For the last three (3) years I've been totally impressed with Nadella. And I was waiting for him to say something like this, and finally ... he has, the first person at Microsoft, which would have been unheard of in the Ballmer years.
Which is why even Nadella is saying something that was outlawed in decades prior ... something Bill Joy and others said 3 decades ago -- "The Network is the Computer" ('80s), followed by "One Network, One Computer" (and vice-versa, '90s). It's even in the 'adopted' name of the company he co-founded ... Stanford University Network. Those were back before Gates even called the Internet a fad, because he wanted it to be, because it meant the end of distribution control of the PC.
Which is why Microsoft has been losing in every end-consumer device since. Heck, they have to heavily subsidize their gaming division with profits from business (they've never made a profit in 15 years), and that's their most successful end-consumer device (massive losses everywhere else). When consumers have choice, they've left Microsoft in droves. Which is what Nadella understood from day 1.
There's still a lot of work to do. .NET is still heavily dependent (80%) on x86/Win32-only C++ code, but now that it's fully supported outside of x86/Win32 platforms, not just x86-64/Win64 itself, but GNU/Linux as a peer (at least what can be ported -- again, same issue with even x86-64/Win64, let alone non-x86-64), it will happen. That's what really needed to happen for the future of Microsoft, portable code and platforms.
"The world is becoming a computer" -- Nadella
Azure has finally changed Microsoft, especially once they embraced GNU/Linux into their core infrastructure, because their partners offered nothing, even if GNU/Linux powered (which is usually how Microsoft would 'adopt' Open Source -- partner managed). As they put the time and investment into developing software defined networking and storage on Open Source, it changed everything about them.Which is why even Nadella is saying something that was outlawed in decades prior ... something Bill Joy and others said 3 decades ago -- "The Network is the Computer" ('80s), followed by "One Network, One Computer" (and vice-versa, '90s). It's even in the 'adopted' name of the company he co-founded ... Stanford University Network. Those were back before Gates even called the Internet a fad, because he wanted it to be, because it meant the end of distribution control of the PC.
Which is why Microsoft has been losing in every end-consumer device since. Heck, they have to heavily subsidize their gaming division with profits from business (they've never made a profit in 15 years), and that's their most successful end-consumer device (massive losses everywhere else). When consumers have choice, they've left Microsoft in droves. Which is what Nadella understood from day 1.
There's still a lot of work to do. .NET is still heavily dependent (80%) on x86/Win32-only C++ code, but now that it's fully supported outside of x86/Win32 platforms, not just x86-64/Win64 itself, but GNU/Linux as a peer (at least what can be ported -- again, same issue with even x86-64/Win64, let alone non-x86-64), it will happen. That's what really needed to happen for the future of Microsoft, portable code and platforms.
