Nadella has worked on the cloud computing at Microsoft. Microsoft is betting big time on the cloud. Although MS never publicly admits, the OS business for the end user is slowly fading away with the tablets, smart phones taking over and Browser becoming the new OS.
You can see this by looking at their Office 365 strategy (iOS, Android release, online version push). Making Windows 10 free to 8 users, removing licensing fees for windows phones, making Visual Studio available for free. Making the ASP.NET vNext to run on Linux.
Instead, MS sees the growth in Azure. Whether they use Linux or Windows servers, MS can make money off of the enterprise/startup segment. Whether or not it is a sustainable strategy in the long run, we will see. But in the short term, at least for the "consumer" market, MS is giving up on Windows and it is moving its focus to Azure and the software that runs on top of Azure (Office, Sharepoint, Dev Services, XBox, Bing, etc).
The marketing strategy behind this is also interesting. Things are still labeled "Windows" to give the illusion that the "Windows" the end user gets on their new laptop is somehow "related" to the Windows in the cloud (Azure). Interesting strategy to make the "Windows" brand live for a little more at least..
I'm not sure Windows (and transitively Microsoft) is a positive brand and its continuity an illusion worth keeping. It reminds me of antivirus, slow boots, periodic reinstalls to make XP quick again, BSOD and many other things that drove me away from it years ago. Anyway, if one never tried anything else not to leave home could be reassuring and it seems that Win7 wasn't so bad anymore (but I still get calls from friends with infested Windows machines).
You can see this by looking at their Office 365 strategy (iOS, Android release, online version push). Making Windows 10 free to 8 users, removing licensing fees for windows phones, making Visual Studio available for free. Making the ASP.NET vNext to run on Linux.
Instead, MS sees the growth in Azure. Whether they use Linux or Windows servers, MS can make money off of the enterprise/startup segment. Whether or not it is a sustainable strategy in the long run, we will see. But in the short term, at least for the "consumer" market, MS is giving up on Windows and it is moving its focus to Azure and the software that runs on top of Azure (Office, Sharepoint, Dev Services, XBox, Bing, etc).
The marketing strategy behind this is also interesting. Things are still labeled "Windows" to give the illusion that the "Windows" the end user gets on their new laptop is somehow "related" to the Windows in the cloud (Azure). Interesting strategy to make the "Windows" brand live for a little more at least..