I didn‘t check this one out before I walked up here, look, this is just a piece of plastic, it doesn’t know a thing. I can touch it, I‘m not controlling it, it doesn’t recognize me and say, hey, Steve, stop beating on me. It doesn‘t see me, feel me, speak to me. I don’t know, there‘s some song that sounds a little bit like that. But, that’s the future. That‘s where things are going.
You don’t even have to be interested in the tech field, software is going to change so many fields. It will change energy, environmental science, the impact of software will be broadly felt. So I‘m a bit of a zealot on that, as a particular expertise, but the chance for entrepreneurship is really, really high.
We live in a world where I think things are really also changing based upon the fact that we’re still quite early in the presence of the Internet. People say, well, the Internet, we‘ve had that for 15 years. So much has been invented. And yet really the whole world of technology is being redone as we speak. Technology grew up with the computer, and now it’s the computer, the PC, and maybe the smart TV. The computers, phones, and TVs, didn‘t grow up assuming the Internet. And frankly the Internet didn’t grow up assuming tomorrow‘s PCs, phones, and TVs. And so the whole mode of how software gets written to run intelligently in PCs, phones, and TVs, to talk to the Internetcloud, that’s all going to get redone.
Since I‘ve been at Microsoft the basic paradigm for how software gets written has changed a few times. Mainframes, PCs, client-server, Internet, and now we’re in sort of a Web 2, Web 3 kind of generation. Smart phones, smart PCs, smart TVs, talking to a smart Internet, and that creates a whole generation of opportunities to disrupt the businesses that are to there. To create new businesses that people couldn‘t dream of before. We talk about the cloud; the cloud is kind of that smart Internet presence talking to those smart clients.
A lot of people sort of question the fact, will we continue to need smart phones, smart PCs, et cetera, and the answer is yes. Yes, people will actually want to get the best they can get, because this stuff is just so darned cheap, and as long-Bill Gates when he started Microsoft said, the hardware represents a form of free intelligence. We just have to have the software to switch it on. And that opportunity still exists. Your world needs to be brought together, the consumer, you have one identity on the phone, you’ve got another on the Internet, you‘ve got another at work, you’ve got another at home. You may want them separate, but you may not want to manage the cacophony of things that you deal with today.
Just take contacts, how many different places do you have to update when somebody switches homes, switches phone numbers. How many different places do you go touch, just simple things, so much to do, so much to do to improve the overall experience people have with these things. See, I wish there was a camera in that darned screen.
Anyway, at Microsoft we‘re investing aggressively across the spectrum, touch, voice, natural language input, smart phones, smart PCs, smart TVs. We’ve introduced a whole new platform for writing smart applications in the Internet, a new version of Windows that we call Windows Azure. Ourcompany this year will invest over $9 billion in R&D. Nobody sort of is you can‘t process what numbers like that mean, I can’t and I deal with them every day. It means we‘ve got about 45,000 people involved creating software, and perhaps most importantly we will invest the same amount of money this next 12 months that we did the last 12. We were going to increase it, because of the economy we won’t. But, it sure reflects the fact that we‘ve got fundamental optimism about what can be created.
Now Microsoft is sort of a funny place. We’ve got these big businesses, but in the software business big businesses need to be constantly recreated. A product like Windows is, in a sense, only as good as its last release or two, not just its last release, but its last release or two. So we need to have this mix of sort of large-thank you. Anyway, moving right along. I kind of knew what I was doing when I walked down that road. Anyway, you need to have a mix even in a big company of smaller entrepreneurial projects, bigger entrepreneurial projects. It‘s not like running a factory. It’s not like running a bank. It‘s not like running a retailer. Not just Microsoft, but nobody.
In our business you’ve got to be inventing new things, because software doesn‘t wear out. It doesn’t break, or at least if it breaks it was broken when you finished it, it doesn‘t break over time the way physical goods do. So the opportunity and need to invent, just like any other startup, or entrepreneurial activity remains strong.
So we’re investing. Venture capitalists, there‘s going to be less venture capital this year than last year. There is still probably in my opinion more venture capital than there are really good ideas to absorb the venture capital. So whether you’re going to join a startup, whether you want to start a business yourself, whether you want to join a company like ours, I think there‘s just incredible opportunities.
We want to be kind of a partner and friend to people who are startingthese businesses. We’ve made our tools now free for students, for startup companies, qualified startup companies. We‘ve made our software free so we can bootstrap entrepreneurs who want to come with us, and help pioneer and really pursue the future, the future for students, for consumers, for businesses, for the whole range of things.
