Let's start by going back a little further, maybe to the beginning of the cloud and what seems like a story of the begining.
Julia White:Oh, wow.
Adam Stacoviak:It was...
Jerod Santo:The day you were born! \[laughter\]
Adam Stacoviak:...an awesome day in 2014.
Jerod Santo:I'm just kidding. \[laughter\]
Adam Stacoviak:It was Satya's first CEO appearance, roughly, unveiling what I think -- so I'm hoping you can share more of the story... It seems like maybe that was the beginning of what is now Microsoft's cloud. Office was the first thing rolling out in terms of a cloud-based application to different devices, you were his co-presenter...
Julia White:Oh, that day, yes.
Adam Stacoviak:You're jacked, you've got a lot of press, as much as you did... Take us back to those days, take us back to that story, those days in the cloud.
Julia White:Yeah, so that day was big, for a lot of reasons. We had already been in the cloud, but I think people kind of woke up and really realized we were serious.
Jerod Santo:The messaging started...
Julia White:Yeah, I think it started sinking in... But we'd put a lot of the groundwork down, which was important, so that when people started paying attention, we were ready. But as much as anything, I think that when Satya came to the helm - and starting with that day, but it's continued on since then - it was a real clear pivot of what mattered. The choice to at that moment launch the Office apps on iPad, which was what blew everyone's mind...
Adam Stacoviak:Like, "Whaat...?!"
Julia White:...it was an important thing, right, but it was just a symbol...
Adam Stacoviak:Yeah, crossing over...
Julia White:...of "Hey, all those things you thought we'd never do - it's gone. It's the new norm, break all the rules." Just shortly after that I think he stood up and had that "Microsoft loves Linux" moment - similarly, just really trying to set down clear guidelines of like "This is where we're going. We're gonna go where our customers are, and we wanna make them successful whatever they choose to use", which is obviously a big shift.
Adam Stacoviak:\[03:58\] I wanna pin one thing down too, because in this keynote -- I think it was Scott Guthrie's keynote, where he said "Microsoft loves open source." So you've got the Linux moment there, but I think what's interesting is that, you know, this is the beginning of the cloud for you, but you've been with Microsoft for a long time, so I wanna share that story because you've got such a history, and you've seen Microsoft maybe in a day where developers didn't -- maybe open source developers, any developers had less love, or maybe there was a different... What did Julia Liuson say, how did she frame it? "A different lens" I think is what she said for the way Microsoft's perspective was.
Julia White:Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak:You've been here for a while, so that was that turning moment... How has maybe the vision/perspective of Microsoft, changed since the beginning for you? You've been here for a while.
Julia White:I know, 17 years... It makes me wince a little bit when I say that. \[laughter\]
Adam Stacoviak:Well, 2001 was the year I got out of the military, so...
Julia White:Oh, okay, so there we go, right?
Jerod Santo:Long time ago.
Adam Stacoviak:It was a long time ago.
Julia White:So you feel it, too. \[laughter\] It feels like yesterday, but it wasn't at all.
Adam Stacoviak:It was not yesterday.
Julia White:No, no. Well, back when I started 17 years ago I remember we had the anti-Linux campaign. It was one of the big -- I remember the guy leading it, and it was like "Linux is free like a puppy", all those crazy campaigns. And it's so funny now, I remember I did the Red Hat keynote three years ago now, and I remember thinking "God, that's different." Like, "Here I am, talking about our great partnership" and "This is amazing!" and "We love Linux!", and 17 years from now it was a very different thing... Just a big shift. I think there was always energy there, but it was just a strong mantra of like, ya know, "Windows or bust. Windows or bust.", and now we recognize that's just not reality, and we don't need to do that. We wanna be wherever our customers are.
Adam Stacoviak:Do you have any insight into the "Windows or bust" mentality now? Like, what the perspective is on Windows in comparison to, say, "The world is a computer." Windows is a part of that "World is a computer", but not THE computer. It seems like Azure, which you run, is the computer.
Julia White:It's the open platform. You can run anything you want on it. You can use whatever tools, whatever language or database... So it's a very different -- yeah, we still have a point of view, like, gosh, we think Azure is very differentiated, this growing computer for the world, but it runs anything, everything, it welcomes all developers, versus having an operating system or a toolkit perspective on top of it.
Adam Stacoviak:The reason why I ask these questions is because I feel like our audience, very "any developer", very open source focused... We pretty much cover open source - the languages, the technologies, the people - and I feel like maybe they need to kind of keep getting reminded that Microsoft is changing, and someone like you can help them evolve their perspective of Microsoft.
Julia White:Yeah, you know, I always talk about "Perception lags reality by 3-5 years", and I think we're in that place with the open source community, where what we're doing is actually... I mean, this ironic moment - we were working with GitHub recently and looked at the contributions on what Microsoft's doing, and it exceeds all these other companies that are know at their core to be --
Adam Stacoviak:Did you try that? Was that purposeful?
Julia White:We tried what?
Adam Stacoviak:The contributions to GitHub...
Jerod Santo:To get that stat, like "We're gonna be the number one!"
Julia White:We didn't. We didn't say "Hey, we're gonna be number one!" We really didn't. I mean, to me, it's one of those moments where you're like "Well, it's not something we're faking, or trying to make it in. It just happened. It literally just happened. In terms of hey everyone (thousands of developers), go forth and do what makes you successful internally", and this is where we got to in terms of the contributions. It's amazing -- to me, that's like a true indicator of change. Satya set out to do it a few years back, and it actually happened, when you see that kind of stat.
