This month has been a roller-coaster at Microsoft — beginning with 1000’s of layoffs and ending with blockbuster earnings. In a brand new message to workers, posted Wednesday afternoon on the corporate’s inner communications platform, CEO Satya Nadella struck a reflective tone, encouraging a long-term mindset.
The context: the fifteenth anniversary of Microsoft Azure. As soon as a distant challenger to Amazon Internet Companies, Azure has grown right into a key pillar of the Redmond firm’s enterprise, producing $75 billion in annual income — greater than 1 / 4 of Microsoft’s whole — as disclosed for the primary time in Microsoft’s earnings launch.
Within the new message, obtained by GeekWire, Nadella defined that he has been “personally reflecting on our Azure journey, having been there because the early days.”
“Now we have come a good distance since Venture Purple Canine!” he wrote, referring to Azure’s inner code title previous to its public unveiling. The message continued …
“I nonetheless keep in mind what it felt like at first. We have been all in. We believed within the arc of expertise. There have been challenges, however we stayed the course, compounding small features quarter-after-quarter and incomes our prospects’ belief—and right here we’re including as a lot capability in a month as we did in our first 5 years!”
“That is what’s required to make long-term progress: have a daring imaginative and prescient, full the thought, and persist by way of all of the ups and downs. And that’s what makes Microsoft distinctive: our capacity to assume in many years and execute in quarters.
“That’s what nice groups and nice companies do. And that’s what continues to drive us ahead.
“So it’s price every of us asking: What are you engaged on as we speak that you’ve such conviction on, that 15 years from now you’ll look again and say, ‘We obtained it proper!’?
“That’s the chance in entrance of us. Thanks for all the things you do. I’m grateful to be on the journey with you.”
In a separate memo final week, made public by the corporate on the time, Nadella addressed the juxtaposition between the corporate’s latest job cuts and hovering earnings, referring to the scenario because the “enigma of success.”
That message drew a wave of inner response — starting from appreciation to skepticism and frustration — as Microsoft workers tried to reconcile the corporate’s monetary power with its workforce restructuring.
Between ongoing hiring and up to date layoffs, the corporate is preserving general headcount flat — round 228,000 workers globally, in keeping with a brand new submitting. Wall Road analysts praised Microsoft for its working value self-discipline.
On the similar time, Microsoft is ramping up capital spending to unprecedented ranges, planning a file $30 billion within the subsequent quarter alone to increase its AI infrastructure — aiming partly to maintain Azure sturdy for the following 15 years and past.
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