Suffering abundantly from the global financial crisis, and getting ready to face even tougher times ahead as the economic downturn deepens, Microsoft is turning to investments in innovation as a long-term strategy to survive and to ultimately come out on top. Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s chief research and strategy officer, sharing half of Bill Gates’ responsibilities together with Ray Ozzie, chief software architect, indicated that the Redmond company remained committed to Research and Development ahead of anything else.

“Conducting basic and applied research is part of Microsoft’s DNA,” Mundie said. “More than ever we’re committed to this investment, enabling our researchers and developers to continue advancing technology for challenging societal problems and pushing the boundaries of computing in exciting ways.”

At the Microsoft Research TechFest 2009, the research lab’s ninth annual innovation fair, the software giant showcased various innovations in computing technology, with natural user interfaces, adoption of manycore computing and a vision of evolved data centers in the limelight. A total of 40 technologies out of all the projects cooking over at Microsoft Research were made available to the public.

“Research projects at TechFest are technological hints at what the future holds,” said Rick Rashid, senior vice president of Microsoft Research. “In past years we’ve shown touch technologies that are now part of Microsoft Surface, artificial intelligence projects that enhanced Live Search and Windows, and database and graphics research that led to WorldWide Telescope.”

Craig Mundie's job at Microsoft, following the pseudo-retirement of Bill Gates, involves looking ahead, and architecting the company's vision, strategy and software products of the future. Resources are plentiful at Microsoft, even in tough economic times, with the company planning to spend over $9 billion on R&D by the end of 2009 alone. Still, the Redmond company's research division spans over consumer products and is increasingly focused on the Cloud.

In this context, Microsoft is now looking to build state-of-the-art data centers and to cut costs by at least fourfold, while accelerating deployment in ionfrastructures, increasing performance and boosting reliability, via Cloud Computing Futures. “Our cloud computing research begins with a key concept: the datacenter is a computer, and it must be designed and programmed as an integrated system,” Rashid said.