Jerod Santo:One of the things that I've been thinking about with regards to Microsoft's (we'll just call it) success in open source is that open source, the mindset - and it's an idealistic mindset that we realized doesn't exist in reality, but there's this meritocracy to it, where it's like "May the best code win" or "Let the cream rise to the top", and on our best days you can't market, or you can't shove, or you can't do anything except for like show up with your software, to get the respect that people earn through open source efforts.
Julia White:Right.
Jerod Santo:\[08:14\] And it seems like - specifically with VS Code, but there's many other efforts as well... It's like, maybe the 3-5 year lag is because you guys have been earning it through shipping awesome open source software that has really contributed so much to the whole ecosystem. It's like "Wow." What's kind of cool is like even Microsoft has to earn it, and then you guys have.
Julia White:Totally. People are like, "I don't understand this community and how it works", and I always start with exactly your point of "It's absolutely earned. You can't buy your way into it, you can't relationship your way in..." You just earn it, which I love; at some level it's just so true, and authentic... But yeah, it is absolutely earned. And it takes time. It's taken a long time, but that's okay... We're in, we're doing this thing. We're committed. I mean what I love absolutely is of course we look at other clouds out there, and I actually think we're in a weird, crazy and ironic way being more open source friendly than the alternatives... Which is like "How did we become the best in class?" \[laughs\] ...someone who's been around this long; it's interesting. But I love it, I'm like "Let's go forward and just blow everyone's minds."
Adam Stacoviak:Anything unexpected coming up for open source? Like, anything that's Windows, or anything that's like-- \[laughter\]
Julia White:Someone asked me yesterday "When are you open sourcing Windows?"
Jerod Santo:That's gonna be \[unintelligible 00:09:29.29\]
Julia White:Let's see... I mean, I think we are considering things that might surprise you. I don't know exactly when and how they'll come to light, but I think... I mean, honestly, everything's on the table - what's right for the future of the company, and... And again, Azure brings a different perspective to everything, of like what helps Azure grow, and what we need to use for that.
Jerod Santo:Let's go back to the beginning of Azure a little bit, and that any platform, anything runs on Azure; old Microsoft would be Windows, right? Windows runs on Azure, and it's gonna be Windows...
Julia White:Yup.
Jerod Santo:Was that decision hotly debated? What was the conversation around "Are we gonna go this way or that?" Because that was really like a fork in the road for you guys.
Julia White:It was. I mean, we started -- it was called Windows Azure when we launched it, if you remember...
Jerod Santo:I do not remember that, but that makes a lot of sense.
Julia White:Yeah, when we first launched it, it was called Windows Azure, and then it was -- I can't remember how many years later, under Satya, that it became Microsoft Azure, and we welcomed all. Interestingly though, in the pivot of like "How much do we support Linux? What does it look like? How serious are we?" - it was one of those things where there was a little bit of pressure, a little bit of pressure, but then as soon as Satya came forward, it was like "Of course!" It was just this fast, absolute decision to move forward. And now actually Azure is half Linux, half Windows \[unintelligible 00:10:43.28\] the VM is running. So it's perfectly even.
Adam Stacoviak:What's perspective along Satya's maybe earning it, too? Like, new CEO, new direction - how did he set the tone, how did he gain trust from the rest of Microsoft to move in those directions? Was it easy for him? What are some clear things he's done that helped enable this new Microsoft?
Julia White:You mean from an internal perspective?
Adam Stacoviak:Anything you can share, your perspective. You've been a co-presenter with him, you've been here for a very long time, corporate vice-president...
Julia White:I made him improve his style. I want to make sure I get some points for that.
Adam Stacoviak:Well, the jacket... Did you end up getting a Twitter handle for the jacket?
Julia White:We never did launch a Twitter handle for the jacket.
Jerod Santo:What does that jacket mean?
Adam Stacoviak:Yeah, tell them about the jacket.
Julia White:Yeah, the jacket... So it was Satya's first press appearance after becoming CEO, and I was his co-presenter, and I wore this leather jacket that I didn't think was a big deal; it was just a leather jacket, like many of my leather jackets... And the internet blew up over this thing.
Jerod Santo:Because... It was so stylish?
Adam Stacoviak:She looked cool!
Julia White:Because they loved it. They thought it was awesome.
Jerod Santo:Okay.
Julia White:Apparently, it was awesome.
Adam Stacoviak:It was awesome.
Julia White:I know, I had no idea it was --
Jerod Santo:This could be like the best purchase ever. I did not think that you will buy a nice jacket.
Julia White:Right?! Someone was like "You need to put that thing in the Microsoft museum. You made Microsoft history with your jacket!" So literally for like two years after that wonderful presentation, everyone's like "I don't know who you are, but I know you've got a good jacket! I know you and your jacket."
Jerod Santo:\[12:03\] I know you're trying to -- oh, there it is...
Julia White:Oh, he is pulling it up, so you can see it.
Jerod Santo:I'm now seeing a picture of that.
Julia White:Yeah. See, and ever since then, every keynote, people are like "Well, I've gotta look good, I've gotta look cool. There's this new bar." I even had our CFO, Amy Hood, who was not known for dressing up - she dressed like a 16-year old coder for most days, and she did a presentation, and she was like "I was getting ready in the morning, and I just thought What would Julia wear? What would Julia wear? That's what I've gotta do..." \[laughter\]
Jerod Santo:I feel like maybe I should start asking myself that, because... I could use some help over here.
Adam Stacoviak:Yeah, the jacket is super cool. We'll include a link in the show notes for anybody chomping at the bit to wanna see this, but...
