微软CEO谈IT转型 亚马逊与Windows10

We live in strange times. Companies are increasingly running applications on computers owned and operated by another company. Employees tend to look upon their colleagues in information technology as more of a nuisance than an asset.

我们生活在一个奇怪的时代。越来越多的企业在其他公司拥有和运营的电脑上运行他们的应用程序。很多员工都很讨厌搞IT的同事，而不是把他们视为一笔资产。

Satya Nadella thinks his company can help make sense of it all.

萨塔亚o纳德拉认为，他的公司可以帮助人们理解这些问题。

On Monday, at Microsoft’s Ignite conference in Chicago, the chief executive will directly address those tech professionals who make sure email gets where it needs to go and that corporate databases keep chugging along. To them Nadella will issue a reminder that even though many dollars budgeted for technology are now flowing to marketing or other corporate departments, that doesn’t mean IT spending is down overall or that the need for tech specialists has evaporated. Quite the contrary.

本月初，在微软Ignite芝加哥峰会上，这位首席执行官将对这些确保邮件顺利抵达目的地，公司数据库保持正常运转的技术人员发表演讲。纳德拉还将提醒他们，尽管许多技术预算正在流向营销或其他业务部门，但这并不意味着IT支出正呈现总体下降趋势，也不意味着技术人员对企业的重要性正在降低。事实截然相反。

Last week Nadella spoke with Fortune about Microsoft’s challenge in addressing this group about the company’s strategy and how he feels about its cloud computing competition. It’s the latest stop in a two-month itinerary that has placed Nadella in front of his company’s largest constituencies, from users of Microsoft business applications (at Convergence in March) to software developers (at Build last week).

上周接受《财富》专访时，纳德拉谈到了微软的战略以及云计算领域的竞争。这次峰会也是纳德拉为期2个月的巡回演讲行程的最近一站，他希望通过此次巡回演讲拉拢微软最大的“票仓”，即微软企业应用用户（3月的Convergence峰会）和软件开发人员（上周的Build峰会）。

For those readers wondering, Fortune did ask Nadella about reports that Microsoft may be the company behind a recent takeover offer for Salesforce , a company that has proven to be a rival and sometimes partner to the Redmond, Wash. company. He refused to comment.

为了解开部分读者心中的疑问，《财富》也向纳德拉求证了微软将收购Salesforce公司的传闻。Salesforce长期以来一直与微软保持着亦敌亦友的关系。不过纳德拉拒绝评论这个问题。

The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

以下是此次采访的摘要，有删减。

Fortune:Microsoft’s theme of aligning IT with businesses is something you’ve talked about for years. So what’s new in the cloud era?

《财富》：“让IT与企业结盟”这个主题，微软已经说了好几年了。在云计算时代，这个主题有何新意？

Nadella: It is all about empowering IT. And in some sense I look at it and say, you know, of course IT stands for information technology, but none of those other transformations for business users can really be achieved, especially in the context of the enterprise, if IT professionals don’t also think of themselves as key drivers of innovation and transformation. And that’s kind of the play with words that I’ve been thinking about a lot. IT really stands for innovation and transformation.

纳德拉：我们要赋予IT更大的力量。当然IT的意思是信息科技，但如果IT人士不把自己看作创新和转型的关键推动者，那么商业用户的其它转型是无法真正实现的，尤其是在企业环境中。最近我思考了很多这方面的事。IT的真正含义应该是创新（Innovation）与转型（Transformation）。

Many employees view IT as naysayers and gatekeepers. I don’t see that changing. Isn’t that what drove the bring-your-own-device [BYOD] stuff in the first place?

许多员工认为IT部门就是“找茬的”或是“看大门的”，而且我认为这种情况还没有转变。是否正是这种看法催生了所谓的“自带设备上班”（BYOD）潮流？

That’s right. And I think that is the challenge. One of the things that I’ve been really focused on, long before even becoming CEO, has been Enterprise Mobility Suite[Microsoft’s software to manage corporate devices]. The thing about bring your own device or bring your own service is, what happens to the information assurance of a company? Okay, so you move to another company. What happens to all the access you had as a person with credentials? Who is taking care of restricting all of that?

