{"id":7013,"date":"2019-02-02T00:30:55","date_gmt":"2019-02-02T00:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/microsoft-what-went-right-under-satya-nadella\/"},"modified":"2019-02-02T00:30:55","modified_gmt":"2019-02-02T00:30:55","slug":"microsoft-what-went-right-under-satya-nadella","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/microsoft-what-went-right-under-satya-nadella\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft: What went right under Satya Nadella?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Media caption<\/span>WATCH: Could Microsoft’s augmented reality change work?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On Monday, it will be five years since Satya Nadella was announced as Microsoft’s chief executive.<\/p>\n

Since taking charge he has turned the tech firm’s fortunes around, making it the most valuable company in the world for the first time since 2002.<\/p>\n

Go on, admit it. <\/p>\n

You thought Microsoft was so last century, didn’t you? In the late 80s and 90s, the company’s Windows operating system ruled the world. <\/p>\n

Catching the wave<\/h2>\n

But where Bill Gates – chief executive from 1975 to 2000 – caught the wave of personal computing, so Steve Ballmer – 2000 to 2014 – failed to do likewise with mobiles. <\/p>\n

Although the Surface tablet is a modest success, Microsoft’s smartphones have flopped despite the firm paying more than 5.4bn euros ($6.2bn; \u00a34.7bn) for Nokia’s handset business. Apple’s iPhone, and then Google’s Android left Microsoft in the dust.<\/p>\n

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Image copyright<\/span>
\n Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n

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Image caption<\/span>
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\n Satya Nadella was announced as Microsoft’s chief executive on 4 February 2014
\n <\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The company has undergone the same stages of evolution experienced by many successful tech names.<\/p>\n

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  1. The nimble start-up with a new idea<\/li>\n
  2. The fast-growing one-to-watch that’s changing the world, slaying the old guard in its path<\/li>\n
  3. The omniprescence we can’t live without<\/li>\n
  4. The uncomfortably big monopoly that buys out or subdues its smaller rivals<\/li>\n
  5. The Evil Empire that has too much power, and knows too much<\/li>\n
  6. The unwieldy supertanker that can’t change course fast enough to catch the next big wave<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    “Some of those waves we’ve missed, but we’re nothing if not persistent,” Steve Clayton tells me. <\/p>\n

    He’s Microsoft’s chief storyteller – and before I get too sniffy about his job title, I have to remember that’s technically my job too on Click.<\/p>\n

    Part of the reason Mr Nadella was picked for the top job was his determination not to miss the next big wave – cloud computing.<\/p>\n

    The Seventh Stage<\/h2>\n

    “[Cloud is] the ability for us to have software anywhere on any device,” says Mr Clayton.<\/p>\n

    Forget the company’s ill-founded attempt to have its own brand of smartphones – the more devices on which it can run its now subscription-based Office suite, the more money it makes. <\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    Image copyright<\/span>
    \n Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n

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    Image caption<\/span>
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    \n Microsoft ended up writing off the cost of its Nokia takeover and sold off many of the related assets it had purchased under Steve Ballmer
    \n <\/span>
    \n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    And subscriptions make up nearly two-thirds of its revenue these days. <\/p>\n

    Couple that with Azure, its cloud computing platform and data centres, and you can start to understand why Microsoft’s share price has tripled since Nadella took over. <\/p>\n

    In November 2018, it became the most valuable company on the planet for the first time since 2002, and has tussled with Amazon for the lead ever since.<\/p>\n

    During my day at Microsoft’s Redmond HQ near Seattle, I’m reminded that the unwieldy supertanker of stage six doesn’t have to vanish beneath that next wave.<\/p>\n

    Stage seven can either be a sinking of Titanic proportions or it can be a sinking into the background, becoming part of the infrastructure, and quietly, unostentatiously, allowing your confidence to grow. <\/p>\n

    “We don’t want to be the cool company in the tech sector,” Mr Nadella has previously said. <\/p>\n

    “We want to be the company that makes other people cool.”<\/p>\n

    Sure the PR machine is in full swing here. But the numbers suggest Microsoft has a lot to crow about.<\/p>\n

    And with that stage-seven confidence, comes an acceptance that you can’t win every battle; that you should welcome other’s successes. <\/p>\n

    Embracing new ideas that don’t have to originate within Microsoft, seems to be one of Mr Nadella’s core principles. <\/p>\n

