Redmond based Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) is a multinational software corporation and has a market cap of $19 billion. Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise group is responsible for building and running the company’s back-end technologies, including technologies for data centers, databases and enterprise IT systems and development tools.

There was a time when generation of output was directly proportional to the resources you had; but today, it depends on the resources you can access. Cloud services make it possible for every organization to conduct its business in an efficient manner, irrespective of its location. What lies at the core of cloud service is the optimum use of resources through an infrastructure by exploiting a network of datacenters. This era is all about data and its conversion into insights and action. Cloud services facilitate the enterprise business to have a transformed vision of growth prospects where the big players, while building infrastructure for their own first party applications, in turn, cater to the start-ups as their needs are the same. This creates an environment of inclusive growth and encourages the entrepreneurs to come up with new ideas.

The Strategy

The strategy for growth and value creation is not an intricate one. We do not need to think about the infrastructure development, independent of our apps since a simple approach of building the infrastructure to support first party applications will pay off. While dealing with the resource management of storage, network and computing, we must think about datacenter and multiple datacenter scales. When it comes to data, we require a data platform, which means a variety of different storage systems and processing systems. We also must think of the application platform; the applications which are being built are mobile-first with cloud computing on the back-end. Hence, it is necessary to invent a new app model to make all the applications reachable to the devices which both consumers and business users use. So, we need to reinvent the infrastructure to support the modern needs of our own applications.

Distribution versus Centralization

Distributed computing should not work in a manner which makes one company capture the world computer storage network in their own data centers because ultimately everyone expects to bring their device to work and to be able to access all their data and applications. Our intention should be to have a secure access to information and applications and at the same time, allowing every other device to participate in the enterprise. We need to accept the fact that with the evolution of this technology in enterprise business, things will remain distributed, and a high level of consistency is required to bring in the benefits which come with centralization.
Another aspect is the heterogeneous nature of the enterprise customer who has several independent systems. So, every solution should be tested beforehand to be compatible with the range of systems. Meanwhile, we cannot rule out the need for standardization so that the cloud application platform has that consistency depending on where it is employed. This is a key area to be focused on.

Opportunities for Entrepreneurs

The enterprise business is going through a very exciting phase as the moment. Gone are the days when a single hot trend drove the growth single-handedly, instead today we have several trends which are all hot at the same time. Also, the entrepreneurs of today have the comfort of getting support from dominant players in the market. There is an atmosphere of healthy competition where everyone has the access to resources which they need to get going. All you need to do is to come up with revolutionary ideas and everyone will come forward to support you. We have invited many entrepreneurs to work with us. Also, we have 'accelerators' where we allow entrepreneurs to sit with us.

Words of Wisdom

The most important ingredient to success today is to read the changes and see the future. We require constant innovation to harness the benefits from every medium which acts as a cushion for the newcomers. For an instance, the role of the developer is changing very rapidly. You cannot say where development ends and marketing starts. So, the work flow of what a developer does needs to be supported with a new tool change. This Hi-Tech business is not built for longevity. It's all about being able to reinvent every second. Also, giving your best to the organization is just not enough and you must strive to get the best out of other resources as well. What an organization does is defined by the coming together of concept, capability and culture and the mantra for success is having these three things in lockstep.(The article is based on the keynote speech delivered at TiEcon, 2013 hosted at Santa Clara)