微軟CEO談IT轉型 亞馬遜與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.

我們生活在一個奇怪的時代。越來越多的企業在其他公司擁有和運營的電腦上運行他們的應用程序。很多員工都很討厭搞IT的同事，而不是把他們視爲一筆資產。

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

薩塔亞o納德拉認爲，他的公司可以幫助人們理解這些問題。

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，在微軟Ignite芝加哥峯會上，這位首席執行官將對這些確保郵件順利抵達目的地，公司數據庫保持正常運轉的技術人員發表演講。納德拉還將提醒他們，儘管許多技術預算正在流向營銷或其他業務部門，但這並不意味着IT支出正呈現總體下降趨勢，也不意味着技術人員對企業的重要性正在降低。事實截然相反。

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).

上週接受《財富》專訪時，納德拉談到了微軟的戰略以及雲計算領域的競爭。這次峯會也是納德拉爲期2個月的巡迴演講行程的最近一站，他希望通過此次巡迴演講拉攏微軟最大的“票倉”，即微軟企業應用用戶（3月的Convergence峯會）和軟件開發人員（上週的Build峯會）。

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.

爲了解開部分讀者心中的疑問，《財富》也向納德拉求證了微軟將收購Salesforce公司的傳聞。Salesforce長期以來一直與微軟保持着亦敵亦友的關係。不過納德拉拒絕評論這個問題。

The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

以下是此次採訪的摘要，有刪減。

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?

《財富》：“讓IT與企業結盟”這個主題，微軟已經說了好幾年了。在雲計算時代，這個主題有何新意？

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.

納德拉：我們要賦予IT更大的力量。當然IT的意思是信息科技，但如果IT人士不把自己看作創新和轉型的關鍵推動者，那麼商業用戶的其它轉型是無法真正實現的，尤其是在企業環境中。最近我思考了很多這方面的事。IT的真正含義應該是創新（Innovation）與轉型（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?

許多員工認爲IT部門就是“找茬的”或是“看大門的”，而且我認爲這種情況還沒有轉變。是否正是這種看法催生了所謂的“自帶設備上班”（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，我認爲這是一個挑戰。早在我成爲CEO以前很長時間，我就非常關注微軟的“企業移動套件”（Enterprise Mobility Suite，用來管理企業移動設備的軟件）。“自帶設備上班”或“自帶服務上班”的關鍵問題是，它對企業的信息安全有何影響？對涉密人員的進入權限有何影響？誰來負責約束這些行爲？

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.

我認爲，終端用戶必須有選擇設備和服務的自由，同時IT部門也要具備管理而非控制的能力。我認爲這種從控制到管理、從提供到賦予的轉型，是企業的IT部門必須經歷的一步。老實說，不想做出改變的並非僅僅是IT部門，還包括像我們這樣的守成者，尤其是作爲一家大型的IT供應商，也需要爲他們提供正確的解決方案。

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是我們最近談得比較多的。我們使企業能夠繼續輕鬆享受Windows這項服務（就像普通消費者一樣）。這個版本有很多技術元素——比如在Windows的系統更新上，我們仍然圍繞着升級補丁等方面給予了IT部門很多管理權，同時也解決了很多妨礙IT部門滿足客戶要求的問題。

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，你說的很對。IT部門必須要從說“No”向說“Yes”轉型，但是要有把握地說“Yes”。這既是一個有待我們解決的技術問題，也是一個我們必須多多宣傳普及的問題。

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?

很多公司認爲，如果他們把更多的企業應用置於雲端，那麼他們就不再需要那麼多IT人員了。你可能不需要一個SharePoint或Exchange方面的專家。那麼，大型企業的IT部門人數現在是否在縮減？

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.

總會有一些人是網絡安全、終端用戶設備、協作或數據庫方面的專家，這些人是不會失業的。但企業爲什麼要提供這些職位？就是要幫助企業轉型。

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.

