Please let me make the connection from active directory wan replication, as far as what I believe is the objective of ramping up the azure ad services capability and capacity: making a global computing grid with current and next generation Xbox consoles. This isn't a polished presentation, I'm genuinely sorry I can't manage better, but this is a proper long line strategy. (Also you could imagine a phone product fitting into this end scenario, at least I can)
I suspect that pushing the world off local machines and licenses is not a bad thing for the security of systems generally.
But consider the flatness of the stock during Ballmer's tenure.
By literally cutting the supply of people who can maintain off net machines, Nadella is pushing the license revolution about the hardest he can.
I hold two not necessarily complimentary theories about the stock under SB: flat stock suits a relentless acquirer such as SB, who iirc became the largest non founder shareholder by committing his net worth to his employer stock and sticking to this policy in every remuneration review. I believe SB laid some of the best foundations for growth to ever be implemented by any internally promoted business leader in a direct majority positive personal wealth correlation position at the time of appointment. Many CEOs have become one to one linked to their employer success but only after options awards and bonus schemes created that equity correlation. Ballmer was all in. I beseech you especially if you're not favourable to the man by reputation, to look at SB more closely. I experienced a Damascene conversation and subsequently I discovered I admire Ballmer's dedication and principles as much as they surely desperately needed smoothing with greater sensitivity to the constituencies that are the still neglected bedrock of economic and technological capability and development in America (much less so in Europe unfortunately) because we just can't respond to any proverbial chair throwing, it's not in the geek career handbook, sorry Steve, but I at least know that you truly tried and can guess how much it means to you still. ---- Equally Ballmer could have suppressed the stock by his relentless investment in long term economic growth. Windows Mobile is the best known calamity. Not necessarily for the mobile ecosystem, but for the social and political relationships that ownership of Nokia could have created. Such transatlantic opportunities are not necessarily seen in every generation.
I think Ballmer takes credit but SN was the trigger puller on the XboxOneX architecture that enticed Dave Cutler from retirement to bootstrap W10 on the 1X. This puts workstation class 3D hardware in homes for under three hundred dollars, last offers I saw. The next model is even more attractive. But at launch the 1X was almost five times the component value and packaged how very few are capable of producing. Powerful workstations in ubiquitous distribution is a stepping stone to the next technological transformation in this lifetime I hope to see and even participate in.
Can you now appreciate why I've digressed so much?
Hundreds of millions of workstation class consoles presents the most important network and remote tenant support challenge that I think I will see in my life.
If by reaping the financial benefits of pushing sites to cloud and subscriptions, Nadella can afford to extend Intune to domestic demand on the scale of the consoles market, the hardware will support a new era of possibilities. I certainly didn't think the adapter for the Xbox to use the switches and controls you bring, was by any means facing only the challenges of physical disability. I have forever since been thinking about my garage door opener being replaced with a simple relay and I have sufficient trust in my wan access to my console to be completely comfortable with this. (Plus of course further security doors before you enter our home)
How do you prefer to heat your home? I prefer to be paid for running azure jobs that are modelling for local transport conditions and micro climate forecasts. Rackfill not landfill, is the future for hardware my company hopes to speed into reality. Miniaturisation is plenty for the data created by our lives exception being sensor data and video capture of later value in review. But I expect to see de duplication of scenery behind multiple channels of capturing cameras, after dimensional data extraction, which is easy to control the storage facility for, over neighbourhood 5G networks (see STH for latest Celeron 5G targeted chips, the most interesting news I'm surprised HN hasn't leaped upon) for simultaneous multi deca gigabit ptp mimo is upon us probably before a full traditional interval technological generation (I think the important tech generation interval is halved and halved again in the last decade alone and therefore I believe that Moore's Law is now manifest in the periodicity of development having become challenged by other limits nevertheless the technology advances just not by virtue of inherent value or capability but external factors. If Moore's Law can be restated to apply for the interval of development continuing the capability exponential growth, please allow the currying to be noted as Kirby's Second Law, my first being explaining is losing, a admonishment probably rather than immutable law but it is very hard to find ways it is inapplicable. Hence my second law could be written, laws return in guise too thin to deceive but too importantly to be obvious (we are too preoccupied with the effect of force unknown ") I had better write that much better.. please please don't take me too seriously in fact please don't take me seriously in the first place, as Feynman offered the seeker of physics profundity his advice "physics doesn't matter, love does" I'm ashamed every time I consume my listeners attention without being able to make some token of value beyond the time taken. Time is beyond the gift of the gods. Its waste is in this incredible epoch I believe is the only crime that is important to punish with meaningful actions.