Microsoft's Nadella: Productivity Is Our Soul

Cloud Contracts: 8 Questions To Ask

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When setting priorities, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says there is no breaking the tie between mobile-first and cloud-first as strategies for the next generation of computing. But beyond that, the company needs to make choices.

"The real question that needs to be asked -- as well as answered -- is what [can we] do as an ecosystem that's unique, that's impactful," Nadella told the crowd at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference in Washington, D.C. "To me, the answer is clear." Creating productivity tools is the thing Microsoft is best known for, he said, and the thing that stretches beyond the Windows PC.

"That's our singular mission, that's what's unique to us, that's what in our core and in our soul -- and that's what we're going to do." As computing power keeps growing, he added, what's scarce is human attention and time.

[For more on Microsoft's cloud focus, see Microsoft Pushes Partners To Cloud.]

Cloud and mobile demand equal attention because mobile productivity depends so much on cloud services and contextual data, Nadella said. This is a source of frustration to computer engineers who don't like having two things ranked #1, he noted, but the sorting algorithm doesn't work. What's more important, he continued, is paying attention to the demands from users about data and privacy and being in control of how cloud and mobile tools behave. "We want Windows to stand for that user-controlled privacy."

To maintain its reputation for productivity, Microsoft will focus on innovating around new modes of input and output that work on phones as well as PCs and are generally more flexible. Nadella said he already finds himself talking to his Windows PC phone "more than I have ever talked to Windows." One onstage demo showcased the latest generation of Microsoft's Cortana voice-powered digital assistant, which is capable of translating a phrase like "add an appointment for Thursday at 8 pm and call it dinner with my wife" into an appointment -- and warning about another event scheduled at the same time.

The biggest crowd-pleaser of the event was a voice translation demonstration of a Skype session between an English speaker, Microsoft's Steve Clayton, and a German woman -- who was naturally gloating over Germany's World Cup win. As each spoke in their own language, translations appeared a moment later, as on-screen subtitles accompanied by a synthesized voice in the other language. Aside from a minor grammatical glitch ("Well how is it me friends"), the German speaker was able to express herself quite clearly ("I could not be happier I celebrated the whole night") and even tease Clayton, who is British ("In a single game, Germany has scored more goals than England in the last two events together."). Microsoft is targeting beta release for the feature later this year.

Skype Translate - awesome verbal translation service coming later this year #WPC14 pic.twitter.com/rCSNhrWYsG

— Darren Spence (@4eyedSalesGuy) July 16, 2014

Nadella also showed off a preview of Delve, a recently announced "Office graph" feature that provides a Facebook-like feed of all the activity from across all the productivity applications in a workplace -- for example, allowing you to see that a file has been shared without searching for it in a shared drive or cloud repository. Unlike social sharing in Yammer,

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