你剛剛談到了預算縮水的問題。一個有趣的現象是：你可以問問任何一家公司——不管它從事製造、包裝、能源、零售還是什麼行業——其IT支出的哪一部分正在上漲，哪一部分正在下降。後者就是所謂“過時的IT”——它可能是很多風扇或服務器什麼的。即便你是一個以本地應用爲主的用戶，你在研發或測試新應用時也會用到大量雲技術。你可能會在雲端上構建移動或網頁後端，但你還沒有把ERP（企業資源規劃）系統放到雲端上。

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.

所以在某種程度上可以說，他們希望用和昨天一樣的投資獲得更多的回報。然後他們想花更多的投資去做他們正在做的新東西。

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.

並不是只有IT部門的IT支出很有限，這個現象在營銷和人力資源領域也很普遍。一個有意思的現象是企業的分析支出。Power BI（微軟的“商業情報”分析服務）是我們以SaaS模式（Saas又稱“軟件即服務”，是一個用來描述雲應用的行業術語）發佈的，我起初以爲它的用戶主要是開發者或營銷人員。後來我發現人力資源部門也在使用Power BI，這是因爲“人力分析”的重要性。因此，有些領域我原本沒有預料到會出現較大的IT支出，但它們卻成了IT的開支大戶，因爲現在IT已經無所不在。

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

讓我們談談數據吧，如何製作非常複雜的數據集，以及如何分何這些複雜數據，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.

如果你看看我們的數據庫業務特別是SQL服務器業務……我覺得非常搞笑的是，很多人認爲亞馬遜網頁服務（Amazon Web Services）是數據領域的領軍者，卻沒有意識到我們通過“古老的”數據庫業務早已實現了數據的平民化——這項業務已經發展到80億美元的市值，無處不在，居於企業的核心地位。

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.

我們最近剛剛收購了一家名叫Revolution Analytics的公司。憑藉我們的數據解決方案，我們將徹底改變所謂的“高級分析”的面貌。我們的機器學習技術將把高級分析和統計學機器學習技術帶到全球各地的數據科學部門。我們的Excel絕對擁有這種優勢。作爲一項SaaS服務，Power BI可以使你通過雲端進行豐富的可視化和儀表盤操作，並進行協作與分享。

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.

我非常關注這些技術的使用。我仔細研究了Office 365的租借和服務使用情況。所有這些數據都是用儀表盤工具（Dashboard）分析的。如果一位利用Office 365的工程師——比如說他正在利用其Exchange Online功能——有一個儀表盤，我就可以發現他的使用情況。所以，它其實已經成爲我們理解公司內部的大數據及其協作方式的通用工具。

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.

而且它不僅僅是報告或儀表盤這樣簡單，它是實時的數據。這意味着我可以問一個自然語言的問題，並且可以獲得回答，做豐富的可視化操作，然後分享回去。這就是我以前提到過的“數據文化”。僅僅擁有大數據，並不意味着你就擁有了正確的見解，或擁有了更好的決判能力，所以你必須要有數據文化。什麼意思呢？如果你有了正確的工具，你只需要擁有數據文化就可以了。這正是Power BI的目標。

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?

大多數人認爲亞馬遜纔是核心架構領域的領軍者。隨着時間的推移，它添加了更高級的服務，與通用電氣等大公司的合作也越來越多。你怎麼看雲計算市場上針對大客戶的競爭？谷歌是否也是一個競爭者？

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.

企業市場從來不是一個“贏者通吃”的市場。如果你看看之前的主從式服務器時代，我們有很多成功的例子，甲骨文、EMC和思科也一樣。在雲時代，你可能會說，我們和亞馬遜、谷歌都有超大規模的雲業務。但我認爲只有亞馬遜和我們，或許還有VMware能在這個新時代繼續保持上一代的領先地位。

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.

我其實並不關注在IaaS（“基礎設施即服務”）領域與亞馬遜的競爭，那不重要。我們的Azure Active Directory“微軟雲”服務已經有了500萬個實體用戶，這意味着有500萬個商業實體在雲端上與微軟有聯繫，而且他們既沒有用本地服務，也沒有我們的許可證。他們使用微軟Dynamics進行客戶關係管理或企業資源管理，還使用微軟的Office 365、Azure和企業移動套件。而這500萬個商業實體中，還有4.5億個個人。

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.

