Tag: Microsoft

8 Things Satya Nadella Did to Make Microsoft a Trillion Dollar Company

Satya Nadella

Satya Nadella has been credited for the turnaround of Microsoft. Ever since he took the reigns of Microsoft as its CEO in February, 2014. His mobile first and cloud first strategy resonated with the enterprise world.

He focused his efforts on reviving Microsoft from the grassroots and has played a significant role in making it only the third US company to touch the magical trillion dollar market capitalisation.

Microsoft joins the elite company of Apple and Amazon to touch the trillion dollar market cap. It is ahead of Google in market cap and strong as ever with dominant enterprise offerings. Here are 8 things Satya Nadella did to make Microsoft a $1 trillion company:

1. Cultural & Mindset Shift

Cultural & Mindset Shift

Nadella advocated an open minded approach after taking over the hot seat at Microsoft. He has inspired his team to embrace learning big time. He calls this learn-it-all curiosity, it has rallied the developers, customers and the investors for microsoft.

The company is looking at novel ways to reinvent itself and do things better in today’s context, not just relying on its past.

2. Rediscover the soul of Microsoft :

When Microsoft was launched by its legendary founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975, it had a mission of bringing a computer to every desk. It was one of the most audacious dreams that shaped the modern world.

The success of Microsoft is a folklore of the technology world. The Microsoft had achieved its mission though. Nadella realised that for the company to excel and push its past glory, it needs a new mission more relevant today.

Satya Nadella worked with the senior leadership team in reframing what Microsoft stood for. The mission of the company needed to inspire their teams and customers. Nadella reinforced that work should have profound significance for the teams. He helped redefine Microsoft’s mission as  “Empower every individual and every organization on the planet to achieve more.”

3. He Understands the Business Value of AI

Business Value of AI

Satya Nadella has been credited with making the right technology moves for Microsoft’s success. Microsoft has also been pushing with AI initiatives that are creating impact and will be the source of major competitive advantage in the future.

Microsoft has always had a sizable presence in the enterprise software world with its office suite, enterprise emails, productivity suite, SQL-Server, operating systems etc. The company is now a dominant player in the cloud world.

The Azure cloud offers an integrated way for customers to store and access all these softwares. Microsoft is also augmenting its cloud with AI features and leveraging the strong enterprise data to take an unprecedented lead.

4. Balance of Consumer and Enterprise products:

Microsoft has been experimenting and innovating like never before. It’s offerings and balance of consumer and enterprise products are making other technology companies cringe.

Office 365 is an example of how the company has tailored its old products to today’s context. Offering the productivity suite on cloud and making them accessible like consumer products shows the great capabilities of Microsoft.  

5. The shift from personal computing to cloud computing

cloud computing

Nadella had put smart bets into Azure. It transformed from a minimal hosting service to a full fledged dominant cloud based ecosystem driving the core Microsoft products now.

The customers actually wanted this. They are now taking advantage of a automated data centre, cheaper services, more sophisticated and state of the art technology for their enterprise software. Azure offers platform as a service to its clients and hybrid cloud has become the mainstream. Satya Nadella started talking about this five years back.

Today Azure is coming out with great features and hosting more customers in the cloud than anyone else in the world.  

6. Nadella prefers Collaboration

Microsoft and Apple have been engaged in a war for decades. Nadella has been instrumental in making moves that have made Microsoft more collaborative. The open and collaborative approach of the company is pushing new frontiers for its developments.

Microsoft made its office apps available on the iPad. Nadella grabbed headlines when he used an iPhone at a Salesforce event in 2015 to demo an  Outlook app.

7. Open Source Community

Open Source Community

Microsoft has had a history and some of its top leadership have had lot of adverse remarks for open source, Linux etc. Steve Balmer once described open source software as cancer.

Microsoft has shown a new liking to open source software under Nadella. Infact, they have also purchased Github and the company is now contributing to open source prolifically. Diversity has taken a new meaning in the company under the present leadership.

8. Making Connections

“A leader must see the external opportunities and the internal capability and culture, and all of the connections among them and respond to them before they become obvious parts of the conventional wisdom.”

Satya Nadella

One of the most remarkable attributes of Nadella has been to build the right connections within and outside of the company. Nadella has been known for taking initiative whether it was Microsoft’s jump into the portable PC market with Surface Book, its first laptop, or embracing cloud and open source software.

