Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella Hints At Big Changes In Company Email

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella honed his vision for the company today in an email sent to all employees in which he talked about Microsoft as a “productivity and platform company for the mobile-first and cloud-first world. We will reinvent productivity to empower every person and every organization on the planet to do more and achieve more.”

The email, excerpted below, sent as the company begins its fiscal year this month, also hinted at changes to come that will be announced later this month.

From: Satya Nadella
To: All Employees
Date: July 10, 2014 at 6:00 a.m. PT
Subject: Starting FY15 - Bold Ambition & Our Core

Team,

As we start FY15, I want to thank you for all of your contributions this past year. I'm proud of what we collectively achieved even as we drove significant changes in our business and organization. It's energizing to feel the momentum and enthusiasm building.

The day I took on my new role I said that our industry does not respect tradition – it only respects innovation. I also said that in order to accelerate our innovation, we must rediscover our soul – our unique core. We must all understand and embrace what only Microsoft can contribute to the world and how we can once again change the world. I consider the job before us to be bolder and more ambitious than anything we have ever done.

We'll use the month of July to have a dialogue about this bold ambition and our core focus. Today I want to synthesize the strategic direction and massive opportunity I've been discussing for the past few months and the fundamental cultural changes required to deliver on it. On July 22, we'll announce our earnings results for the past quarter and I'll say more then on what we are doing in FY15 to focus on our core. Over the course of July, the Senior Leadership Team and I will share more on the engineering and organization changes we believe are needed. Then, at MGX and //oneweek, we'll come together to build on all of this, learn from each other and put our ideas into action.

Continue reading full letter.

From the day he was appointed to succeed former CEO Steve Ballmer in February, Nadella has emphasized his vision of a “mobile first, cloud first” world. He later added to that, talking about “ubiquitous computing” and “ambient intelligence” in which computing devices are all embedded all around us, taking in reams of data and using it to learn about us in order to operate on our behalf.

Read more on this story at The Seattle Times.