This letter comes the same week Microsoft reported its Fiscal 2023 Q1 earnings, with revenue up and profits down. Nadella starts by saying the challenges of the changing world adds confusion for organizations and customers. He says Microsoft is best positioned to help overcome that confusion through its services: “Our mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more has never been more urgent or more necessary. For all the uncertainty in the world, one thing is clear: People and organizations in every industry are increasingly looking to digital technology to overcome today’s challenges and emerge stronger. And no company is better positioned to help them than Microsoft.” Nadella points out inclusion is a major part of Microsoft’s commitments, now and moving forward. He says the company is teaching digital skills to 10 million people by 2025. Furthermore, Microsoft will continue its humanitarian output, including its push for sustainability. “There is no more powerful input than digital technology to drive the world’s economic output. This is the core thesis for our being as a company, but it’s not enough. As we drive global economic growth, we must also commit to creating a more inclusive, equitable, sustainable, and trusted future.”
Cloud
Microsoft Azure’s growth continues like a runaway train. Satya Nadella says the company now has over 60 datecenters around the world. Cloud investments are a major source of research for Microsoft, including the metaverse where tools like Microsoft Mesh in Teams are already available. “We are building Azure as the world’s computer, with more than 60 datacenter regions—more than any other provider… With Azure Arc, we’re bringing Azure anywhere, meeting customers where they are and enabling them to run apps across on-premises, edge, or multicloud environments… As the digital and physical worlds come together, we’re also leading in the industrial metaverse. From smart factories, to smart buildings, to smart cities, we’re helping organizations use Azure IoT, Azure Digital Twins, and Microsoft Mesh to digitize people, places, and things, in order to visualize, simulate, and analyze any business process.”
Consumer Products
There is no doubt that Microsoft’s focus remains in delivering enterprise services and solutions. However, Nadella says the company will continue to grow its consumer products too. He points out that Windows 11 and Windows 10 have a combined user base of over 1.4 billion monthly active users. Furthermore, Microsoft 365 is now used by 65 million monthly active users. Despite what I see as an underwhelming devices situation, Nadella says Microsoft is committed to the Surface Brand through new products like the Surface Laptop 5, Surface Pro 9, and Surface Studio 2+. Sadly, there no mention of the future of the Surface Duo smartphone. He does, however, discuss gaming and the Xbox division. It is clear Microsoft’s goal is to integrate cloud into gaming in a seamless way. Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Cloud Gaming underpin that ambition: “The big bets we have made across content, community, and cloud over the past few years continue to pay off. We’ve sold more Xbox Series S and Series X consoles life-to-date than any previous generation of Xbox, and with Xbox Cloud Gaming, we’re bringing games to entirely new endpoints. In the past year, we’ve made many of our most popular titles accessible on phones, tablets, TVs, and low-spec PCs for the first time. Our Xbox Game Pass subscription service now includes access to hundreds of games.” It really is a sprawling letter that goes into detail on just about every aspect of Microsoft. You can check out the full published letter by following the source below. Tip of the day: Windows now has a package manager similar to Linux called “Winget”. In our tutorial, we show you how to install and use this new tool that allows the quick installation of apps via PowerShell or a GUI.