是的，我认为这是一个挑战。早在我成为CEO以前很长时间，我就非常关注微软的“企业移动套件”（Enterprise Mobility Suite，用来管理企业移动设备的软件）。“自带设备上班”或“自带服务上班”的关键问题是，它对企业的信息安全有何影响？对涉密人员的进入权限有何影响？谁来负责约束这些行为？

So I feel that there has to be the freedom for end users to be able to choose devices and choose services and yet the ability for IT to govern but not control. I think that transformation—from control to govern, from provision to enable—is what IT must go through. And quite frankly it’s not just about them not wanting to change. It’s also incumbent on us, especially as a massive provider to IT, to give them the right kind of solutions.

我认为，终端用户必须有选择设备和服务的自由，同时IT部门也要具备管理而非控制的能力。我认为这种从控制到管理、从提供到赋予的转型，是企业的IT部门必须经历的一步。老实说，不想做出改变的并非仅仅是IT部门，还包括像我们这样的守成者，尤其是作为一家大型的IT供应商，也需要为他们提供正确的解决方案。

One of the things we’re talking about right now is Windows 10. We are making it possible for businesses to stay current with Windows as a service [as easily as consumers have been able to]. There are lots of technology elements to this—for example, there are things that we’re doing in Windows Update to still give IT a lot of governance around how patches are applied but solve some of the things that get in the way of IT being able to satisfy their customers.

Windows 10是我们最近谈得比较多的。我们使企业能够继续轻松享受Windows这项服务（就像普通消费者一样）。这个版本有很多技术元素——比如在Windows的系统更新上，我们仍然围绕着升级补丁等方面给予了IT部门很多管理权，同时也解决了很多妨碍IT部门满足客户要求的问题。

So yes, you’re absolutely right. IT has to go from saying “no” to saying “yes,” but saying “yes” with assurance. And that I think is both a technology problem for us to solve and what we must talk a lot about and evangelize.

所以，你说的很对。IT部门必须要从说“No”向说“Yes”转型，但是要有把握地说“Yes”。这既是一个有待我们解决的技术问题，也是一个我们必须多多宣传普及的问题。

Many companies think that if they put more business applications in the cloud, they don’t need as many IT people. Maybe you don’t need a SharePoint expert or an Exchange expert. Is the net number of IT professionals shrinking at large companies?

很多公司认为，如果他们把更多的企业应用置于云端，那么他们就不再需要那么多IT人员了。你可能不需要一个SharePoint或Exchange方面的专家。那么，大型企业的IT部门人数现在是否在缩减？

There are always going to be people who are experts in security, or end-user devices, or collaboration, or databases. That’s not going to go away. But what’s the reason all of these professions come together? To help the business transform itself.

总会有一些人是网络安全、终端用户设备、协作或数据库方面的专家，这些人是不会失业的。但企业为什么要提供这些职位？就是要帮助企业转型。

You talk about shrinking budgets. So here is a fascinating phenomenon. Ask any company—it could be in manufacturing, packaged goods, energy, retail, what have you—what in their total digital technology spend is going up as a percentage of revenue. Then ask what is coming down. It’s what was considered past IT—maybe a bunch of fans, or servers. Even if you are predominantly an on-premise customer, you’re using the cloud quite a bit for development and testing new applications. You may be building a mobile or web back end in the cloud, but you’re not yet moving your ERP [“enterprise resource planning”] system to the cloud.

你刚刚谈到了预算缩水的问题。一个有趣的现象是：你可以问问任何一家公司——不管它从事制造、包装、能源、零售还是什么行业——其IT支出的哪一部分正在上涨，哪一部分正在下降。后者就是所谓“过时的IT”——它可能是很多风扇或服务器什么的。即便你是一个以本地应用为主的用户，你在研发或测试新应用时也会用到大量云技术。你可能会在云端上构建移动或网页后端，但你还没有把ERP（企业资源规划）系统放到云端上。

So in a sense they want more out of the same dollar for what they did yesterday. And then they want to spend more dollars for things that they’re doing that are new.

所以在某种程度上可以说，他们希望用和昨天一样的投资获得更多的回报。然后他们想花更多的投资去做他们正在做的新东西。

IT spend is not limited just to the IT department. It’s spread across marketing and human resources. One of the fascinating things I see is the amount of analytics spend. Power BI [a Microsoft “business intelligence” service], which we launched as SaaS [“software-as-a-service,” the industry term for a cloud-based application], I initially thought would be used by developers and maybe marketers. It turns out that HR departments all use Power BI because “people analytics” is a big deal. So in places where I traditionally would not have expected big IT spending, they are becoming big spenders of IT, because IT is everywhere.

