Technologies such as cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) are among the imperatives that *will foster innovation, create broad economic progress and accelerate the growth of businesses in India, according to Microsoft chairman and CEO Satya Nadella.
There is a tremendous momentum in the adoption of cloud, the technology which is a “big game changer”. It is also the first one that will enable companies to do everything with “a lot less resources”, Nadella said in his keynote address at the ‘Microsoft Future Ready Leadership Summit’.
By 2025, most applications will be built on cloud and in some cases, it would provide 10 times value and in certain cases the value would be 100 times.
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“When you move to the cloud, it’s 70-80% more energy efficient. You also hedge against demand cycles as you are only consuming it when you need it. So, it’s a hedge against energy, a hedge against demand and getting more efficient with cloud native development. To me that trifecta is pretty compelling. So, we are investing a ton. We have 60 plus regions, 200-plus data centres worldwide,” he said, adding Microsoft is determined to make cloud infrastructure available everywhere.
The next imperative is AI
“Let’s think about how AI can augment every one of us in whatever we are doing. Every knowledge worker is going to be more creative, more expressive, more productive. Every frontline worker will be able to do more knowledge work than they ever did. Every design task, whether it’s software engineering, mechanical design, architecture, is going to be that much more productive going forward. So, it’s ultimately, in my opinion, going to accelerate human creativity, human ingenuity and human productivity across a range of tasks,” he added.
The third imperative is fusion teams, where software developers and frontline domain experts come together to build systems, could enable growth. By 2025, 70% of apps will be built through low-code, no-code platforms (tools for people who do not know how to code or have no time to code).
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Another imperative would be re-energising the workforce. Stating that there is a “productivity paranoia”, especially in the knowledge industry, where managers sometimes think that workers are not being productive and workers are feeling burnt out, he said data could bridge this gap. The fifth would be business processes that are collaborative and the final one would be cybersecurity and privacy, he said, stressing on the importance of the zero-trust approach. Hyderabad-born Nadella, also lauded India’s digital story and termed it as the “golden age” of tech. The Microsoft top boss is on a four-day visit to the country, with scheduled stops in Delhi and Bengaluru, apart from Mumbai. He also met with top business leaders in Mumbai including Tata Sons’ Chairman N Chandrasekaran and Tata Consultancy Services’ CEO and Managing Director Rajesh Gopinathan.
