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FORBES ASIA MARCH 2020Cloud Pleaser
Microsoft is on a monster win streak.
Its stock price, which had barely risen
above its 2000 peak prior to 2017, has
now risen almost threefold in the past
three years. On any given day, Micro-
soft or Apple stands as the world’s
most-valued company, at close to a
trillion-and-a-half dollars.
Behind the surge is CEO Satya
Nadella’s transformative bet on cloud
computing, which he announced upon
taking the post in 2014. The risk was
huge, since Microsoft’s cloud comput-
ing engine, Azure, was then far behind
cloud pioneer and leader Amazon
Web Services (AWS), IBM and oth-
ers. Nadella gave his old job, executive
vice president of Microsoft Cloud+AI
Group, to Microsoft executive Scott Guthrie and asked
Guthrie to make Azure competitive with giant AWS. Guth-
rie has succeeded. Microsoft’s cloud business reported $
billion in sales in 2019, with Azure growing 62% in the lat-
est quarter. Forbes has called Guthrie arguably the second
most-powerful executive at Microsoft after Nadella.
In late January I sat down with Guthrie, wearing his
trademark red polo shirt and jeans, at Microsoft headquar-
ters in Redmond, Washington. Below are edited highlights
of Guthrie’s remarks.On the shift to cloud computing:
“We made a pivot six years ago, when Satya became CEO, to
be a cloud-first company. Our goal was to accelerate digital
transformation for our customers. Give them cloud as a way
to let them advance their business and add more tech inten-
sity to their organization.”On the cloud’s future:
“We see a faster rate of evolution in the digital space. Cloud
lets us scale up at the pace of Moore’s Law, but also scale out
rapidly and use less infrastructure. The physical world is
going digital. Everything has an IP address. Everything will
be connected at 5G speed. The ability to link physical and
digital processes transforms the amount of data you can
collect—and the insights you will have. We see every busi-
ness out there—retail, logistics, finance, manufacturing, ev-erything—reinventing their business
processes and revenue models because
of that change.”On Asia’s potential:
“Asia and India are among our fast-
est-growing regions for Azure. This
growth comes from large companies,
like LG and Samsung, and from newer
companies like Flipkart, Ola Cab and
Jio Phones in India. Singapore is one
of our largest regions of Azure, what
we call a hub region. Similarly, if you
look at Hong Kong and Australia and
the customers across Malaysia, Indo-
nesia, Vietnam, and Thailand, those
are all big markets for us. We see tre-
mendous growth.”On Microsoft’s competitive advantage:
“Microsoft has 56 Azure regions around the world and
more cloud regions in Asia than any other cloud provider.
So, for issues such as data residency and very local com-
pliance certifications, we can work in countries that other
cloud vendors can’t. All of that makes a big difference to
companies as they look to expand and transform their
business.”On the cloud as an equalizer:
“We see great companies in these regions. They aspire to
be global companies and reach every market around the
world. The cloud is a great equalizer. It lets a company in
any country expand outside their region. An Azure cus-
tomer in Jakarta, Singapore or Bangalore can, with a push
of a button, deploy their products and services in Europe.
North America, the Middle East or Africa while meeting
local regulations and compliance.”By Rich KarlgaardTECH CONNECTOR
Rich Karlgaard is editor at large at Forbes.
As an author and global futurist, he has
published several books, the latest of
which is Late Bloomers, a groundbreaking
exploration of what it means to be a late
bloomer in a culture obsessed with SAT
scores and early success. For his past
columns and blogs visit our website at
http://www.forbes.com/sites/richkarlgaard. STEPHEN LAM/GETTY IMAGESScott Guthrie