Jerod Santo:That is a cool jacket.
Adam Stacoviak:A very cool jacket. I could see why. So you helped him get a better style.
Julia White:Yeah, I take credit for a little bit of image improvement of the company, with that moment, and then raising the bar in all of the executives to look a little better. \[laughter\] So... Keeping at it.
Jerod Santo:Playing your part.
Adam Stacoviak:So aside from style, how did Satya change the direction for the company? What are some milestones for him that you can see that he's done that earned trust internally, as a company?
Julia White:I think nothing of this size of change happens overnight. Honestly, I think some of his magic in driving the change is just being super consistent, day in, day out. As a new conversation rises, like "Oh, should we do this, or should we do this? Should we open source, should we not? Should we contribute back or not?" Yes, lots and lots of decisions every day, very consistent on the execution. And Scott Guthrie too, it's not just Satya.
Adam Stacoviak:Sure, of course. It's a team.
Julia White:Yeah, it takes a whole lot of us.
Adam Stacoviak:Why I asked that is because you had a different direction under the previous management, let's just say... And not naming names, we all know them, but you know, it's a bit shift, it's a new Microsoft, and everybody keeps saying that. I think we've had conversations with different executives, different vice-presidents at Microsoft, and we keep kind of wheeling back to "Where did it begin?" and "How did it happen?" And that's kind of where we're getting at.
Julia White:Got it. I mean, it sounds so simple, but it begins with starting with what makes our customers successful. And if you start from that point of view, versus starting with the point of view of like "Hey, here's my agenda, and I'm gonna shove it on our customers..." Versus "Hey, what is our customers' agenda and how do we fulfill that?" It seems really simple, but it actually just comes down to that, of like "Hey, we wanna make sure our customers are super successful. Let's make sure we work that direction, versus the other way."
Adam Stacoviak:Do you remember the first conversations around open source?
Julia White:Well, an interesting thing, just from where I was - I was in the Office 365 team for like eight years, and then it was three years I moved over to Azure, so we'd already pivoted on the Azure side to embracing open source fully by the time I arrived into the Azure side of things. So in my Office life, all those conversations were "Do we support Android? Do we support iOS? How do we do that?" So that was why the Office on iPad was so pivotal for that moment... But I think it's less about being open source, but about being cross-platform.
Jerod Santo:Sure.
Julia White:It was super symbolic of "This is a new direction." Then when I came over to Azure - we'd made the decision, we had been embracing it, we were supporting it, and I worked on this partnership with Red Hat... But we'd go out into the world and people had no idea that we were doing it, or if they had heard about us doing anything open source, they were super skeptical, and they assumed it was because of the "Embrace and extinguish." I got told that a lot. "You're really just gonna embrace and extinguish, I understand." So the conspiracy theory - so high... Which is fine, I understand. You have to earn your way out of that, which I think we have. So getting more serious... And then just kind of executing it consistently.
Adam Stacoviak:I never wanna keep bringing you back to the fire, so to speak, to keep saying how you earned it, but...
Jerod Santo:But I'm about to.
Julia White:"Now I want something more specific."
Adam Stacoviak:I'm gonna just go back to explaining why, just so -- you know, our audience is very developer, very open source, very indie, and I think there's just been this... As Julia said, this different lens, this different perspective of Microsoft that is changing, and I wanna give them a reason to see why they can begin to evolve that perspective.
Julia White:\[15:58\] What makes it credible?
Adam Stacoviak:Yeah. Well, I don't want you to keep going on about it... I'm just explaining our perspective, why we're asking these questions.
Julia White:It's helpful to understand the lens of people listening to this, and what are they looking for. In a business sense, Azure is not gonna be successful unless we're super successful with open source. My CFO cares, because Azure can't grow if we're only a Windows platform. That is a very limited growth. We can have a much, much bigger growth opportunity, so just dollars and cents-wise, we have to do it. We need to do it, we want to do it, on that front. And then the other thing -- we're so developer-oriented internally; we're super dev culture, and they're out there like "I wanna build fast, I wanna build efficient, I wanna contribute..." Gosh, open source is a super efficient way to do that, and it just happened. When you said "Go for it, use whatever you want. Innovate however you want", it just happened, because the developers went there, and saw the efficiency of it and how useful it was to use all this different open source code and bring it into our products.
Jerod Santo:In my perspective, Microsoft has for a very long time - I would say "always", but I don't know the entire history of the company... But it has for a very long time been developer-centric, but it was always the developers on the Windows platform. So there's like this huge swathe of developers outside of the sphere, and so there was no developer-centric for them. But now, because of this shift to services, with Azure at the forefront of that, well now it's everywhere, all developers.
Julia White:Right, that's the thing - we used to be about our Windows platform, and getting developer engagement on our Windows platform; we had a very specific point of view, kind of to Julia Liuson's point of view - it was a lens about Windows developers and how we get them. And then when suddenly you say "Hey, it's not about a Windows platform, it's about this Azure cloud platform", then you're like "Oh." All the rules change. You're like, "Oh, okay. I can think about things completely differently." So yeah, it is the same developer centricity, but a totally different business lens.
Jerod Santo:A completely different business model, which allows that, and it's interesting just the broad sweeping implications of that primary -- I mean, it's a big decision, but away from Windows platform and towards cloud platform or Azure... It just completely changes the opportunities for the business decision-making. Everything is a whole new ball game.
Break:\[18:14\]
Jerod Santo:Let's talk about Azure...
Julia White:Yes, near and dear to my heart.
