What A Difference A Decade (Or So) Makes

On Sunday, I'll have been a Microsoft employee for 10 years. In total, I'll have been working either for, or at, Microsoft for 14 years, 2 months, and 19 days. That feels crazy!

Like a lot of people who celebrate work milestones, I've been reflecting on just how much has changed since 2010. Back then, Microsoft had a different CEO, Azure was (only just) Windows Azure, and I got my first contract role as a deployment specialist for this thing called Live@edu which is an ancestor of what we now call Microsoft 365.

One thing that's become increasingly apparent (and could be a symptom of me getting older), is that the pace of innovation and change is only getting faster. Think about the time it took for hyper-scale public cloud deployment to become mainstream, and compare it to how quickly new technology like AI through services like Copilot has been adopted.

It's why I believe focusing on success (or customer lifetime value, to put it another way), is so important, and why I get excited to be able to focus on that as my role in the current chapter of my career. After all, the first thing a customer does in the cloud is seldom the only, or last, thing they can do, and we have to help enable them to do it through our fantastic partners.

I've been incredibly fortunate to work with some amazingly talented and inspiring people over the years. Both at Microsoft, and with customers and partners. People who have shown me new ways to work, think, and who've opened doors for me that allowed me to get to where I am today. I hope I continue to be someone upon whom placing a bet seems worthwhile, and pays off!

Now, enough self-indulgence. Time to get back to talking about interesting stuff, like Microsoft Ignite that's happening this week - have you checked out this year's Book of News ? There is SO much cool stuff to catch up on if you haven't been following along.

I particularly love it when SMB and partners are called out, and so the updates on security solutions is one of my favourites.

That's all for this week!

James