Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella today hailed his “very specific” vision for a mobile first world, which he claims will be driven by the “mobility of the human experience across all forms of computing”, and not necessarily the mobility of any one device.

Nadella, speaking in today’s keynote at Microsoft’s Future Decoded event in east London, repeated the company’s ambition to enable what he sees as a “mobile first, cloud first world”, as he also once again touted success of the recently launched Windows 10 platform.

The new platform showed how “Microsoft is able to penetrate the entire planet”, after rolling out in 180 countries, hitting 110 million users within a first few months of launching.

With such success in mind, the company’s global mission, Nadella said, is being driven by a mobile first world, with cloud infrastructure simultaneously key.

He said computing will “be ubiquitous” globally in five years, meaning people will have access to such mobility “on their wrists, their eyes, on small screens, large screens, in conference rooms, and through sensors that will be located everywhere”.

“In this world, what then becomes more important is our own mobility, the experience of mobility and that’s what gets orchestrated by the cloud. That’s why we think about mobility and cloud revolutions happening together.”

Microsoft is focused on making three key contributions to ensure a “mobile first, cloud first world”, stated Nadella, which includes the reinvention of business processes, enabling the intelligent cloud and investing in new forms of personal computing.

Nadella, who during his speech also announced the company’s plans to offer commercial cloud services from the UK for the first time, talked up the importance of intelligent data, which is helping it transform the way it works internally and with its partners.

Difference is data
Over the next five years, Nadella said the company is focused on building applications that differ from what it has built previously.

“That difference will be data,” he said. “It is about our ability to build applications that convert data from the exhaust into the fuel, data that converts from things that you log because of the usage of the application to virtually feature in the application. There will now never be a form of data like a search box that doesn’t have auto complete, there will never be a form of data without recommendations.”

He said the company, and he personally, is also more committed to going beyond organisational boundaries, with intelligent data sets key to that goal.

“As a CEO, I need to look at key performance indicators and how we use our own tools to drive culture at Microsoft. This is all part of me getting to real issues, rather than waiting for things to be reported up. This includes key indicators for success, like net promoter scores, over lagging indicators like revenue or profit.”

During the speech, Nadella showed off a series of demos, and even displayed one on an Apple device, which the executive described as an “iPhone Pro” as it was equipped with Microsoft’s suite of applications.

The company also showcased Microsoft HoloLens, a technology run on holograms, which he said “enables us to blend the digital world with the real world and transform what we see through technology”.