Jerod Santo:Yeah, near and dear to your heart. You know your competition better than we do; there's lots of big players in this space...
Julia White:Sure.
Jerod Santo:How does Azure stack up, and what -- you said it's differentiated. Give us some of the highlights of why Azure is differentiated.
Julia White:I love that. I've never gotten that question before, just so you're clear... \[laughter\]
Adam Stacoviak:Really? \[laughter\]
Julia White:I've never thought about that.
Jerod Santo:\[unintelligible 00:19:43.29\] \[laughter\] "I wasn't ready for the differentiation question..."
Julia White:"Hang on, what do you mean!? There's someone else out there?!"
Adam Stacoviak:"Whaat?!"
Julia White:I have to say, being the number two cloud in the world, it keeps you on your toes. It's kind of a fun place. I was in Office for all these years where we had this number one position...
Jerod Santo:The incumbent, yeah.
Julia White:\[20:02\] Yeah, right? And it's all about protecting the franchise, and... It was so fun to switch over to Azure, where you're like "Oh no, we've gotta go, baby!" So how are we differentiated - actually, the core of it goes back to that developer experience. We spent some time, like "What's the soul of Azure and the company?" Satya made us all spend the time, like "What's the soul of Microsoft? Why do we exist?", in his very interesting and philosophical approach to problems... And we did the same thing on Azure, like "What's our soul? What do we wanna stand for?" The thing we came back to is the developer being productive, and having that incredible developer productivity experience is part of our cloud. It's just a developer platform, it's what it is, so that's our core - how do we do that differently? There's tech - fine, we'll just support all the same tech everyone else does, and other things, but HOW we do it. One of the things I talk about is around serverless; event-driven came out... So AWS launched Lambda. Innovative, new, but they didn't put a lot of support around it; you had to kind of figure it out... On the forums people were like "This is kind of complicated. I don't get it yet." And then when we brought out Functions, it had the whole VS toolkit ready, with SDKs, we had support and docs around it, so that you can just get going... And it's a subtle thing, but to me it's a good example of how we think about what we want. Every developer, whether you've never heard of serverless in your whole life, or whether you're the master at it... we want you to be great at this. We wanna make sure you can be incredibly productive with building whatever you wanna build. So as we think about the technology and how we support that delivery of it, it's much about how we wanna be different and more helpful, frankly. And then also, there's a little bit of -- you know, Microsoft has always been great at saying "We want everyone to be on this. We wanna make it something that everyone has access to, and not have any judgment. And I look at some of the competitors and I see there's a little bit of judgment; like, if you're not like the leading edge developer and you don't totally get cloud, there's a little bit of like "Hm..."
Jerod Santo:Which is intimidating, right?
Julia White:Yeah, there's a little bit of like, "I guess you don't get it..." And like, I don't judge; we welcome all. I want everybody to be successful. I don't want any kind of like "I guess you don't get it. Too bad for you." I don't know, I just think that edge doesn't work, so that's how I wanna...
Adam Stacoviak:It's interesting you got there by doing a little soul searching.
Julia White:Yeah.
Adam Stacoviak:We're big fans of retrospectives, big fans of iteration... In the case of Microsoft, you've been around long enough to re-examine who you are...
Julia White:For sure.
Adam Stacoviak:...and even at one single service level to understand what's the direction, because you can't get everybody on board of a plan unless you understand who you are and what you're gonna do, right?
Julia White:Yes.
Adam Stacoviak:Can you maybe share a bit more about that retrospective aspect, going into who was involved, how did you get there, and what were some thoughts that came from that?
Julia White:Yeah, it was a really important time, because AWS has started so many years before us; we came in second place in the delivery order (I call it)... We really had to say -- we can't just chase the leader; that strategy is the most flawed strategy you can find, right? No one wants the same technology from--
Adam Stacoviak:\[unintelligible 00:23:01.17\]
Julia White:Right, no one wants that. So we had to do some just core matching the tech; so there was work to be done just to make sure we had equivalent technology from the VMs, networking storage, that kind of thing. But then we just stopped and really -- and it was the entire leadership team, and it was a pretty long process, because it had to be true and authentic, because people had to buy into it. We kind of like had to earn our own stuff internally, to get everyone on board... And we started with just what's going on in the industry broadly, what are the topics from a trend and a technology perspective... But then it really got into these in-depth, long, over dinner sessions with customers, and we'd wallow with them... And you'd start with tech, and then you'd stop, and you start more talking about like "What about you? What do you want as a human?" Really getting on this other level of conversation with developers, with IT admins, with business decision-makers, and the thing we kept hearing was "This is a little scary and a little overwhelming." \[24:00\] After you got past the idea of like "This is awesome! There's so much cool tech! It's super great! I can't wait to do event-driven! Containers are awesome!" and then they'd be like "And I think it's a lot of work, and I don't know which one I should be using, and everyone thinks I should know, and I don't know, and I'm kind of scared by that." I remember a couple guys, they would pause and they were kind of like "I just have impostor syndrome all the time. That's how it feels." To me, those were gems of like, okay, there's tech and all this stuff, but then there's this truth, and this quiet place inside, of like "What are you gonna do about that?" So that's what we grabbed on to... Like, "Hey, we can understand that, we can empathize with that in a way that I think other companies who are newer and haven't been through the journey that we've been, and the humble self-reevaluation that we went through as a company, that gives you a new perspective on the world, versus the hubris of never making mistakes..." So I think it allowed us to hear that in a different way, so that's where we started re-centering. Then we had this conversation like "That's the history of our company. That's been true of our DNA since the beginning of time", and one of the engineering leaders that works for Scott starts saying "Let's help our customers fall into the pit of success. How do we find that in like this Pit of Success idea?" Anyway, so it was long -- you know, we iterated, iterated, where it really started to get to the point where we'd talk to anyone across the team and you'd just see them get it, and they were like "Yeah! That's what we are! That's how we're different! That's what we stand for! That's how we're gonna change the world!" and it started to emotionally hook them. You kind of see it. So that culmination over it, like the whole course of the time - it was probably nine months of really iterating, spending time thinking like is that quite right, not quite right, move forward, and kind of picking our spot.
