(tires squealing)
- [Brad] It's lunch time and this is
Brad Anderson's Lunch Break.
(sprightly music)
I get invited to attend tech events
all the time in Las Vegas.
And whenever I can, I like to make the quick trip
from Redmond and meet with other tech leaders and
learn about what they're doing.
(sprightly music)
Today I'm meeting up with Mary Jo Foley,
award-winning tech journalist and editor of
ZDNet and a bona fide Microsoft expert.
(horn honks)
(cheery piano music)
Like any great journalist, you are world-class
in collecting information.
Now, there are some urban legends at Microsoft about
ways that you've received information in the past,
so I'm gonna ask you a question and you say, "True,"
"False," "No comment."
- Okay.
- One rumor is that you used to ride around on the buses
that go around campus and just listen to conversations.
- True.
- Dang!
- Until Microsoft found out that I was doing this and
they posted my picture in the shuttle station.
(Brad laughs)
I heard they said, "If you see this woman, do not let her
on the shuttle. She does not work for the company.
So I stopped doing that. Although, I'll say, the last time
I was at Microsoft, they're not requiring us to show
badges anymore on shuttles. So, maybe I ruined it.
- Urban legend number one, true.
And, note to self, look out for Mary Jo Foley.
Okay, urban legend number two, have you ever worked in
the cafeteria dressed up as a cafeteria worker?
(Mary Jo laughs)
- I've heard this one, too, and I can say that is false.
- Okay. One of the ones I've heard most is
you had people that would sit at the Pearl Club
in Redmond and listen to conversations.
- Not true.
- Did you dress up like a bridesmaid for
Steve Ballmer's wedding and crash the wedding?
- No. No! Not true!
- I totally made that one up.
- It's not unprecedented that this could happen.
Although I did not do that.
- So when you're talking to customers and customers are
inquiring to you, I'm sure you get a lot of inquiries in,
saying, "Hey, what's Microsoft doing here?"
- Yes.
- What's the number one question you're getting,
right now, about Microsoft?
- I get a lot of questions about,
"How committed is Microsoft to customers who
aren't ready to go 100% Cloud?"
Because there are a lot of fears, I think, because you
guys are being so "out there" with the Cloud stuff,
they're like, "Oh man, I wanna put some of my workloads
in the Cloud but I'm not ready to put them all. Are they
gonna keep supporting SharePoint and SQL server on Prim?"
And even Windows Server. I have people saying, "Is Windows
Server 2016 the last version?"
So, I think people are worried about that.
- Good advice, first to make sure that we're even
pushing our hybrid story even more. I tell you, the work to
do Azure stack was non-trivial, that was an
engineering feat, to take some aspects of Azure and have
that be able to run on Windows Server, so you have that
consistent Cloud platform.
- Right.
- You started your career in 1983 at
Electronic Business? Electronic Business magazine?
- Yep, you're right.
- 1983, what was the hot technology you were covering?
- So, my very first bylined article was about
beryllium copper wire.
- So, how do you make beryllium copper wire intriguing?
- It was a challenge. Luckily, I got off the capacitor and
component beat after that, because I went to my boss and I
said, "You know, I think there's a new, whole, developing
category we're not covering; software."
And he said to me, "Software? It's a fad."
(Brad laughs)
And I said, "Let me try to make it interesting."
- And the rest is history.
- Right.
- What's one of the predictions that you had,
say, 15 years ago, that has come true and what's a
prediction that you're kinda, like,
"Microsoft missed an opportunity, there."
- Fifteen years ago I always thought Microsoft would be
forever the Windows company and I really couldn't foresee a
day when Microsoft would not have that as its priority #1.
And I feel like, these days, Microsoft's priority #1 is
the Cloud. Windows is definitely still a big business
for the company, but it's not the top priority.
Fifteen years ago, if you had told me Microsoft was
going to have Office on any Apple product, I mean, you
had the original Mac product, but anything beyond that?
- Sure.
- Microsoft open-sourcing, so much of its software,
I would never have believed it.
- What's been the most surprising of all those moves?
What's surprised you most?
- This may sound crazy but, when you guys announced you
were doing SQL Server on Linux, I at first, thought that was
a joke. "What day is this? Is this April Fool's?"
- Yep, yep.
- And so many people were pinging me, saying,
"Wait, are you, like, kidding?"
You know, 'cause I wasn't that surprised that you
open-sourced some of the developer tools, but the SQL
Server on Linux was just kind of out of left field.
And so many of the customers that I was talking to
at the time were very excited about it.
- You mention the three CEOs, this is a fundamentally
different company than we were three years ago when
Satya took over.
- It is.
- Tell me what, in your view, Satya's done to
change the company so dramatically.
- So, it's really interesting, I interviewed Satya
many years before he became the CEO.
I always remember being impressed by him, that he was
a person, when you interviewed him, he actually
listened to the question and answered it.
Because so many people have pat answers--
- Or they're deflecting.
- Right. And I was just stunned. Like, I asked the guy
something and he answered it. And when I got to interview
him last year, as CEO, he's just the same guy, and I
think he's brought that humility and tech interest to the
CEO job and it's really boosted morale at Microsoft.
- Mm-hmm.
- I felt like morale was kind of on a downswing,
like, everybody I talked to was like,
"Eh, we're doing this, but it's never going to work."
And now people are really jazzed about what they're
doing again and it makes it really fun,
as the reporter, to cover it.
- I tell you, from an internal perspective, there is more
energy inside of Microsoft, in the fourteen years that I've
been here, than there ever has been.
- Hmm.
- So, you've had a front-row seat at some
major parts of history, in terms of our industry.
Like, you were at Convex in 1984.
- I was.
- And I heard that's the first time you met Steve Jobs.
- I was interviewing Bill Gates, that was the very first
time I'd interviewed Gates, actually, and I was a brand-new,
wet-behind-the-ears tech reporter and I was interviewing
Gates, at Convex, on the show floor and Steve Jobs walked up
and Bill started talking to Steve in the middle of
my interview.
- Okay.
- So, I didn't know who he was.
(Brad laughs)
And so I asked him to leave.
- You asked Steve Jobs to leave?
- I'm like, "Hey, I'm interviewing this guy,
could you come back later?"
And then he's like, "Sure," and he, like, sauntered off and
Gates looks at me and he's like, "Do you know who that was?"
And I'm, like, "No." And he said, "That's Steve Jobs."
And I'm like, "Huh."
And he's like, "You don't know who that is, do you?"
I'm like, "Nope."
(Brad laughs)
- One last question, here, tell me something about
Paul Thurrott, something the world doesn't know.
(Mary Jo laughs)
- Ooo man, something the world doesn't know?
- Now, who's this character right here?
- Hey, speak of the devil.
- And Elvis.
Well, Mary Jo.
- Brad.
- Thank you.
- Thanks, it was fun.
- We've gotta do this again.
- Great.
- Seriously. When I come to New York I'll let you know.
- Great. Hey, what are you doing out here?
- [Paul] There's no party of yours I can't crash.
(Brad laughs)
- Microsoft, you're actually delivering
technology too fast for me.
- I know.
- Who would have thought?
- Well, we were gonna complain about what you do.
Let me ask you a question, because this is reverse to
what I'm used to doing. I don't know if you understand the
relationship, but usually I'm the one asking the questions.
It's a little strange, right there.
(sprightly music)