Not Apple

Satya Nadella is beginning to feel comfortable at the helm of Microsoft. Proof of this is that this July he decided to get up to shake his seat cushion a couple of times and definitively eliminate the shape that Steve Ballmer's years of sitting there had left on him. The result is an email addressed to the company's more than 100,000 employees, and to whoever wants to hear it, with which he begins to define the broad lines of his mandate starting next fiscal year 2015.

It is true that Nadella tried to change the company's motto as soon as he took office as CEO, with that "mobile-first, cloud-first" that he has repeated so much since then and with certain changes in the management cadres; but it has really been now that he has shared his vision of the future.A vision that seeks to overcome the past and build a new, more focused and unique Microsoft

Leaving the Ballmer era behind

Microsoft has only had three CEOs in its nearly 40-year history. One of them was its founder, Bill Gates, and the other his right-hand man, Steve Ballmer. Satya Nadella is different. He knows the company well, not in vain has he been working there for more than two decades, but he is not conditioned by its history. The new CEO is willing to break with the past and put everything under review. There is no place for tradition in this industry and Nadella is right to repeat that.

The consequence of the above is that Nadella intends to open a new era that leaves behind that company of “devices and services” that he intended build Ballmer. The leitmotif coined by the previous CEO less than two years ago is not to his liking and he has not been slow to give it up.

Nadella's worldview is one of a world where mobile and cloud are first, two environments that connect people across the multiple screens and devices they interact with on a daily basis. But for him devices are not important, what is important is the layer of services and applications that can run on them and be useful to people. In this field there is still no clear winner and that is where he sees an opportunity for Microsoft.

Nadella's Microsoft

The key word, and one of the most repeated in the mail, is “productivity” Nadella believes that what makes her unique Microsoft is its ability to empower people to get things done. Only your company can contribute to the world with platforms capable of having a significant impact on the productivity of users and organizations.

Productivity and platformsare the two concepts around which he wants to redefine Microsoft.Both are explained in a text that gives off a rhetoric closer to the business market than to the consumer market. And it is that Nadella is clear in which sectors his company is strong right now.

The essence of Microsoft

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Gone is being a company of devices and services as Ballmer intended. According to Nadella, Microsoft is the productivity company and the platform for a mobile and cloud world>"

But the business approach does not mean leaving aside all consumers. Asked about this in The Verge, Nadella responds with the idea that the business sector and the consumer market are not two watertight compartments and we all have that double aspect of work and life that must be taken into account. It's that dual user you're talking about in your email.

According to Nadella Microsoft must be able to provide tools for both environments: work and lifeAlthough the term productivity is more associated with the first, it also has applications in the second. The increasing conversion of elements of our lives towards digital makes it necessary to provide people with applications and services that allow them to build experiences around them.

Nadella talks about reinventing productivity, innovating and creating new tools that are useful in his quest to empower people to do more . If Microsoft achieved it in its beginnings by making a significant contribution to placing a computer in every home and desk, now it is time to repeat it in a world in which a multitude of screens surround us and information is accessible at all times from anywhere and at any time. .

The cloud and the multitude of platforms

In this necessary ubiquity of information, cloud infrastructure plays a fundamental role That obsession that has swept through the industry in recent years and that Nadella knows about for a while. After all, he was the one who guided Azure to where it is today in the industry.

Microsoft has its cloud and its operating systems. The two together provide a platform for productivity that Nadella wants to set above any individual company product or service. Azure and Windows systems are the elements that delimit the center on which the new CEO wants to orbit, selling their capacity as productive tools both in work with in the life as a differentiating element.

But having your own platform does not imply leaving others aside. When Nadella talks about multiple devices, he knows full well that many of them may not be running on Microsoft systems. Users in their day to day move between several different systems and the goal should be to be in all of them.The important thing is that they use Microsoft services, both at work and at home, and are not conditioned by the type of system with which they are interacting.

The movement seems a move closer to the positions of Google than to those of Apple, although Nadella has also wanted to mark distances with respect to those of Mountain View. In his email, the new CEO talks about the possibilities offered by the immense amount of data to which the company has access through its services, but repeats on several occasions the importance of making careful use of them, respecting at all times the privacy and security of users

What about the hardware?

Going through the email, it can be seen how the essence that makes Microsoft unique, defined by Nadella, has a clear orientation towards software and leaves little place for hardware.This, which is still a return to the origins, when Bill Gates defined it as a software company; questions the future of the company's recent efforts in device manufacturing.

For Nadella, the role of Microsoft hardware should be to open markets and define new product categories. Something that sounds similar to the excuse used by Ballmer to introduce the Surface tablets to the market, although with motivations that now seem different. While the old CEO seemed intent on turning Microsoft into an Apple-style hardware and software company, the new CEO seems to prefer leaving the manufacturing of devices to others and concentrating on providing the platform on which they run.

The problem is that before the end of his term Ballmer closedthe acquisition of Nokia's device divisionUnder the old strategy From him that play made all the sense, but no longer.Nadella, who initially opposed the operation, does not seem to want to follow that line and will have to do something with a manufacturer that accumulates more than 90% of the Windows Phone market. At this point, a quick sale of the division, as Google did with Motorola, may not be ruled out. Which, by the way, would explain the effort to maintain the Nokia brand in future smartphones.

Devices in question

With Microsoft's new philosophy, the company once again focuses on software. Among devices, only Xbox has its future guaranteed. The other recent hardware efforts now seem out of place, including the mobile division acquired from Nokia.

Surprisingly, the only hardware whose future has been assured is Xbox The Redmond console was placed in the spotlight during the election process for the new CEO and there are still those who seem willing to support a possible separation of their division from the parent company.But Nadella has decided to come to its defense, ensuring that its value as a brand is important to Microsoft and that the company can take advantage of many of the advances it promotes.

Switching to a new Microsoft

In Nadella's lengthy mail there is room to review Microsoft's company culture and alert employees to upcoming changes are coming Without mentioning possible and rumored layoffs, in this section the new CEO talks about modernizing the organization, reducing decision-making bodies, defining more focused and measurable processes, greater control of results, etc. All this in response to the need to better predict what users and the market want.

Starting this same month of July, the new management intends to promote a new restructuring of the company during the next six months All departments and teams will have to simplify their operation to move faster and more efficiently, trying to tackle the slow problem that is usually blamed on Microsoft.Subjecting everything to review and a renewed impetus in innovation are the hallmarks of the new culture that is expected to be imposed in Redmond.

Everything to be able to launch a new Microsoft A distance from past attempts with which it seems to want to be Apple. One that, to tell the truth and even with its own forms, now sounds closer to Google. The emphasis on software and on building platforms and tools, attention to the dual work/life use that we make of them, the use of data as a way to provide better experiences, etc; seems closer to Mountain View than Cupertino.

Still, and beyond reasonable resemblances, Microsoft has to be Microsoft and that's what Nadella is aiming for After years in Those accused of trailing behind what other companies put on the market, the new Microsoft outlined in the email by its CEO seems willing to find itself and start marking its own path.The market is waiting.

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