    And so the firm has embraced open source, and partnered with competitors, including its cloud services rival, Amazon. <\/p>\n

    Microsoft Office now runs on the iPad – and Mr Clayton uses an iPhone.<\/p>\n

    “Don’t be a know-it-all, be a learn-it-all.”<\/p>\n

    That’s another Nadella quote for the bank.<\/p>\n

    “In 2014, we cancelled our company meeting where our leaders would tell employees what was important, in favour of having a hackathon that lets our employees tell our leaders what’s important,” recalls Jeff Ramos.<\/p>\n

    He is head of the Microsoft Garage, where employees with a bright idea can come and experiment, build, hack, and see if it has legs.<\/p>\n

    Inside the HypeZone<\/h2>\n
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    \n <\/p>\n

    Media playback is unsupported on your device<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>

    Media caption<\/span>WATCH: Microsoft\u2019s Lenin Sivalingam explains HypeZone<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    “Our idea was very simple,” Lenin Sivalingam explodes with enthusiasm.<\/p>\n

    “We’re going to run computer vision [algorithms] on live streams, understand them pixel by pixel, and we’re going to find interesting moments, and show them to people.”<\/p>\n

    Mr Sivalingam is describing the HypeZone – the project that won his team Microsoft’s 2017 hackathon. <\/p>\n

    Having previously used artificial intelligence to analyse video streams from traffic cameras, Mr Sivalingam hit on the idea of analysing video game streams to find the most exciting moments.<\/p>\n

    Fortnite, he explains, is somewhat boring to watch for the first 20 minutes. The Battle Royale fight-to-the-death game only gets really exciting when it’s down to the last few players. <\/p>\n

    In the style of the NFL RedZone, the HypeZone, running on Microsoft’s streaming site Mixer, uses AI techniques to examine every stream coming into the site. <\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    Image copyright<\/span>
    \n Microsoft<\/span><\/p>\n

    <\/span>

    Image caption<\/span>
    \n
    \n HypeZone analyses what is happening within Fortnite streams to only show viewers the most exciting content
    \n <\/span>
    \n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    A character’s health, kill count, and other factors, help determine how exciting the battle is, and the most thrilling one happening at that moment is the one it shows. <\/p>\n

    Once the game is over, it switches to another stream that’s approaching its climax.<\/p>\n

    It’s also great for streamers, says Mr Sivalingam, as it can bring really good players to prominence, simply by the quality of their gameplay, rather than their current celebrity status.<\/p>\n

    The Batcave<\/h2>\n

    Of course there’s a place called the Batcave. It’s a really plain-looking room, in which extraordinary things are happening.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    <\/span>

    Image caption<\/span>
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    \n The door to Microsoft’s Hololens testing room has a familiar logo
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    \n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    I and four others are wearing the firm’s HoloLens augmented reality headsets – we can see each other and our surroundings, but floating around us are pictures, 3D objects, text and presentation material. <\/p>\n

    To add new objects to the space, we say search terms out loud. The results appear as a stack of images for us to manipulate.<\/p>\n

    Oh, and did I mention that two of my collaborators aren’t even in the same city as me? <\/p>\n

    One is in New York, and one is in San Francisco. I can see them, and they can see us, as animated avatars, which blink, and lip-sync to the words we speak.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

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    Image caption<\/span>
    \n
    \n HoloLens presents a new way to interact with computers
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    \n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    Microsoft changed the way we worked once with Windows.<\/p>\n

    There’s a long way to go yet, but maybe, when augmented reality is ready for prime time, this could be the workspace of the future.<\/p>\n

    Surfer Cool<\/h2>\n

    “The CEO sets the tone, the direction, the strategy and the culture,” says Mr Clayton. <\/p>\n

    Microsoft’s former boss Mr Ballmer once said Linux open-source software was a cancer. <\/p>\n

    Mr Nadella has stood in front of a display saying Microsoft loves Linux, made Microsoft a member of the Linux Foundation and spent $7.5bn buying Github – the code-sharing site where much of the content is designed to run on Linux-based operating systems.<\/p>\n

    Under his watch, this has become a company that embraces others’ ideas. <\/p>\n

    All, admittedly, with the confidence that comes from having caught another wave – Cloud – which pays its bills. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n


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