MS Build developer conference keynote: “Go for that moonshot”
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella kicked off the company’s annual MS Build developer conference this week in Seattle by describing the opportunity available to software developers as connectivity changes not only the consumer world but also drives the digital transformation of enterprises and industries.
“Build is all about imaging what’s possible but more importantly making it possible,” Nadella said. “The real thing is how do we galvanize and come together as engineers as developers to make that world possible? When I think about the world today as computing is getting embedded in the world–where every place whether it’s our homes, offices, factories, stadiums, every industry from oil and gas to retail to agriculture to financial services, everything from connected cars to connected refrigerators to smart surgical tools to smart coffee machines–are all being driven by software.”
He continued: “That’s the opportunity in front of us; the opportunity for developers and our colleagues from all other disciplines to come together to build this new world. That’s the sense of purpose mission that grounds us at Microsoft—to empower every person, every organization on the planet to achieve more.”
Nadella also discussed improvements to the company’s public cloud, Microsoft Azure, which he described as the “productivity and communications fabric” that creates scaffolding for all developers. And, in an era of hybrid public/private cloud operating models, he hit on the move of compute out to the edge in service of new types of applications.
When holistically considering the relationship between data center and edge, Nadella said it’s all about consistency. “We’re extending the cloud to the edge. This is what we’ve always had as a vision for distributed computing. It’s great to see this distributed compute fabric come alive. When you talk about hybrid, what is important is to think about the consistency, the consistency between the cloud and the edge when it comes to operating models…You have to meet the real world needs.”
With 54 data center regions and more than 90 compliance certificates, Nadella said the goal is to make “Azure the world’s computer. You have to meet the real world needs–regulated industries, data sovereignty needs, operational sovereignty needs. You have to be able to meet the world’s complexity with what you build.”
