There are nine million servers sold annually. Of those, just one million are sourced by the big guys. What we're trying to predict is: in the future, is that all going into the one million category? Or will there be some balance?
— Satya Nadella
In the post-Snowden world, you need to enable others to build their own cloud and have mobility of applications. That's both because of the physicality of computing - where the speed of light still matters - and because of geopolitics.
As I spent tons of time with customers, not just in the United States, but in emerging markets, in Europe, in Latin America, top of mind for everybody is how do they drive growth for their business going forward.
What happens in Britain, what happens in the world, matters a lot to us in our core business.
I definitely fall into the camp of thinking of AI as augmenting human capability and capacity.
We will reinvent productivity to empower every person and every organization on the planet to do more and achieve more.
Competition is not going to kill us.
I think we would be dead and gone if we were just mostly failing.
My ambition with connectivity is not to fly balloons in the national airspace of other countries, but my dream is to be able to enable the local entrepreneurs to have low-cost connectivity solutions.
One of the things I think a lot about, I am perhaps a great example of the enlightened immigration policy of this country where I was able to come here to study and then stay back and work and build a life.
I believe men and women should get equal pay for equal work.
I'm not claiming that we are the only guys who are going to succeed in the cloud. Others can succeed as well, just like in the previous generation.
There are always going to be people who are experts in security or end-user devices or collaboration or databases. That's not going to go away. But what's the reason all of these professions come together? To help the business transform itself.
The energy you create around you is perhaps going to be the most important attribute - in the long run, EQ trumps IQ. Without being a source of energy for others, very little can be accomplished.
We had the Windows app store in Windows 8, but one of the big changes in the design of Windows 10 is to make sure that the app store is front and center where our usage is, which is the desktop.
One of the things that I'm fascinated about generally is the rise and fall of everything, from civilizations to families to companies.
If you don't have a real stake in the new, then just surviving on the old - even if it is about efficiency - I don't think is a long-term game.
Microsoft has no SQL Server developers. We have only Azure developers.
To me, Microsoft is about empowerment... we are the original democratizing force, putting a PC in every home and every desk.
India for sure is a mobile-first country. But I don't think it will be a mobile-only country for all time. An emerging market will have more computing in their lives, not less computing, as there is more GDP and there is more need. As they grow, they will also want computers that grow from their phone.
LinkedIn was an amazing deal for us to do because of their mission.
I am absolutely thrilled to have the Xbox franchise.
Culture change means we will do things differently.
Wherever we are seeing something getting used, that to us is an early indicator that there might be something that people want. And then let's figure out how to make that great. And then let's go figure out monetization.
One lesson learned is you've got to finish the scenario with excellence. You just cannot stop. You have to complete this, and I think that's where Apple has taught us all what experience excellence means in the creation of categories.
Iran is a complete Windows country when it comes to the Office automation side.
You look at marketing: everything that's happening in marketing is digitized. Everything that's happening in finance is digitized. So pretty much every industry, every function in every industry, has a huge element that's driven by information technology. It's no longer discrete.
Without a doubt, I wholeheartedly support programs at Microsoft and in the industry that bring more women into technology and close the pay gap.
The enterprise market is never winner-take-all.
I want everyone inside of Microsoft to take that responsibility. This is not about top-line growth. This is not about bottom-line growth. This is about us individually having a growth mindset.
The mobile-first, cloud-first is a very rich canvas for innovation - it is not the device that is mobile, it is the person that is mobile.
When we think about even the PC market and what is required in the student as well as in the consumer market, we want to be able to compete in the opening price point.
We've had great successes, but our future is not about our past success. It's going to be about whether we will invent things that are really going to drive our future.
From Xbox in the previous generation to Xbox One, it's fundamentally transformed.
If every sector of business and society will be driven by software - how does that get enabled? By highly-paid computer scientists funded by risk capital in Silicon Valley? Or by lots of engineers who can build it themselves?
Information technology is at the core of how you do your business and how your business model itself evolves.
We have only one Windows. We don't have multiple Windows. They run across multiple form factors, but it's one developer platform, one store, one tool chain for developers. And you adapt it for different screen sizes and different input and output.
With all the abundance we have of computers and computing, what is scarce is human attention and time.
Bottom line, we will continue to innovate and grow our fan base with Xbox while also creating additive business value for Microsoft.
It's our own ability to have an idea and go after the idea and make it happen. That's what at the end of the day defines us.
What gets lost is we wouldn't be who we are and as successful as we have been if we didn't have a decent batting average.
There is something only a CEO uniquely can do, which is set that tone, which can then capture the soul of the collective.
I cook a very exotic Hyderabadi rice dish called Hyderabadi biryani, which takes an entire day to cook, and the last time I cooked it was multiple years ago, but someday I'll cook it again.
If you think you deserve a raise, you should just ask.
It's not about asking for the raise but knowing and having faith that the system will actually give you the right raises as you go along.
We are going to completely change what it means to do advanced analytics with our data solutions. We have machine-learning stuff that is about really bringing advanced analytics and statistical machine learning into data-science departments everywhere.
Every opportunity I got, I took it as a learning experience.
Believe me, my journey has not been a simple journey of progress. There have been many ups and downs, and it is the choices that I made at each of those times that have helped shape what I have achieved.
We all know the mortality of companies is less than human beings.
The thing I'm most focused on today is, how am I maximizing the effectiveness of the leadership team, and what am I doing to nurture it?