Adam Stacoviak:To give you a little credit to your nearest competitor, they'd never shipped boxed software... So you kind of was born in the idea of you have to get it right, because if not it's a recall.
Julia White:That's true, yeah.
Adam Stacoviak:We talked to Julia Liuson about the idea of like -- what was it, recall bugs I believe is what it was... \[unintelligible 00:25:56.17\]
Julia White:Yeah, recall class bug.
Adam Stacoviak:...recall class bugs, where you have to ship software to a store, in a box, and somebody buys it, buys a license of it... It's a different world; Amazon never had to do that with AWS. There was never a box software mentality for them, so to have to reevaluate how you what you do--
Jerod Santo:They were pretty good at shipping boxes, though... \[laughter\]
Adam Stacoviak:Yes... But different kind of boxes. \[laughter\]
Julia White:A whole different kind of box.
Adam Stacoviak:Yeah, a whole different kind of box.
Julia White:Yeah, we remember those days of recall class bugs...
Adam Stacoviak:So you had to change your perspective, because you had a different DNA then, and to evolve into the new cloud-based world, everything is a computer -- or the world is a computer... You had to evolve.
Julia White:Absolutely. Actually, the real cloud story at Microsoft didn't actually start with Azure, it actually started back with our Exchange Server, our email server, and it was actually Ray Ozzie, a million years ago... We happened to run an exchange server business back then, and he came into the company -- I remember he would come along and sit with us, and he'd be like "I don't know what's going on at Microsoft here. I feel like this world is happening, and time has stood still here." I remember Terry Myerson actually was the engineering leader of Exchange back then, and I was leading the business side... And Ray would just say these things that were like "Oh my god, it cannot be true..." Like, this world has gone somewhere and we are being left behind. Terry would be like, "What are we gonna do about this...?" Finally, Terry Myerson - I give him tons of credit... He was like "We're going to cloud. We're putting this stuff on the cloud, we're doing it", and everyone thought he was crazy... They literally thought he was crazy, so he actually did it in secret. He did this thing called Exchange Labs, where he launched it as an education program for universities, as an excuse to be able to ship things in the cloud, that wasn't gonna affect businesses, so he stayed out of the line of fire from the sales team and other things... So we started to kind of secretly out of the back closet creating this cloud service for our email system, under Exchange Labs. \[28:05\] It was this crazy and insane story, and Ray Ozzie, every time someone would light up at the company and be like "What is this thing!?", Ray Ozzie would protect it and shut him down... We were always running to Ray, like "Ray, help...!" And that's how it started, so many years ago. I can't even -- I wanna say 10-12 years ago... A long time ago, when we put the first thing in the cloud. I remember they came to me and they were like "How are we gonna do customer support on services? How are we gonna make money in subscriptions?" and I was like "I've got no idea, I'll go figure that out... Hold on, I'll just go figure that out." Anyway, but we did it, and then that became over time Exchange Online, and then over time from there it became Office 365, and then right about that time was when the original Windows Azure launched... But that was our first shove into commercial cloud, it was over this interesting Ray Ozzie-sponsored side-project.
Adam Stacoviak:Where do you think Microsoft would be if you didn't have Azure or the cloud direction, if you didn't change direction? If you didn't agree that you were stuck in time and everybody else was moving forward, so to speak - where do you think Microsoft would be if you didn't do what you've done?
Julia White:We'd be in a bad place. We'd be in a bad place...
Jerod Santo:I agree, yeah.
Julia White:These cloud services is where the world is going, it's unquestionable -- and because it's a better model. There's so much truth to it. I wanna make clear when I say that - we have a clear worldview about the cloud in Edge; we talk about hybrid cloud - intelligent cloud/intelligent edge is another flavor of that, essentially, where the edge is not just your data center, your edge is this distributed thing. So when I say the world is going to a cloud model, that means the approach, not necessarily every piece of code will sit on the public cloud.
Adam Stacoviak:Right. It's involved, yeah.
Julia White:Yeah, but it is the center of this whole thing. So we would be in a really bad place, and it would be true for the Office franchise, as well as what we're doing on the Azure side of things, so... Absolutely essential. We would be in a sad, sad, sad decline.
Adam Stacoviak:Not number three in the world.
Julia White:No. No, no. That was essential. Actually, we're doing a video for Terry Myerson's farewell, and I was thinking, "You shoved us, kicking and screaming, into public cloud. You had the cojones to do that, where a lot of us didn't."
Break:\[30:26\]
Jerod Santo:You're a corporate vice-president at Microsoft, which is one of the largest companies in the world... We're a budding media company. You're effectively looking at our company. There's more than just us...
Julia White:It's impressive, it's impressive. \[laughs\]
Jerod Santo:\[31:49\] ...so I suspect we live very different lives. I'm thinking about your work life, what it means to be corporate vice-president, and I was just thinking you have to have worlds of insight into leadership, into getting things done, pushing the ball forward... Can you share with us stuff that you've learned through the years about how to inspire people to do what they're doing and how to push the ball forward at Microsoft?