并不是只有IT部门的IT支出很有限，这个现象在营销和人力资源领域也很普遍。一个有意思的现象是企业的分析支出。Power BI（微软的“商业情报”分析服务）是我们以SaaS模式（Saas又称“软件即服务”，是一个用来描述云应用的行业术语）发布的，我起初以为它的用户主要是开发者或营销人员。后来我发现人力资源部门也在使用Power BI，这是因为“人力分析”的重要性。因此，有些领域我原本没有预料到会出现较大的IT支出，但它们却成了IT的开支大户，因为现在IT已经无所不在。

Let’s talk about data, making really complex data sets, and making the ability to parse them available to mere mortals.

让我们谈谈数据吧，如何制作非常复杂的数据集，以及如何分何这些复杂数据，令普通人也能看得懂。

If you look at what has happened with our database business, at the core, with SQL Server…I mean, it’s just pretty hilarious for me to think about people who think of Amazon Web Services as a leader in data and not have an understanding of the democratization of data that we have done with our regular old database business—an $8 billion business that’s everywhere, in the core of the enterprise.

如果你看看我们的数据库业务特别是SQL服务器业务……我觉得非常搞笑的是，很多人认为亚马逊网页服务（Amazon Web Services）是数据领域的领军者，却没有意识到我们通过“古老的”数据库业务早已实现了数据的平民化——这项业务已经发展到80亿美元的市值，无处不在，居于企业的核心地位。

We just bought a company called Revolution Analytics. We are going to completely change what it means to do advanced analytics with our data solutions. We have machine-learning stuff that is about really bringing advanced analytics and statistical machine learning into data-science departments everywhere. We absolutely have this strength in Excel, but Power BI is a SaaS service that allows you to do these rich visualizations and dashboards and collaborate and share.

我们最近刚刚收购了一家名叫Revolution Analytics的公司。凭借我们的数据解决方案，我们将彻底改变所谓的“高级分析”的面貌。我们的机器学习技术将把高级分析和统计学机器学习技术带到全球各地的数据科学部门。我们的Excel绝对拥有这种优势。作为一项SaaS服务，Power BI可以使你通过云端进行丰富的可视化和仪表盘操作，并进行协作与分享。

I’ve been very, very focused on usage. I look at what’s happening in Office 365 by tenant, by service. All of that is dashboarded. So if one of the engineers on Office 365, say Exchange Online, has a dashboard I can go discover that usage. So it’s become, in fact, the lingua franca of how we make sense of big data inside the company and how we collaborate on it.

我非常关注这些技术的使用。我仔细研究了Office 365的租借和服务使用情况。所有这些数据都是用仪表盘工具（Dashboard）分析的。如果一位利用Office 365的工程师——比如说他正在利用其Exchange Online功能——有一个仪表盘，我就可以发现他的使用情况。所以，它其实已经成为我们理解公司内部的大数据及其协作方式的通用工具。

And it’s not just reports or dashboards. It’s live data. That means I can ask a natural-language question, get a response, do a rich visualization, and then share back. That, I think, is what I referenced before as data culture. Just because you have big data doesn’t mean you have insights or a better ability to pass judgment. So you’ve got to have this data culture. What does that mean? You are only going to have a data culture if you have the right kinds of tools. That’s what Power BI is about.

而且它不仅仅是报告或仪表盘这样简单，它是实时的数据。这意味着我可以问一个自然语言的问题，并且可以获得回答，做丰富的可视化操作，然后分享回去。这就是我以前提到过的“数据文化”。仅仅拥有大数据，并不意味着你就拥有了正确的见解，或拥有了更好的决判能力，所以你必须要有数据文化。什么意思呢？如果你有了正确的工具，你只需要拥有数据文化就可以了。这正是Power BI的目标。

Most people see Amazon as the leader in core infrastructure. Over time it added higher level services and talked more to big companies like General Electric. What’s your take on the competitive landscape for big customers when it comes to cloud computing? Is Google a contender?

大多数人认为亚马逊才是核心架构领域的领军者。随着时间的推移，它添加了更高级的服务，与通用电气等大公司的合作也越来越多。你怎么看云计算市场上针对大客户的竞争？谷歌是否也是一个竞争者？

The enterprise market is never winner-take-all. If you look at the previous client-server era, we had a lot of success. So did Oracle, EMC, Cisco. And now, when you look at the current cloud era, you would say there is us, there’s Amazon, and there’s Google who have that hyperscale cloud. But really it’s Amazon, us, and maybe VMware who will translate the position that they had in the previous era to one in this new era.

