sharing the team in different divisions. Was Microsoft really preparing for a world without Windows? Nadella was ready to tell me that Windows would not go away - of course, Windows would not go away - but he also wanted to explain his latest fashion vision for Microsoft's future: AI, Intelligent Cloud and Intelligent Cloud. edge.

Windows may still be there, but after talking to Nadella, I felt that Windows was no longer at the center of the company's future plans. Instead of trying to make everything work on Windows (as its predecessor Steve Ballmer was trying to do), Nadella wants to make sure everything works with Windows.

This is a big change after the arrival of Nadella as CEO in 2014. Microsoft of Nadella is fighting less lost battles and, on the contrary, trying to be a little more open. New features in Windows 10 - such as a time line that works across multiple devices and a "Your Phone" system that allows text users and access to your phone's phone data - show a measure of pragmatism or even humility. Of course, the opening has its limits: Microsoft is always aggressively pushing users to the Cortana wizard and the Edge browser in Windows.

Microsoft is a different company from Nadella than it was a few years ago. He works to get his software on IoT devices, such as drones, to support companies with cloud services, and to improve their enterprise software. Retail consumers are not exactly late thinking, but Microsoft is starting to look more like IBM than Apple.


The demos that Microsoft will show on stage during its Build Developer Conference are a good example of this change. Bohn took a look at some of them in Microsoft's "Batcave", a room full of extremely expensive tangles of cables, laptops, drones and Surface Hub monitors. . It is located in the same building as Nadella and other executives, and that is where new technologies are tested and refined to become something that can be broadcast on stage - and, hopefully, sent to businesses and consumers. .

In a demonstration, a DJI drone loaded Microsoft software so it could recognize faults in an oil pipeline without the need for an Internet connection. A commercially available consumer drone can stream video on a Windows laptop to do the same. In both cases, the idea is that Microsoft thinks its customers will be better off if they happen to have Windows to increase the hardware they already use. Windows is important, but it's not the only thing.

But if you are totally in a Microsoft business setup, the company is insinuating big things ahead. He joins Cortana in his teams of Slack competitors. Cortana can be "invited" to your discussions and automatically suggest things based on your conversation, such as a meeting or document that you need.

Bohn also watched a demonstration of a futuristic meeting: a speaker with a 360-degree camera recognized me and welcomed me when I entered the room. As we talked, he transcribed our conversation live using distant field mics. (Microsoft also said it could also translate between different languages ​​live.) If one of us said something like "I'll follow you at this point," a separate box recorded an action item. , correctly assigning the person to the context. conversation.

Of course, HoloLens was involved. Microsoft is looking for ways to make its augmented reality headset more useful, and viewing 3D data is a good example of how to use it. Since someone used HoloLens to manipulate a 3D map of temperature sensors in a building, I was able to see it on-screen in real time. We have the same data displayed in several ways: in AR on HoloLens, on screen, and remotely on someone else using a Surface tablet.

Of course, HoloLens was involved. Microsoft is researching ways to make its augmented reality headset more useful, and visualizing data in 3D is a good use case. As one person used the HoloLens to manipulate a 3D map of a building’s temperature sensors, I was able to see it on the screen in real time. We were getting the same data displayed in multiple different ways: in AR on the HoloLens, on the display, and remotely to somebody else using a Surface tablet.

The demo was just a bunch of existing Microsoft products working well together in a surprising way. And there’s no better metaphor for Nadella’s Microsoft: instead of naïvely hoping it will take over everything, it’s just working on the stuff it’s good at. And instead of promising a future that we know isn’t going to happen anytime soon, it’s building on what it has now.

That’s a different kind of Microsoft than what we’re used to thinking of. It’s a little less flashy, yes, but it has the benefit of being a lot more likely to succeed.