Julia White:We've all got an opinion, so I'm happy to give you mine, from the wisdom that I've gleaned over these years... First of all, as a leader I think authenticity is so core to everything, and I think other human beings smell bull\*\*\*t (can I say that?). I have a bit of potty mouth so I've gotta check myself. No, but human beings smell that; if you don't feel like that leader is being authentic and true to you, and brave, even though they don't know all the answers, people waver... So I think that's so, so important, staying super authentic to who you are and what you believe, and getting people to follow you and wanna work with you and be with you and take these crazy risks with you... So that's super essential. I think as a leader in tech particularly, you constantly have to be questioning everything you've done. Just because it worked last year doesn't mean it's gonna work next year... And that uncomfortable push of changing all the time. You know, human beings don't love change; it's caused us to survive all these years, being risk-averse... But that absolutely destroys you in technology, so having the willingness to be like "I know we did everything like that last year, but we're gonna change it all next year." Everyone's like, "Ugh...!", and there's so much resistance in the system... I remind myself constantly as a leader, like "Hey, a lot of resistance and a lot of pushback doesn't mean you're wrong. It just means you're driving change, and change is hard, and there's uncomfort to that, with all the people around you." So being bold and courageous in those moments of heightened resistance is still super important. I talk to teams on things like "Change doesn't feel good, but it doesn't mean it's wrong. You have to separate the discomfort and being wrong, and realize those are different things... So don't take that signal." A lot of times I'm like, "Hey, we've gotta drive this change, we've gotta move forward" and people are like "Everyone's upset about it", and I'm like "And you've still gotta go do it...! It doesn't matter." \[laughter\] There's good ways to do it and bad, but just know that that is the truth... And I think it took me a while earlier in my career, like "Oh, there's a lot of resistance... I must be wrong", and actually, no, it's the opposite often times.
Jerod Santo:How can you detect that? Is it always in retrospect? How do you know when the resistance is because we're wrong, versus the resistance is because there's change?
Julia White:Because you quickly become tone deaf if you're like "I'm always right, everyone's always wrong!" and I just jam my ideas on them.
Jerod Santo:Exactly, exactly!
Julia White:So I think that combined with really truly listening... And listening with empathy, not just listening for what I wanna hear. Most people listen for what they want, and they remember that part...
Jerod Santo:Yeah, or just waiting for their chance to talk.
Julia White:Yeah, or that. But Satya spent a lot of time on empathy, which to me has been so essential in my career... Really, really understanding -- when someone's saying "I hate your idea... Let me tell you why. I think you're totally wrong" and I'm like "Okay, I really wanna know."
Adam Stacoviak:It's time to listen, yeah.
Julia White:Like, "I don't wanna be wrong... Please, that's a gift. If you think I'm wrong, I wanna know why."
Adam Stacoviak:Welcome criticism.
Julia White:Yeah, and listen... Really listen, and I really try and understand where they're coming from, and their condition of being, so I can say "You know what, from where you sit and the pressures you're under, and what motivates you and what people are expecting of you, your perspective makes a ton of sense. Now I really understand what your point of view is and I understand why you don't like what I'm doing." Then I can evaluate and say "Hey, there's real truth in there, that I have to listen to" or like "Gosh, that is a condition of being that would of course make you resistant to this. I get it. I get it."
Adam Stacoviak:Or is there other people that feel the same way? Is it systemic, across the team?
Julia White:Right, right.
Adam Stacoviak:Do we need to pause and change on thing before we change several things?
Julia White:Yeah, because sometimes your idea around how you're doing it is bad, right?
Jerod Santo:Right, sometimes you need a minor course correction, but sometimes you need a change of directions, right?
Adam Stacoviak:Or even expectations...
Julia White:Yes.
Adam Stacoviak:Clarity, expectation - those are things that often lead people in... You know, lack of clarity. Sometimes you need to circle back and "Here's the mission, here's why we're doing it. This is why it makes sense. I understand the circumstances, but this is the way we should move forward, and for these reasons."
Julia White:Yeah, yeah. You know, we've done a bunch of research at Microsoft around decision-making, human condition, emotion, reaction, and actually we had a bunch of PhD's in brain sciences to help our leadership team in general get better...
Adam Stacoviak:\[36:17\] Is that right? Awesome.
Julia White:It's been fascinating.
Adam Stacoviak:You have a team of PhD's available to you to make decisions...
Jerod Santo:\[laughs\]
Julia White:You know, it's nice...
Jerod Santo:Why not, right?
Adam Stacoviak:I love that.
Julia White:There's a few upsides in being with a big company like ours, and that's one of them.
Jerod Santo:Can we borrow some of them?
Julia White:And the leadership principles that have been laid out - they're so beautiful and they're so simple and they're so true... They are clarity - which you just spent time talking about - and energy, and business results. Those three things. Everything you do as a leader kind of comes down to that - can you create clarity about where you're going, why you're doing it, what's the purpose? Make people really understand it. Creating energy, meaning people wanna follow you, that people are in, they're putting their whole selves in this...
Adam Stacoviak:Enthusiasm, yeah.
Julia White:They're with you, you're getting rid of the resistance... And then delivering the results, which then of course gives you the reward of like "Hey, let's do more of that." Every day, literally, I come to work and I'm like "Alright - clarity, energy, results. Clarity, energy, results." It's so simple, yet it's so incredibly effective.
Adam Stacoviak:I like that, Jerod. A lot. Clarity, energy, results.