在我看來，真正重要的，是擁有正確的SaaS的價值組合。我不認爲我們的服務器業務是“過時的”，或是所謂的“遺產”。我認爲服務器業務對我們的雲業務來說是一種優勢。

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.

我們現在有能力將雲業務和服務器業務捆綁到一塊，這是我們的一個獨特的能力。所以我們究竟在與誰競爭？亞馬遜在這方面是沒有競爭能力的，他們沒有服務器，谷歌也沒有。甲骨文也沒有等同的能力。所以這些都是我們想要領先的領域。

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.

我並不是說，我們是唯一一家能夠在雲服務方面取得成功的公司。就像上一個時代一樣，其他公司也能取得成功。但在技術前景方面，我們是符合歷史潮流的。你提到的幾個名字都很對，有谷歌、亞馬遜，還有我們。但是誰受到了企業界的信任？誰擁有一直專注企業界的韌性？有些公司說自己是做企業業務的，喊了幾天口號，就轉到下一個項目了。

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.

我想要大規模地構建我們自己的公共雲。我們有超過100萬臺機器。我想要採用同樣的軟件——這時我們就要說說SQL（服務器）2016了。目前它已經開始運行了，它的名字叫Azure D8。我們將把它反向集成到一款服務器產品中。我認爲這種能力在長期內都會給我們帶來好處。

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

我們似乎還沒有提到Windows或Office。微軟是否依然是一家做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目前擁有15億用戶。每月都有8.5億臺機器進行Windows升級，這還沒有算上那些因爲被企業防火牆隔絕而沒法直接進行Windows升級的機器。所以說我們擁有一個充滿生機的用戶羣。另外每年還有3億臺PC被銷售出去。

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對我來說是一件大事。它是一個新時代的開始，不僅對於PC，對於平板電腦、智能手機、全息電腦、Surface Hub和Raspberry Pi（又稱“樹莓派”，一款小型卡片式電腦）也是一樣。Windows已經遠不止侷限於PC。它是一個核心、一個倉庫、一個平臺。

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.

所以對我來說，Windows也是雲服務的一個重要部分。但我認爲，Windows的重要性不僅在於一款設備。當我說“移動第一”或“雲第一”時，我指的是應用的移動性或體驗，而不是設備的移動性。所以我們的控制平面其實是雲技術。

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.

我在這次訪談中其實談到了好幾次Office 365，但有趣的是，你並沒有把它當成Office。正是由於Office 365，Azure Active Directory纔有了那麼多商業客戶。它是我們在整個Azure項目的核心，也是Office的核心。而且當你登錄Windows的時候，你其實同時登錄了你的微軟賬戶和Azure Active Directory。所以我才說我們的控制平面是雲服務，這些都是整合的方法。

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?

如果我是一個移動開發者，我可以爲蘋果的iOS開發應用，也可以爲Android或Windows開發應用。但硬件廠商和微軟之間也有一些摩擦。所以我爲什麼要選擇爲你們而不是爲iOS和Android開發呢？

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.

我認爲，只要能接觸到最多的用戶，賺最多的錢，開發者就會去開發應用。我們在Build峯會上說，我們希望開發者開發通用的Windows應用（即在各種設備上都可以用）。這樣做是很有道理的。如果你開發了一款通用應用，你想獲得10英尺的遊戲體驗，你就可以在Xbox上玩。如果你想創新地開發一款全息應用，你也可以在HoloLens這樣的全息電腦上運行同一款應用。當然，你也可以選擇在Surface Pro 3這樣的平板電腦上運行。

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.

這樣你就擁有了“Windows一致性”特點，也就是這些通用應用可以平順地在平板和筆記本電腦之間切換。這對消費者來說是件大事，對於很多行業來說也非常重要。正是因爲這些原因，開發者纔會看重我們，願意爲我們開發應用。不過我們在Build峯會上也明確表示，開發者也可以使用我們的後端，同時爲Android和iOS設備開發應用。他們可以使用我們的企業移動套件，如果他們是IT人員的話，還可以在Android、iOS和Windows等各個平臺使用我們的安全管理、身份識別、設備管理和數據損失保護工具。這也是我們的一個獨特的能力。