The new approach and leadership of Satya Nadella has certainly taken Microsoft to great heights. Bill Gates couldn’t have chosen a better successor to Steve Ballmer than him.

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Bing is Accessible in China after being Blocked Accidentally

Bing-is-accessible-in-china

Bing, the Microsoft’s search engine was blocked in China accidentally on Wednesday and the outage persisted until Thursday. No other international search engine is accessible in China other than Bing. The stringent policies and censorship in China have ensured exit of major international players like Google among others.

“We have confirmed that Bing is currently inaccessible in China and are engaged to determine next steps,” said a Microsoft spokesperson CNN after the outage was reported on Wednesday.  Reports claim that the outage was accidental and due to technical reasons. Now the search engine is accessible again for the users in China.

Microsoft spokesperson

The Chinese search engine market is dominated by Baidu. The country has a huge market but its strict rules and regulations make it hard for international competitors to enter or survive in China. Google pulled out of China in 2010.

As per China Internet Network Information Center, 802 million people in China are active internet users. It is by far the largest population of internet users in the world. India has close to 500 million internet users followed by US with approximately 300 million internet users.

Baidu

Microsoft is still investigating into the reasons why Bing was blocked. Several users reported that they were unable to access Bing since Wednesday afternoon. But with Bing back online, Microsoft can heave a sigh of relief for now.

The Chinese government’s firewall known as the Great Firewall has blocked several global platforms like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, Youtube & Yahoo.

Great Firewall

Microsoft launched Bing for China in June 2009. It had modified itself in line with the Chinese regulators and their censorship norms. The web analytics service, SimilarWeb, reported that Bing received over 220 million page views every month.

Microsoft launched Bing

With the widening rift between China and US, the growing tensions could escalate and impact the technology companies like Apple etc. who are relying on the Chinese market for their growth.

The US has introduced a Bipartisan Bill, if passed, would ban the export of US Chips and other technology to Chinese companies like Huawei and ZTE. The trade war between the two countries may escalate even further in the next few months amidst the uncertain geoclimate.

The Chinese government has been on a censorship spree and has banned several apps and news service of late. Last week, it shut down more than 700 websites, 9300 mobile apps and that included Tencent’s popular news service app.

The digital crackdown has hurt many technology companies and social media platforms including Wechat-operator, Tencent etc. In 2017 alone, the Chinese government shutdown 128,000 websites. The Chinese official Xinhua news agency reported that these websites contained obscene and harmful information.  

In an era of globalisation, technology can play a vital role in building bridges between countries, take trade and cultural relationships to a new high.

 

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Inspirational Paul Allen Quotes to Remember the Legend

allen paul

Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft and one of the pioneers in the computing industry passed away on October 15th in Seattle, USA. Allen, 65, was suffering from cancer. Paul was first diagnosed with cancer in 1982. The cancer was treated successfully then, but its recurrence in October 2018 caused his death.

Together with his childhood friend, Bill Gates, he started Microsoft in 1975. Microsoft became the leader in software industry and created a whole new world driven by computers. Allen left Microsoft in 1983 and the board in 2000.

paul-allen-and-bill-gates

Bill Gates said, “Personal computing would not have existed without Paul Allen. He deserved much more time, but his contributions to the world of technology and philanthropy will live on for generations to come. I will miss him tremendously.”

Paul Allen had diverse business interests in technology, media companies, scientific research, real estate, private spaceflight ventures, and stakes in other companies. He also owned professional sports teams like the Seattle Seahawks and the National football league.

Paul allen

At the time of his death, Paul Allen was the 21st richest person in the world with a net worth of $20.3 billion as per Forbes. Allen was instrumental in getting Bill Gates to dropout of Harvard and start Microsoft. He played a key role in the early days of Microsoft.

Paul Allen was an innovator, investor and a business legend. His philanthropic work includes setting up organisations like Allen Institute for Brain Science, Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Institute for Cell Science.

Paul donated more than $2 billion for causes related to education, wildlife, environment conservation, arts, healthcare, and community services etc.

microsoft

Paul received many awards and accolades in his illustrious career in different professions. He also made it in the Time list of the 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2007 and 2008. Paul Allen maintained a low profile and focused on his work.

Here are some words of wisdom and inspirational by the legendary Paul Allen.

“You look at things you enjoy in your life, but much more important is what you can do to make the world a better place.”

Paul Allen

allen paul quotes

“The possible is constantly being redefined, and I care deeply about helping humanity move forward.”

