(car tires squealing)
- [Narrator] It's lunchtime and this is
Brad Anderson's Lunch Break.
(upbeat 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 Redman and meet with other tech leaders
and learn about what they're doing.
(upbeat music)
Today on Brad Anderson's Lunch Break
I'm joined by the tech all-star Jeffrey Snover.
Jeffrey is a technical fellow
and a proud father of PowerShell.
(Cars honking)
(piano music)
- [Brad] Have you ever been on vacation somewhere
and someone finds out, oh this is Jeffrey
who created PowerShell?
- So, yes, Yes.
- What's that like?
- So a few years ago, we sent,
My wife and I sent the kids off to summer camp
and we decided, hey let's have a break from it all.
We went to this really remote bed and breakfast
at the end of a dirt road.
It had only three rooms, right.
And then in the morning we get together and the three
- Have a breakfast
- And have a breakfast and the first guy
"Oh I'm a professor from California here for a wedding."
The next guy, "I'm a state IT guy,
"my specialty's scripting."
I said scripting? Oh well tell me about that.
And the guy launches into this long, like
"oh well there's this thing called PowerShell
and I'm the state expert at that, and I do this and this."
And then his wife gets into it.
"Oh, Josh is so amazing and he helps all of his people
and he's the rockstar of the state, he's just wonderful."
And this goes on and on for like 10 or 15 minutes.
At some point the guy kind of catches himself.
He's like "oh you know I just keep going on,
I get so excited."
- [Both] So what do you do?
(Jeffrey and Brad laughing)
- And so I told him, well you know, I work for Microsoft
I invented PowerShell.
And there was this kinda scowl of disbelief on his face
and then some awkward moment and then we just moved on
and just talked about what they were gonna do for the day.
And a couple minutes later he's like,
there's this flash of insight.
He's like "Wait a second, are you Jeffrey Snover?"
- [Brad] Awesome Story.
You've been at Microsoft a long time, how many years now?
- [Jeffrey] 17, 17 years.
- Okay so think back on your 17 years
what would be the missed opportunity,
when you think back and you go
like man, I should have done that.
- Yeah, Okay, so here's the thing
Microsoft is this amazing company. It truly is right?
We are the company that put a desktop
- In every home, and on every desk.
- [Jeffrey] And on every desk, right.
And then what we did was we said
Hey, we're gonna take that and we're gonna be
the enterprise server company.
And I remember being outside of Microsoft at the time
thinking there's no way that's gonna happen.
- Microsoft as enterprise?
- But the reality is Microsoft has the business assets
it's got world class talent, and it has this culture,
this culture of being like, really, like a dog with a bone.
- Persistent
- Persistent, tenacious, just go do the right thing.
And self critical.
We look at our flaws, we face them with courage
and we address them.
And we became like the leading vendor
of enterprise software, so amazing.
But when it came to mobility, we failed there.
We failed there, and the reality is,
I think that as a leadership team,
me, you, as a leadership team we underestimated
the amount of commitment required
and the amount of sacrifice required
to succeed with that marketplace.
So, we definitely, that was a mess.
But again, because we're such a great company
we learned from that lesson
and then when it came to the cloud we said never again,
we are all in, we are gonna make the commitments,
we are gonna take whatever sacrifices
to succeed at the cloud.
And, you know, under the great leadership of Satya
there is no one that has any confusion
about our commitment to the cloud. None.
- [Brad] Okay, so when you meet with customers,
what's like the one or two things that you hear
that you go like you know, man, we've solved that.
With the could or what we're doing
with our productivity and mobility.
we've solved that.
How do we help you understand that
we can actually solve this problem for you.
what do you hear?
- Well there's a whole bunch of that stuff
around agility and what I find is that a lot of people
are still on, they'll complain about something,
and it's like well, tell me about that.
What are you running?
And they'll say oh I'm running on 2003
like oh good heavens, or 2008.
So I think people are kind of stuck in a way of doing things
that if they updated it, if they kept up to date
a bunch of those problems should be gone, right?
So, that's cost, that's efficiency, energy savings.
Oh! storage, good heavens, boy have we solved
the storage problem.
If you're still buying really expensive,
if a large portion of your budgets still being spent
on storage, you need to take a look at our new stack.
Storage space is direct, oh my heavens.
I think a lot get this exactly wrong,
they think that to be safe and secure,
oh I've gotta run things...
- Exactly. Yep.
- I gotta keep hold of them.
And this is really analogous
to the hundred plus years ago when people thought
well the way I have to keep my money safe
is to put it underneath my mattress
because banks get robbed all the time
- That's right
- [Jeffrey] And no one would do that today.
(peppy music)
- [Brad] Thank you so much.
- [Jeffrey] Dude, this was great
- Thanks Jeffrey.
- Cheers have a great
(peppy music)
- [Narrator] Next time on Brad Anderson's Lunch Break.
- [Brad] I heard a great story
about when you got in a big dispute with Bill.
- Which one?
(Both laughing)
- [Man In Dark Blue] I've written a review of a laptop
somebody comes in and says hey I bought that laptop.
It cost $1800, you are an idiot.
- [Man In White] I don't think IT is something
you can just show up because you play Xbox
and do well on it, I think you have to be clever.
(Refreshing Music)