企业市场从来不是一个“赢者通吃”的市场。如果你看看之前的主从式服务器时代，我们有很多成功的例子，甲骨文、EMC和思科也一样。在云时代，你可能会说，我们和亚马逊、谷歌都有超大规模的云业务。但我认为只有亚马逊和我们，或许还有VMware能在这个新时代继续保持上一代的领先地位。

I really am not focused on competing against Amazon in IaaS [“infrastructure-as-a-service”]. That’s not what it’s about. Take Azure Active Directory. It’s got 5 million entities—that means 5 million commercial organizations that have a relationship with Microsoft in the cloud and not on premise or with our licenses. None of that. They’re using Dynamics for CRM [“customer relationship management”] or ERP [“enterprise resource management”], Office 365, Azure, Enterprise Mobility Suite. That is representing 450 million individual identities within that 5 million organizational footprint.

我其实并不关注在IaaS（“基础设施即服务”）领域与亚马逊的竞争，那不重要。我们的Azure Active Directory“微软云”服务已经有了500万个实体用户，这意味着有500万个商业实体在云端上与微软有联系，而且他们既没有用本地服务，也没有我们的许可证。他们使用微软Dynamics进行客户关系管理或企业资源管理，还使用微软的Office 365、Azure和企业移动套件。而这500万个商业实体中，还有4.5亿个个人。

To me what matters is having the right mix of SaaS value. I don’t think of my server business as somehow “old school” or “legacy.” I actually think of the server as the edge of my cloud.

在我看来，真正重要的，是拥有正确的SaaS的价值组合。我不认为我们的服务器业务是“过时的”，或是所谓的“遗产”。我认为服务器业务对我们的云业务来说是一种优势。

We now have the ability to tie together the cloud and the server. That is a very unique capability that we have. So who am I competing with? Amazon has no capability to compete there. They don’t have a server. Nor does Google. Oracle doesn’t have the equivalent capability. So those are the places where we want to really excel.

我们现在有能力将云业务和服务器业务捆绑到一块，这是我们的一个独特的能力。所以我们究竟在与谁竞争？亚马逊在这方面是没有竞争能力的，他们没有服务器，谷歌也没有。甲骨文也没有等同的能力。所以这些都是我们想要领先的领域。

I’m not claiming that we are the only guys who are going to succeed in the cloud. Others can succeed as well, just like in the previous generation. But the people who are on the right side of history, so to speak, when it comes to technology promise? You identified them right. There is Google, Amazon, and us. But who has the credentials with the enterprise? Who has the tenacity to stay constant with it? It’s not a fashionable thing to say you’re in the enterprise business for a few days and then move onto the next project.

我并不是说，我们是唯一一家能够在云服务方面取得成功的公司。就像上一个时代一样，其他公司也能取得成功。但在技术前景方面，我们是符合历史潮流的。你提到的几个名字都很对，有谷歌、亚马逊，还有我们。但是谁受到了企业界的信任？谁拥有一直专注企业界的韧性？有些公司说自己是做企业业务的，喊了几天口号，就转到下一个项目了。

I want to build our own public cloud at scale. We have over a million machines. I want to take the same software and—well, this is how we got to SQL [Server] 2016. It’s already running; it’s called Azure DB. We will now take that and reverse-integrate it into a server product. That’s the kind of capability that I feel will serve us well in the long run.

我想要大规模地构建我们自己的公共云。我们有超过100万台机器。我想要采用同样的软件——这时我们就要说说SQL（服务器）2016了。目前它已经开始运行了，它的名字叫Azure D8。我们将把它反向集成到一款服务器产品中。我认为这种能力在长期内都会给我们带来好处。

I don’t think we’ve actually mentioned Windows or Office once. Is Microsoft still a Windows company?

我们似乎还没有提到Windows或Office。微软是否依然是一家做Windows的公司？

Windows is used by a billion and a half users. We see, on a monthly basis, 850 million machines that touch Windows Update. This is not even counting the machines behind corporate firewalls that don’t directly talk to Windows Update. So it’s a vibrant user base. And there are 300 million PCs, by the way, sold every year.

