Nadella On SolarWinds, Partners And Being ’Cool’

Microsoft’s success hinges on the value created around it as a platform company, and its growth wouldn’t be possible without partners unlocking its technology potential with customers, according to CEO Satya Nadella.

“What I think is unique about the way we approach our business, our business model and the partner ecosystem is we fundamentally wouldn’t exist as a company if not for the partner ecosystem taking what we build, adding value to it and then, most importantly, jointly being as obsessed about how do the outcomes of it help the world get better one business at a time, one community at a time,” Nadella said in an exclusive CRN interview. “That to me is the core ethos, at least of the Microsoft that I have grown up in.”

And there are “trillions of dollars” of opportunity for the technology company and its partner ecosystem, Nadella said.

“Today 5 percent of the world GDP [gross domestic product] is spent on tech,” he said. “I think in 10 years’ time—in fact this COVID crisis may have accelerated it—that’s going to be 10 percent. In other words, we are lucky enough to be in an industry that’s going to double. The partner opportunity therefore is clear.”

Nadella, who’s served as Microsoft’s CEO since 2014, has spent more than half of his life working for the company and will mark his third decade there next year.

Here is what Nadella had to say about partners and how they generate revenue, Microsoft Azure’s edge over Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud, emerging technologies, the SolarWinds hack and Microsoft’s bid for TikTok.