Send In The Clouds
MANILA, Philippines - A roundtable discussion with Darren Huston, corporate vice president, consumer & online (C&O), Microsoft on the future trends of Microsoft.
How has 2010 been for Microsoft?
DARREN HUSTON: This has been a very strong year for Microsoft. We are continuing our transition as a company as we go to the really high level, since the transition of technology is very fast-paced.
What are the major trends for the future?
We started as a consumer company. We spent a lot of time in our history trying to prove our enterprise credibility. We have become very enterprise credible as we run a lot of stock exchanges and bullet trains. Windows is now scaled very much in the enterprise.
How did you work to get consumers’ attention?
What we did was innovated against the enterprise needs and we were OK. We just had to convince consumers that they needed stuff because generally consumers didn’t really think they needed much stuff.
What changed?
Something changed about four or five years ago. Where enterprises became much more conservative and consumers became more aggressive. Part of it is because technology devices started digitizing. TV digitized, cameras digitized, music players, e-readers. People understood that it’s all digital — and they think that maybe all the digital stuff should start working together.
What about the Cloud?
The Cloud is a fabric that can tie the devices together. It is a fabric that can help personalize the experience. The average US household today has 30 digital screens — the navigator in the car, the DVD player, the computer in the rooms — the problem is that a lot of these things don’t connect well together. And the Cloud is the dream opportunity that can start connecting experiences. The devices will also be able to identify who you are across devices at home and at work.
Has there been a positive response to the Cloud?
When you start hearing things like 50 million Xbox consoles sold, the more impressive figure is that 30 million of them are online with Xbox Live. And this makes using the Cloud a must for most users. In products like Kinect, it is not just the interface, but also how Kinect connects you to the Cloud. How you can have these conversations with other avatars, and kids are doing this really naturally, but it is really amazing how the Cloud has empowered people to connect with others.
The next five or 10 years in consumer technology are going to blow away the last five or 10 years — partly it is because these technological changes that are happening. It is also because consumers are demanding more from technology than they ever have in the past. And it is because our lives are becoming digital at a pace that is incredible.
