14 DAY TRIAL // The new Microsoft is all about productivity and now that Office 2016 is alive and kicking, the company’s CEO Satya Nadella took the time to reiterate the commitment to productivity, explaining that its software firm is the one that’s trying to reinvent this side of the business.
Since early 2014 when Satya Nadella replaced Steve Ballmer at the helm of the company, Microsoft has been switching focus to an approach supposed to help people “do more,” as the new tagline states, so products such as Windows and Office are built around this concept.
In the post published today by Nadella himself, the CEO explains that “Microsoft has set a bold ambition to reinvent productivity and business process in this mobile-first, cloud-first world,” explaining that the release of Office 2016, which includes tools specifically designed with productivity in mind – such as real-time co-authoring from the desktop, is living proof for this promise.
“Work requires mobility of the human experience, not the device. Your work cannot be bound to any one device or location. You must be able to get anything done on any device you choose, anywhere you choose,” Nadella explained.
The productivity trend
Microsoft’s not the only tech company that’s investing billions of dollars in productivity, as others are also looking at this side of the business to expend their product portfolio.
The most recent example is Apple, which unveiled the iPad Pro at its September 9 event in order to help customers stay productive on the go.
The new iPad Pro comes with features that are specifically designed to serve this purpose, such as multi-tasking and a digital pen, as well as support of a keyboard, which are all things that Microsoft has been using on its Surface lineup since 2012.
So Nadella’s message is very clear: we’re the one reinventing productivity and not others. Apple actually knows that very well and it publicly admitted it during the September keynote. When inviting Microsoft’s Kirk Konigsbauer to demo the new iPad Pro, Apple described the software giant as “a productivity-obsessed firm.”
But is this enough to become the pioneer of the productivity trend? Time will tell, but Microsoft’s certainly going in the right direction with this.