A series of takeaways from a recent Microsoft financial analysts’ meeting — the first in two years — reveals what’s ahead for the company. If they’re smart, it’ll be a focus on the enterprise and cloud services.
Last week, Microsoft executives had their first financial analysis meeting in two years, and used it to explain more of the plan for the future of the company. They also hit on many of the topics the media and tech insiders have been speculating about lately. InformationWeek published 11 Takeaways from this meeting on Microsoft’s next moves, and in that spirit, we culled it down to the two biggest takeaways we see from the larger list: the enterprise market and the cloud.
“Power to the People”
Rich Barton, founder of Expedia and Zillow, has always sought to put more power in users’ hands.
We have him to thank for the revolutionary way we now plan our travel: independently. He describes the frustration he felt in the early days of the Internet, when travel agents had access to databases that regular citizens, travelers, were not privy to.
“It was giving consumers access to information and databases that they knew existed because they either saw or heard professionals over the phone clacking away on a keyboard accessing that information. I remember I wanted to jump through the phone and look at the screen myself, turn it towards me and just take control. And I knew that I would spend more time and do a better job searching than this person who was doing something on my behalf, and who really didn’t know my preferences but was just trying to approximate them.”
So he did what he’s consistently done ever since: disrupted the market and brought about a revolution in the travel industry.
Internet Explorer hits the mark for web engagement with The Hunger Games Explorer. The film adaptation of Catching Fire, the second in the Hunger Games trilogy, doesn’t come out until November. But Internet Explorer partnered with the Games web team and RED Interactive Agency to give fans an edgy, interactive online portal that gives them everything they need to whet their appetite while they wait.
The team built this site on some of the very latest web technologies, and it’s especially designed for the touch-screen, tablet experience. There’s all the regular stuff, like trailers and exclusive photos, but there is also content to keep users coming back. Fans can sign up and get their own District ID, and go behind the scenes on the making of the film via this futuristic online content portal.
The team took special pains to ensure the technology lives up to the demand for excellent user experience. This comes across in the responsive grid layout designed to be just as engaging no matter whether the user is on a mobile phone or tablet. “Taking a mobile-first approach [to back-end design] allowed us to ensure we used a single code base across multiple platforms and devices,” the behind-the-scenes website reveals. The grid was built using JavaScript.
