Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who is widely credited with reviving Microsoft with a move to the cloud, has said that Azure was the brainchild of the shy and retiring former CEO Steve Ballmer.
Nadella told CNBC that Ballmer played a key role in the refocus to cloud.
“The guy who gave me permission to do all this was Steve Ballmer. He wanted us to be bold and go at the cloud very aggressively and that is what we did”, Nadella said.
Blue sky and white cloud with sun light and rainbow
Software king of the world Microsoft claims that it is beating everyone with its Cloud Security packages and Volish results on the Cloud are looking pretty good.
For the three months ending 31 March 2019, Microsoft saw revenue increase 14 percent year on year to $30.6 billion and growth in Productivity and Business Processes, Intelligent Cloud and More Personal Computing.
Microsoft supreme Dalek Satya Nadella has told partners that AI does not mean the death of privacy.
Addressing the assembled throngs in his keynote speech at Microsoft’s Inspire global conference in Las Vegas, Nadella said the tech could improve human relationships, but also warned that ethics must be implemented to ensure users’ privacy.
“We have to do our very best work when it comes to privacy because as technology becomes pervasive in our lives, we have to approach everything with the fundamental assumption that privacy is a human right”, he said.
Nadella emphasised that the IT industry needs a set of “ethical principles” to ensure that technology does not unduly influence real-life events.
“We want to make sure that anything that we do doesn’t amplify bias, doesn’t hijack our attention, and doesn’t sway opinion”, he said.
“The Tech Accord is a fantastic example of that because the world in our time needs a new Geneva Convention. We need to make sure that the most vulnerable populations are protected from these new weapons. And when it comes to AI, we have to have a set of principles that guide the development of AI.”
He did not mention the vendor’s recent acquisition of conversational AI company Semantic Machines, but he emphasised that Microsoft is working to ensure its machine learning will soon have the same conversational capabilities as a human being.
“In the last couple of years, some of the advances – especially as measured by our ability to have human parity in a lot of these perception and language capabilities – is pretty stunning”, Nadella added.
He explained that the “ultimate AI challenge” for Microsoft is to develop a two-way natural conversation between bot and human.
“We’re also trying to push this concept of language understanding or this capability of language understanding to the next level, to have the ability to do full duplex conversations”, he added.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has written a book about how he had to “rediscover Microsoft’s soul” when he took the top job in 2014.
The book with the racy title Hit Refresh depicts Nadella as an Indian boy rising through the hierarchy at Microsoft to the chief executive spot.
At a launch event in London, Nadella said that he had to re-establish the purpose and goal of the vendor and take it beyond its PC roots.
“When I joined Microsoft in 1992 we used to talk about getting a PC in every home and in every desk as our mission. It was tangible, clear, succinct and in some sense very empowering because it was clear what the company was for and what we were trying to get done.
“Even by the late nineties, at least in the developed world, we had more or less achieved that, and after that it was a bit unclear – what is our purpose?
“So that was what I thought was important to start asking in 2014, it’s quite an existential question, why does Microsoft exist?”
Nadella said that, on this existential journey, he went right back to the first product Microsoft created – interpreters for the Altair 8800 – and formed a culture within the company that would lead to its focus not just being on technology.
“Those are the two things I’ve focused most on”, he said. “The sense of purpose and mission, and the culture. Those are the two bookends.
“Of course you have to get a lot of things in the middle right – your products, your technology, your business strategy… but what is ignored is what are the necessary conditions for you to get those things right? I believe it’s that sense of purpose and culture.”
Apparently Nadella after questing for the soul of Microsoft, vanquishing a few dragons, rescuing a few products from trolls, reshaped the company’s mission statement to focus more on people. It now reads: “At Microsoft, our mission is to empower every person and every organisation on the planet to achieve more.”
Apparently these sorts of mission statement’s pass for a soul.
Nadella said that, “moving forward”, Microsoft has given itself three pillars with which to achieve this mission – AI, mixed reality and quantum computing.
The CEO who told women that they could gain good karma by not asking for pay rises, Microsoft new Chief Executive Satya Nadella, apparently is planning to come back as a slug in a future life.
Nadella has become one the technology industry’s biggest earners, with a total compensation package worth $84.3 million this year.
According to a document filed with securities regulators, Nadella has no chance of being released from the wheel of birth and death any time soon – unlike many Microsoft female employees.
The huge number is mostly made up of the estimated value of certain one-time stock awards given to Nadella, who became the company’s third CEO in February. He cannot actually receive the shares until 2019.
The massive stock awards, valued at $79.8 million overall, were designed to keep Nadella at Microsoft while the company was hunting for a new CEO, and to give him long-term incentives as CEO.
Large stock awards have not been necessary for Microsoft’s previous two CEOs, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, as both had multi-billion dollar holdings in the company.
Nadella’s compensation is set to be more modest, with “total target compensation” for fiscal 2015 set at $18 million, according to the company’s proxy filing.
The Microsoft boss has said sorry to his women employees after making a huge howler on the subject of equal pay.
In answer to a question from the floor, “What do you advise women who are interested in advancing their careers, but not comfortable … with asking for a raise?” Multiple studies have suggested that women in the workplace earn roughly three quarters of the salary, on average, compared to male counterparts doing the same job.
Satya Nadella said that women who don’t ask for raises have “good karma” and that not asking for equal pay with men is a “superpower”,
His exact words were: “women who don’t ask for raises have a “superpower … because that’s good karma, that’ll come back … that’s the kind of person that I want to trust.”
It is not as if he said the comment in private either. He said it on a stage at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference, held in Phoenix, where no one is likely to take offence.
“It’s not really about asking for the raise,” Nadella told the audience, “but knowing and having faith that the system will actually give you the right raises as you go along”.
We guess that at that point the conversion was drowned out by the cries of a thousand PR bunnies throwing themselves into Nadella’s mouth to stop him speaking.
Needless to say when he got back to the office there was a very cross representative from the PR department with an apology all written for him to send to all female employees who are being advised not to apply for raises.
Nadella wrote that he answered that question completely wrongly.
“I believe men and women should get equal pay for equal work. And when it comes to career advice on getting a raise when you think it’s deserved, Maria’s advice was the right advice. If you think you deserve a raise, you should just ask.”
We suspect that Nadella will have to spend a little more time on the Wheel of Birth and Death to escape his karma on that one.
April 26th, 2024
April 26th, 2024
April 25th, 2024
April 25th, 2024
April 24th, 2024
April 26th, 2024
April 26th, 2024
April 25th, 2024
April 25th, 2024
April 24th, 2024