Jerod Santo:I like that, too.
Julia White:See? And you can remember it, too. It breaks it all down. Because there's like 65 wheels of leadership, blah-blah-blah; I can't remember that crap.
Adam Stacoviak:"Give me three!"
Julia White:Totally!
Adam Stacoviak:I can operate on three.
Julia White:Yeah, and if you can do a lot of other things, great, but those three are essential.
Jerod Santo:It's interesting, we've spoken with you, we've spoken with Corey Sanders, and we also spoke with Steve Guggenheimer, upper leadership positions, and I can't speak to the results, but across all three of you what I've experienced in listening and just conversing with you is clarity for sure, energy is like the number one thing -- you know, there's a lean in, there's an excitement to all three of your guys' responses to these questions.
Adam Stacoviak:Definitely!
Jerod Santo:So it manifests itself...
Julia White:But of the three, I'm really the best...
Jerod Santo:Yes, of course. \[laughs\]
Julia White:Sure. Corey, you hear that? \[laughter\]
Adam Stacoviak:On the playback. Listen, Corey.
Julia White:And he's got the worst jokes; he wins there, but you know...
Jerod Santo:If you can win for being the worst, I guess... \[laughs\]
Adam Stacoviak:What's a day like in your day?
Julia White:Never the same, I would say. Where I spend my energy is essentially making sure that people have the right direction, and then I'm getting obstacles out of their way. Like, "This is where we've gotta go. What do we need to get it done?" And some days that I can sit down and write something or build something... But it's about making sure that the direction we have set is moving forward smoothly, whether that's reviewing something, or approving something, or authorizing something, or giving feedback, or tackling a blocker... That's kind of how I spend my time.
Adam Stacoviak:That's fun, right? Tackling blockers...
Julia White:It's not bad, it's not bad... \[laughs\]
Jerod Santo:Sometimes that hurts... Sometimes it feels good...
Julia White:You know, I was like "Sometimes I think I'm gonna get a glutton for punishment", but you know, it's how it works...
Adam Stacoviak:Can you give an example of maybe what a blocker might be and how you tackle it? Maybe a recent, fun one for you...
Julia White:Let me think of a good one...
Adam Stacoviak:And how maybe it was strategic in leadership.
Julia White:You know, it's super recent, so let me pick it, because it's super recent and on top of mind... So we announced here Project Kinect for Azure, basically bringing the technology that was in the Kinect Sensor that we launched with Xbox, and into the Hololens and now essentially connected it with Azure AI services to create a new, very intelligent edge with this incredible depth sensor. So we made the decision, we're gonna announce this, we're gonna do this thing, and we're gonna be part of the Azure family. Previously it was over in the Xbox team, and from the Xbox perspective they had sunsetted the product...
Jerod Santo:Right.
Julia White:So there was this interesting thing of like those of us from the Azure side were like "Oh, it makes perfect sense. The intelligent edge is coming to fore, the IoT - there's so much incredible opportunity with this world-leading tech..."
Jerod Santo:There's a lot of technology sitting in that thing, right?
Julia White:\[40:03\] Yeah, like unbelievable, right? But then, if you were from the Xbox team, you just made the decision to end-of-life this thing, and now you're onto different pastures, and we work with people to move on. So there was this incredible resistance to this idea of how we do this, and why, and when, and was it gonna feel like we're just bringing something back, and all these things... So we really had to a) provide clarity of like "What is this about?" and "What you believed this tech was for before - it's about a whole new thing." Yes, it's the same tech, but a totally new use case, and a different approach, and a different way... So just getting everyone, kind of top-down, when everyone came up like "Oh my god, this is ridiculous, this is crazy!" Like, no, no, let me explain why it's not... I spent some time making sure they understand the vision for the future. And then also really listen to -- like, I didn't know the history, so I had to be like "What was this? Tell me. I don't wanna do the same things again. I don't wanna step into a big doo-doo."
Adam Stacoviak:To know the history so as to not make the same mistakes. They repeat themselves.
Jerod Santo:Right.
Julia White:And be sensitive to what history was, and make sure that when we talk about this thing, that people get it, and they don't be like "Oh, this is the same thing!"
Adam Stacoviak:Stomping on toes, and stuff like that... You don't wanna do that.
Julia White:Yeah. So it was an area where I kind of dropped in with not a lot of information, but like the "Go get it done" kind of thing... So it was this intense moment of understanding, listening, driving, and making sure I was really hearing signal from noise, and like "That didn't matter, that does matter, that's relevant, that's not relevant... Go." So as an example...
Jerod Santo:So what does the future look like for that? ...for the Kinect on -- as an edge device, or as the way you're thinking about it now.
Julia White:Yeah, I can't wait... I think it's amazing. Like, literally, the camera can be still and you can render like a 3D understanding of an object. If I think about -- whether it be retail, or healthcare, or manufacturing... So many different scenarios where suddenly what was just a camera, suddenly they're looking for a movement, they can suddenly actually see something completely different, and help people do more efficiently... Especially in healthcare, there's a lot of opportunities there. I mean, we're just early on this one, but wiring it up with our AI services, you're like "Man, this could be a game-changer."
Jerod Santo:So are you gonna sell it as an individual product, or are you gonna integrate this technology into new products?
Julia White:We're actually looking at all options at this point. We have great tech, and we wanna get developers' hands on it, and work with it... I mean, again, a little bit of like, you know, new Microsoft culture... Like, "Let's start, let's put an idea out there. Let's try it, and let's see what unfolds", in terms of --
Adam Stacoviak:And this is part of the open source announcement too, the IoT runtime.
