Microsoft - Beyond Windows

 A long time watcher, and ex-employee, of Microsoft, I'm always interested to see what this tech giant is up to.  With a lot of focus on the still radiant Apple, the steady and interesting work Microsoft does, is often neglected.

Back in the late 90's and early Noughties, Microsoft was the tech place to work in, but over the last decade or so it began to lose it's luster, both in terms of technology, and share price.  The late Ballmer era, saw some big misses (mobile computing especially) and some fairly desperate moves to try and catch-up (the purchase of Nokia, and the resulting massive impairment charges that hit MS's Q4 2015 earnings).

With the Ballmer years firmly behind it, and CEO Satya Nadella in post for over two years, the company has started to get it's Mojo back.  I bought a Surface Pro 4 Windows machine this year, running Win 10 and while not perfect, it's a great device and an indication of what MS can achieve in the consumer space when it decides to focus.  More broadly, the company is continuing to make big strides forward in major computing areas, and is embracing a much wider tech than just the Win platform.  

Last week's Build conference, and Satya's article in Business Insider, point to a future strategy where Microsoft will play across platforms, while building out deep experiences on it's own assets (Skype, XBox, Cortana).  It's release of a developer version of HoloLens, a VR headset that merges reality with holographics, is hugely exciting, and has the potential to be vastly more revolutionary than Oculus Rift.  

The Build conference spent a chunk of time talking about the power of AI, and Bots.  Microsoft clearly sees a big opportunity here, and while we've been here before, it's the scale of data, devices, plus the advances in speech recognition and understanding unstructured data, that now make personal assistants a much more compelling proposition. 

Windows is of course still core to the way the company thinks, and Windows 10 is going to be around for a while (target - 1 billion installs by 2019).  'Build' showcased further improvements to ink input and some other bells and whistles, but the most powerful move in the Windows ecosystem is the concept of Universal Windows, the idea that developers build for one platform, that is distributed across multiple device types, the phone, desktop and XBox.  That strategy is it's most powerful lever in trying to extend Windows onto mobile devices, and start to plug the major whole in it's strategy - the absence of any kind of meaningful penetration or growth of Windows powered mobile phones.

For those of us trying to understand the role of technology and our particular industries, the MS ecosystem, if it can deliver on the vision, provides some powerful opportunities.  For my industry, this could mean real financial agents, giving a financial health check up via HoloLens in my own living room, or getting an update on my savings strategy with an intelligent bot 24/7, or in the world of health insurance, being able to get a medical check up, and make a claim, without needing to leave my home.  

Microsoft may not the shining star right now, but I have a strong feeling that it's day in the sun will return.

(For more on Microsoft, check out the Build developer conference, and the Business Insider article)