Paul Allen

“Any crusade requires optimism and the ambition to aim high.”

Paul Allen

allen paul quotes

 

“What should exist? To me, that’s the most exciting question imaginable. What do we need that we don’t have? How can we realize our potential?”

Paul Allen

“In my own work, I’ve tried to anticipate what’s coming over the horizon, to hasten its arrival, and to apply it to people’s lives in a meaningful way.”

Paul Allen

allen paul quotes

“I’m always interested in finding ways to innovate… It’s a blend; it’s not a point focus.”

Paul Allen

“For the most part, the best opportunities now lie where your competitors have yet to establish themselves, not where they’re already entrenched”

Paul Allen

allen paul quotes

“I grew up around books. When I first held the book and it was a substantive, tangible thing, and I thought of all the work that went into it, not just my work but everybody else’s and the research and so forth, there’s a sense of really have done something worthwhile.”

Paul Allen

“When it comes to helping out, I don’t believe in doing it for the media attention. My goal is to support the organizations that need help.”

Paul Allen

allen paul quotes

“In my experience, each failure contains the seeds of your next success– if you are willing to learn from it.”

Paul Allen

 

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Microsoft Reaffirms Software’s Prominence with $7.5 billion GitHub Deal

Microsoft

Microsoft’s acquisition of Github would have been unimaginable a few years back. But
with Satya Nadella at the helm, things have changed considerably for Microsoft. GitHub
is a web based software development platform and hosting service offering distributed
version control for source code.

The software giant has acquired GitHub for a staggering $7.5 billion in all stock deal as
confirmed by its CEO. GitHub is the code repository which is very popular among code
developers and tech enthusiasts around the world. Among the most notable contributors
on GitHub are companies like Apple, Google and FB.

microsoft

The business world is recognising the importance of software. The dizzying heights of
GitHub’s valuation confirm that notion. They last raised $250 million at roughly $2
billion value, in less than 2 years, they are now valued at $7.5 billion. It may also be
noted that Microsoft made its biggest acquisition ever in 2016, the $26.2 billion deal
with LinkedIn.

Patience has its own virtues. The cofounders of GitHub have proven that yet again.
Bloomberg reported that cofounders of GitHub, Tom Preston-Wener, Chris Wanstrath
and PJ Hyett will be billionaires after this deal. It will also change the ownership ranks in
the world’s largest software company. All the three cofounders will now be among the
Microsoft’s biggest shareholders placing them next to the legendary Bill Gates.

Back in 2001, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer called Linux “a cancer.” Today,
Microsoft is the top contributor contributor on Github, beating Google, Facebook,
Docker and other competitors. The world has changed for Microsoft after Satya Nadella
took over the reins. While MS has been focused on open sourcing software for almost a
decade, they are now embracing open source and Linux like never before.

Satya Nadella

While many in the open source world have been sceptic about this acquisition, others
point out that Microsoft today is not the same company they were a decade ago.
Microsoft acquired Skype in 2011 for $8.5 billion & Nokia for $7.6 billion in 2013, both
these deals haven’t really gone the way they would have expected. The frequent updates,
versioning issues, integration with existing MS products made many users Skype sceptic.
Nokia has been a write off that Microsoft would have best avoided in hindsight.

Microsoft is doing their bit to show how deeply they care about open source and
developer community by having the largest number of open source contributors on
GitHub. Nadella wrote in his blog, “Computing is becoming embedded in the world, with
every part of our daily life and work and every aspect of our society and economy being
transformed by digital technology. Developers are the builders of this new era, writing
the world’s code. And GitHub is their home.”

GitHub

The resurgence of Microsoft under Satya Nadella has been quite phenomenal. The MS
stock has risen by over 160% in the last four years with Nadella as the CEO. He has taken
brave decisions and made Microsoft more relevant in today’s world. They are moving
away from the closed ecosystem to a more open one embracing diverse platforms and
technologies.

Microsoft has reiterated that GitHub will remain open source and would maintain its
core developer friendly ethos. Satya Nadella remarked,“GitHub will remain an open
platform, which any developer can plug into and extend. Developers will continue to be
able to use the programming languages, tools and operating systems of their choice for
their projects – and will still be able to deploy their code on any cloud and any device”

This deal reaffirms the importance of software in taking on the biggest challenges and
prejudices facing our world today. The world will be a more open and interconnected
place with software and technology playing a pivotal role in shaping the future.

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