• Sidebar: Bill Gates on IT Investment

At its seventh annual CEO Summit, which brings CEOs from major corporations to Microsoft’s headquarters, Microsoft focused on showing how IT can improve worker productivity, particularly by allowing people to communicate more effectively, and on planned enhancements that will make computing more secure and reliable. Chief Software Architect Bill Gates also discussed specific technologies that Microsoft has used internally to streamline business processes. Although closed to the press, public transcripts from the event often reveal Microsoft's priorities for the next year, which can be useful to partners and systems integrators.

Focus on Collaboration, Reliability

Held every May since 1997, Microsoft's CEO Summit is a two-day event consisting of speeches, panel discussions on corporate governance and other topics, and social events, such as dinner at Gates's house. The event gives Microsoft executives an opportunity to pitch the company's products and technology vision directly to top decision makers; invitees get the opportunity to discuss pressing issues and initiate deals with top Microsoft executives.

About 100 executives took part in the 2003 meeting on May 21–22, including CEOs from technology companies, such as Dell (Michael Dell) and Hewlett-Packard (Carly Fiorina), and financial institutions, such as Berkshire Hathaway (Warren Buffett) and Bank One (Jamie Dimon). These executives heard a keynote address from Gates in which he stated that the value of IT has been broadly underestimated in the last several years because of the financial collapse of many high-flying technology businesses. Gates gave the following examples of how IT would continue to be relevant:

Real-time collaboration (RTC). Microsoft believes IT can help improve productivity by improving how workers communicate and collaborate. Microsoft demonstrated a scenario in which users could search the corporate directory for phone numbers and dial them from a PC, establish transfers and conference calls through a PC interface, and establish flexible rules for how and where calls are routed. Another demonstration focused on PlaceWare, the Web conferencing company Microsoft acquired in Apr. 2003, which enables workers to schedule and conduct virtual PC-based meetings and interactive demonstrations. In discussing the company's real-time collaboration plans, Gates sounded a reassuring note for traditional telecommunications companies, saying that IP-based telephony would probably not become a viable replacement for PBX systems in the near-term because sound quality is still too poor.

Improved reliability. Gates discussed planned improvements that Microsoft believes will make computing more reliable, including the following:

• The Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI), Microsoft's proposal to build applications that can monitor their own performance and reallocate computing resources as necessary, rather than relying on other management software
• Windows Error Reporting, which lets users automatically send error reports to Microsoft, thereby improving application quality
• New technologies to combat unsolicited commercial e-mail, or "spam."

Web services. As he has often done in recent speeches, Gates reiterated the importance of Web services in integrating back-end systems that use different technologies, making it easier for workers to access information from these systems in a single location (e.g., through a personalized portal site).

He also highlighted the importance of Web services in allowing businesses to exchange information but suggested that this use of Web services had been slowed because early implementations imagined businesses communicating through centralized exchanges. Instead, Gates said, each business will act as its own hub and communicate directly with its business partners.

Internal processes. Lastly, Gates gave some concrete examples of how Microsoft has used IT internally to increase productivity. For example, the company has consolidated customer information, including information from Siebel and SAP systems, into a single location, and many paper forms for employees have been replaced by electronic forms hosted on SharePoint Portal Server.

Resources

The complete text of Bill Gates's keynote speech at the 2003 CEO Summit can be found at www.microsoft.com/billgates/speeches/2003/05-21ceosummit2003.asp.

For background about PlaceWare and the organization overseeing Microsoft's RTC initiatives, see "Acquisition Moves Collaboration Strategy Forward" on page 22 of the Mar. 2003 Update.

For background on DSI, see "Long-Term Plan for Manageability Announced" on page 11 of the May 2003 Update.

For background on Microsoft's plans to combat spam, see "Antispam Alliance, Team Formed" on page 31 of the June 2003 Update.

For background about personalized portals see "SharePoint Portal Server Radically Redesigned" on page 8 of the June 2003 Update.