Windows目前拥有15亿用户。每月都有8.5亿台机器进行Windows升级，这还没有算上那些因为被企业防火墙隔绝而没法直接进行Windows升级的机器。所以说我们拥有一个充满生机的用户群。另外每年还有3亿台PC被销售出去。

So Windows 10 is huge to me. It’s the beginning of a new generation of Windows. It’s not just about PCs. It’s about tablets and phones. It’s also about holographic computers and Surface Hub. It’s about [simple, versatile computers like] Raspberry Pi. Windows has gone way beyond the PC. It’s one core, one store, one platform.

所以Windows 10对我来说是一件大事。它是一个新时代的开始，不仅对于PC，对于平板电脑、智能手机、全息电脑、Surface Hub和Raspberry Pi（又称“树莓派”，一款小型卡片式电脑）也是一样。Windows已经远不止局限于PC。它是一个核心、一个仓库、一个平台。

So to me Windows is very much part of the cloud. But one of the fundamental things I believe is, it’s not just about one device. When I say “mobile first” or “cloud first,” to me it’s about the mobility of the app or the experience, not the mobility of the device. And if you believe that, then the control plane is really the cloud.

所以对我来说，Windows也是云服务的一个重要部分。但我认为，Windows的重要性不仅在于一款设备。当我说“移动第一”或“云第一”时，我指的是应用的移动性或体验，而不是设备的移动性。所以我们的控制平面其实是云技术。

I actually talked quite a bit about Office 365 in this conversation. The fact that you didn’t think of it as Office is interesting. Office 365, that’s where Azure Active Directory gets all those organizational tenants from. It’s core to what we’re doing in Azure. It’s core to what we’re doing in Office. And guess what? When you log into Windows, you’re logged into both your Microsoft account and your Azure Active Directory. So the control plane is in the cloud. And those are the ways things come together.

我在这次访谈中其实谈到了好几次Office 365，但有趣的是，你并没有把它当成Office。正是由于Office 365，Azure Active Directory才有了那么多商业客户。它是我们在整个Azure项目的核心，也是Office的核心。而且当你登录Windows的时候，你其实同时登录了你的微软账户和Azure Active Directory。所以我才说我们的控制平面是云服务，这些都是整合的方法。

If I’m a mobile developer, I can develop for Apple iOS, I can develop for Android, or I can develop for Windows. But there’s been strife with hardware makers and Microsoft. Why develop for you and not them?

如果我是一个移动开发者，我可以为苹果的iOS开发应用，也可以为Android或Windows开发应用。但硬件厂商和微软之间也有一些摩擦。所以我为什么要选择为你们而不是为iOS和Android开发呢？

I think they will choose to develop wherever they can make the most amount of money by reaching the most amount of users. At Build we said that we want them to write universal Windows apps [that work across devices]. There are many cases to be made for it. When you build a universal app, and you want a 10-foot experience, you can go to the Xbox. You want to innovate and build a holographic app, you can use the same application on a holographic computer like HoloLens. You can, of course, run it on our tablets like the Surface Pro 3.

我认为，只要能接触到最多的用户，赚最多的钱，开发者就会去开发应用。我们在Build峰会上说，我们希望开发者开发通用的Windows应用（即在各种设备上都可以用）。这样做是很有道理的。如果你开发了一款通用应用，你想获得10英尺的游戏体验，你就可以在Xbox上玩。如果你想创新地开发一款全息应用，你也可以在HoloLens这样的全息电脑上运行同一款应用。当然，你也可以选择在Surface Pro 3这样的平板电脑上运行。

So you now have these “Windows Continuum” features where those universal applications can gracefully move between a tablet and a laptop. It’s relevant for consumers, but it’s also going to be relevant in many industrial scenarios. Those are the kinds of reasons why developers will want to look at us and build for us. But we made it clear at Build that developers can use our back end and still target Android or iOS devices. They can have our Enterprise Mobility Suite and, if they’re an IT person, manage security, identity, device management, and data-loss protection across Android, iOS, and Windows. That’s a unique capability of ours.

这样你就拥有了“Windows一致性”特点，也就是这些通用应用可以平顺地在平板和笔记本电脑之间切换。这对消费者来说是件大事，对于很多行业来说也非常重要。正是因为这些原因，开发者才会看重我们，愿意为我们开发应用。不过我们在Build峰会上也明确表示，开发者也可以使用我们的后端，同时为Android和iOS设备开发应用。他们可以使用我们的企业移动套件，如果他们是IT人员的话，还可以在Android、iOS和Windows等各个平台使用我们的安全管理、身份识别、设备管理和数据损失保护工具。这也是我们的一个独特的能力。