Bill Gates
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
And increasingly, the offline economy is becoming some sort of cloud-dependent service. I mean, it's crazy to just see cars rely on the cloud and restaurants rely on the cloud. Like anything that you interface with in the physical world, you expect to have some digital component. At the very least, take credit cards.
And increasingly, the offline economy is becoming some sort of cloud-dependent service. I mean, it's crazy to just see cars rely on the cloud and restaurants rely on the cloud. Like anything that you interface with in the physical world, you expect to have some digital component. At the very least, take credit cards.
And all of these things, point-of-sale systems, all of these things are routed through the cloud at some point. And so... David, I think you're making the same point about the cloud today that I was about Microsoft in the PC era. Microsoft was lucky to own 90% market share and in cloud they own, you know, meaningfully less than that. Right.
And all of these things, point-of-sale systems, all of these things are routed through the cloud at some point. And so... David, I think you're making the same point about the cloud today that I was about Microsoft in the PC era. Microsoft was lucky to own 90% market share and in cloud they own, you know, meaningfully less than that. Right.
But it's still basically a tracker on the growth of an insane secular tailwind that is just an inevitability in the world. It's probably a 30, 40 year wave that they get to keep riding. Yeah.
But it's still basically a tracker on the growth of an insane secular tailwind that is just an inevitability in the world. It's probably a 30, 40 year wave that they get to keep riding. Yeah.
Yep. So to review how it came to be, interestingly, it was Ray Ozzie in an incubation group doing it outside the bounds of the business units. Beginning in 2006. Beginning in 2006. Yeah. with Steve's buy-in and the air cover from Steve to make it happen organizationally. You look at where all the talent came from. Bing taught them how to do distributed systems.
Yep. So to review how it came to be, interestingly, it was Ray Ozzie in an incubation group doing it outside the bounds of the business units. Beginning in 2006. Beginning in 2006. Yeah. with Steve's buy-in and the air cover from Steve to make it happen organizationally. You look at where all the talent came from. Bing taught them how to do distributed systems.
Xbox Live was a always-on cloud service, real-time, zero latency, with 40 million subscribers. MSN was a super high-traffic web property with 750 million registered users online. Hotmail was a web application that hundreds of millions relied on. They had SharePoint and Exchange. There was knowledge of how to do server-based application software for the enterprise.
Xbox Live was a always-on cloud service, real-time, zero latency, with 40 million subscribers. MSN was a super high-traffic web property with 750 million registered users online. Hotmail was a web application that hundreds of millions relied on. They had SharePoint and Exchange. There was knowledge of how to do server-based application software for the enterprise.
I mean, there was some conflict business model-wise with Windows Server, since Azure would be an orthogonal business model. But the technical chops were there. I mean, these are hardcore server OS people. Of course, that group is going to be capable of doing things like hypervisors. So...
I mean, there was some conflict business model-wise with Windows Server, since Azure would be an orthogonal business model. But the technical chops were there. I mean, these are hardcore server OS people. Of course, that group is going to be capable of doing things like hypervisors. So...
I just think the ingredients were remarkably there from all these other things that Microsoft had been doing over the years. They were kind of the only one who could pull this off at this scale with this set of enterprise relationships to migrate all these people to the cloud as they built out the product suite.
I just think the ingredients were remarkably there from all these other things that Microsoft had been doing over the years. They were kind of the only one who could pull this off at this scale with this set of enterprise relationships to migrate all these people to the cloud as they built out the product suite.
Yeah. There was seven years before Steve Ballmer handed the reins to Satya where Azure development was happening under him.
Yeah. There was seven years before Steve Ballmer handed the reins to Satya where Azure development was happening under him.
That is nowhere near the public narrative.
That is nowhere near the public narrative.