In a memo to employees on Thursday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella spelled out his mission for the company: “to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.” Microsoft will also aim to “reinvent” productivity and business processes, build an intelligent cloud platform and create a more personal computing experience for its users, he said.
Nadella’s vision statement comes just a week after the company announced major leadership changes in which four top executives will be stepping down. They include former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop; Kirill Tatarinov, executive vice president of Microsoft Business Solutions; Eric Rudder, executive vice president of Advanced Technology & Education; and Chief Insights Officer Mark Penn.
Those changes were part of the company’s efforts to align its structure to its strategy, Nadella noted in the memo, which was obtained and published by GeekWire. He added that he was sending the message because “It is critical that we start the new fiscal year with this shared vision on what we can do and who we want to become.” We contacted a Microsoft spokesperson who confirmed the validity of the memo, which was not officially released by the company.
Focus on ‘Mobility of Experiences’
Woven throughout Nadella’s memo was an emphasis on Microsoft’s place in a mobile-first, cloud-first world. “[T]he transformation we are driving across our businesses is designed to enable Microsoft and our customers to thrive in this world,” Nadella said. “It’s important to note that our worldview for mobile-first is not just about the mobility of devices; it’s centered on the mobility of experiences that, in turn, are orchestrated by the cloud.”
The company should aim to appeal to “dual-use” customers by helping them improve their productivity both at work and “in the rest of their life activities with other people,” Nadella said.
Another goal, will be for Microsoft to “build the best instatiation” of its vision through its Windows platform and devices, he added. With its Windows 10 operating system set for release on June 29, Microsoft will seek to “delight our customers, increase distribution of our services, drive gross margin, enable fundamentally new product categories, and generate opportunity for the Windows ecosystem more broadly,” Nadella said.
‘An Incredible Position To Seize Growth’
Other elements in the vision outlined by Nadella included promoting an “insatiably curious” growth mindset and further developments in gaming. “We will bring together Xbox Live and our first-party gaming efforts across PC, console, mobile and new categories like HoloLens into one integrated play,” he said.
HoloLens, first revealed in April at Microsoft’s Build 2015 conference, is a headset-enabled holographic computing system. Microsoft has not yet announced when the system will be released to the public or what its price will be, but HoloLens is already being used by a number of early-adopter partners, including NASA. Microsoft and NASA announced earlier this week that a pair HoloLens devices will be launched into space this weekend to be used on board the International Space Station.
In closing his written comments to employees, Nadella said, “We are in an incredible position to seize new growth this year. We will need to innovate in new areas, execute against our plans, make some tough choices in areas where things are not working and solve hard problems in ways that drive customer value. I really do believe that we can achieve magical things when we come together as one team and focus. I’m looking forward to what we can achieve together in FY16.”
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