During today’s key note both John Roskill and Kevin Turner tried to demonstrate to the WPC audience what the road ahead looks like for the Microsoft ecosystem and its competitors.
I have always found it interesting that Microsoft were often criticised for lacking innovation and creativity, however when Windows 8 hit the street there was a mass outcry from the market that it looked too different and “can’t we have the old Windows back”.
What I found interesting today was how people’s skills can transfer into areas that at first glance do not seem likely a match. Carl Ledbetter who is the Principle Creative Director for Xbox first studied Geology but discovered that his passion was for making and creating and applied skills he’d learnt to this process. The fact that humans can detect minute changes to design characteristics shows why so much time and effort is put into products such as Xbox 1.
We also heard how a senior technical engineer applied his ability to exploit and attack spammers to that of genetics and looking specifically at HIV and the cure for. Amazing really where life can take you.
Supporting the devices theme we heard how Fighter Pilots and Test Pilots fly with a manual on their laps. Nope I’m not kidding. Using a Windows 8 slate gave them the ability to digitise this content making access to data faster and safer, and let’s face it if you are in a dog fight you’d probably not want to be hampered by a Hayes manual. A key message for this was of course that the original choice for this solution was the iPad which was unable to meet the criteria of size, access to content and probably most relevant security.
So innovation from Microsoft is here to stay, question is will the world want to keep up?
I also got the sense that the Senior Microsoft Leadership team were in some ways frustrated with the partners. 22000 partners managed some form of cloud transaction last year. Now this is no small beer but when you consider that Microsoft has nearly 650,000 partners worldwide you can see that most have yet to follow Microsoft’s lead and align their businesses accordingly.
The cloud story is a number of years old now so the data collected as to market trends, key workloads etc is more accurate and much of this was showcased today. The claim is that by 2016 70% of IT will still be on premise. This should some comfort to those IT teams that see cloud as a threat but it them seems disjointed that the current messages.
Microsoft is as always keen to point out where their technology is strong when compared to the competition and they believe that the data by independent analysts support the view that Microsoft is the most secure, available and comprehensive Public, Private and Hybrid Cloud platform.
It has taken me some time to understand the thought processes that Microsoft went through when they announced their devices and services strategy. They have gone into markets that you would not necessarily think of as natural turf. Mobile Phones and Tablets for example, however when you consider that the total addressable market for PC’s is in decline to some 338 million predicted for this FY and then see that when you add in tablets and phones the addressable market for Windows reaches nearly 3 billion, and this is a by year figure, then I guess the strategy becomes much clearer.
The atmosphere post this key note definitely lifted the audience which when your 4 days into a conference is no bad thing.
It is a quieter day tomorrow with the regions giving their thoughts for the next Financial Year to the local teams so it will be interesting to hear from those new in post such as Clare Barclay as to how they plan to achieve.
Dr. Adam Steltzner, this year’s guest speaker and leader of the 2012 Mars Curiosity Rover mission, will share his experiences of operating under intense pressure – driven by curiosity and the human need to explore.
I’ll share my final thoughts with you tomorrow before heading home.
You can always keep up to date on our twitter feed @EACSltd
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