“Fall in love with what you do, and the journey will become easy.” This is not a motivational guru, but Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, speaking to thousands of Indian students across the country.
The day, which was packed with events, including Microsoft’s announcement of commercial cloud services – Azure and Office 365, from local data centres by the end of 2015 and addressing the students later, got Nadella in a philosophical and reflective mood.
With a clear focus on India’s youth and the growing internet population, Nadella and his team also shared Microsoft’s ‘Women in Tech’ and ‘YouthSpark Programme’.
Nadella said it was just beginning of yet another journey for him as he wears the cap of Microsoft global CEO. He connected with the 800 students at a venue here and thousands across the country through live streaming.
“I am just starting my journey. But, I can share some principles that you could use to approach your challenges and opportunities,” Nadella said adding that in the long run, EQ (energy quotient) does trump IQ (intelligence quotient).
Microsoft launched commercial cloud services, which is expected to accelerate public and hybrid cloud adaptation significantly in India, a moved aimed at making ‘digital India’ a reality.
It’s a key strategy for Microsoft India as it enables partners and customers to adopt Azure and Office365.
But, Microsoft needs to invest in its partner base that can help customers in complex use cases and needs for integration and migration.
It also anticipates a price war from Amazon and IBM on public Cloud.
The task may not be easy, but as Nadella in his interaction said, “It is no longer just one field of engineering…but also people from design sensibility, economics and business backgrounds coming together.
It is about coming together or multi-disciplinary approach to innovations, which all of you represent, is perhaps going to shape and change what you do and create.”
It is a critical time for Microsoft to address the start-up eco system requirements with the Mobile-First, Cloud First strategy.
But, in Nadella’s words, he is ready for the challenges. And this is best summed up by what he said to a student, “My journey was not simple. It had ups and downs, professionally and personally. It’s the choices that I made which have shaped a lot what I have been able to achieve and learn and take meaning out of it.”