Julia White:So we open sourced our IoT Edge runtime, so people can take that and put it on all different kinds of devices, including this new Project Kinect for Azure... It's gonna be one of the places. But then what we can do with this incredible depth sensor that we have, in addition to those IoT and AI services - it just gives a new technology to the stack.
Jerod Santo:So we served you the softball on the differentiation question... Are there any other questions that we didn't ask that you've just been waiting for? You're like "I can't wait till they ask me about this, so I can answer that..." What didn't we ask you?
Julia White:I actually expected you to ask more about this intelligent edge, and hybrid, and in that area... I don't know if that's as relevant -- it's more about build, and I don't know if that is relevant to your audience, though.
Jerod Santo:Go ahead and tell us about it, I mean...
Julia White:You're like, "We'll find out..." Satya is a brilliant man, for real. Like, the real deal. And he has these ideas that are so deep and so long-term that sometimes people are like "I don't know what he said." \[laughter\]
Adam Stacoviak:"Let's just follow him anyways..."
Julia White:I'm sure it's right, but... But you know, the worldview that he's created, of intelligent cloud, intelligent edge, and he spent some time on this keynote talking about intelligent cloud, intelligent edge, and I've gotten a lot of questions like "Okay, so is that IoT? Does that mean hybrid? What exactly is that thing that he's talking about?" So I tried to break it down for folks... It literally is his point of view and a shared point of view that every application type that we build moving forward will be this combination of the technology that is the public cloud, and the technology like compute and data sitting on these edge nodes; and the edge nodes, if you think about it today, the biggest edge nodes are these giant data centers, or technologies running, and they're using the cloud, and most people call that hybrid. \[44:12\] But that data center is gonna evolve into a huge set of distributed connected devices, from cars to tiny little sensors in refrigerators and thermostats and that type of thing, and each one of those will hold application code, and will be running local processing, local compute and AI and make meaningful things, not just dumb sensors that ping back to the cloud, and just ping on a regular basis. So the edge is gonna become maybe just as powerful as a data center, but a far more distributed technology set... So how do we think about it as a developer, how do you think about "Okay, my world is gonna look like that, and every application is gonna have a cloud and edge component to it. How do I start thinking about that?" And the most obvious way that happens today is IoT. So we bring it right back to like "Okay, is IoT, is this a use case people can kind of get their head around today, right now, and understand it?" But I do believe that IoT and edge will converge over time into this -- just an example of what this intelligent edge looks like.
Adam Stacoviak:I thought we crossed this chasm of like application developers, web developers, to now not just delivering an application to, say, the web, and an application on a phone, or something like that... To now think like "Well, my device could actually include a drone, or a refrigerator, or the washing machine, or just various interesting things that may end up on somebody's plate. That's an interesting web developer to, say, a world developer.
Julia White:Yeah, I like the way you put it.
Jerod Santo:Oh, a world developer... So I think I understand intelligent edge a little better now that you've explained it, because I'm likening it to kind of the move away from mainframes with dumb terminals, to more of a -- still a client-server model in the traditional sense, but now you have the fit clients, right? So the idea is our edge points - that button in your house, or that thing in your fridge is not going to be a sensor that's just sending data, which is what they've kind of been so far...
Julia White:Yes, they've been dumb edges. Small and largely disconnected and not dumb edge.
Jerod Santo:Right. So now the idea is like "Now let's actually move - similarly with fit client architecture - that intelligence into the edge." Of course, still the cloud is where the bulk of the work will be -- or maybe the source of truth is, but there's lots we can in these devices; of course, smartphones is the number one example of like a very fit client, a very smart edge.
Julia White:Yes, absolutely.
Jerod Santo:That's interesting. I didn't put that together...
Julia White:See? It clicked.
Jerod Santo:I was like, the word "intelligent edge", I was just like "It's kind of just a buzz word", until now it makes sense.
Adam Stacoviak:Yeah, that makes sense.
Julia White:Well, there's two things that are happening right now... What's sitting on the edge, when it is even connected, is kind of dumb. It's like "It's hot. It's cold. It's hot. It's cold. It's off. It's on." That's the amount of information being processed there and being connected with the cloud. But the potential there is gonna blow up fast in terms of what's possible and what we can run there. They showed a computer vision model running on that Raspberry Pi device - super simple example, but there's a lot more you can do.
Adam Stacoviak:\[47:15\] Well, demos have to be somewhat simple to not fail in real time, right? \[laughter\]
Julia White:It helps, too...
Adam Stacoviak:Right, that helps. And also approachable...
Julia White:Yeah, we really tried to put it in examples people could kind of get their head around... Because it is a different way to think about the world, so you have to -- you know, like, "Let me show you some ways we think about it", to kind of bring people along.
Adam Stacoviak:Yeah. Well, Julia, thank you so much. I know we've got a hard stop here soon, so... It was a pleasure talking to you.
Julia White:You guys as well!
Adam Stacoviak:Thank you for sharing the back-stories... I personally love hearing those. I like to have the opportunity to talk to someone like you, to lean back to this issue... Like, Microsoft is a big part of my entire life, and so to kind of like even retrospect it back into my life, and see where this company is now, where it was then, and the process you took to get there.
Julia White:Yeah. It's pretty amazing, but I love the -- in any maturation there's a lot of humble pie you eat along the way... But it makes you better, and I kind of love that about Microsoft. And I see other companies that are younger and they have a lot more hubris still, and I think "They're gonna figure it out..." But we have this unique wisdom that I feel fortunate to be part of.