Cloud is a big game changer; tremendous momentum: Satya Nadella

“The reality is the cloud has been a pretty big game changer. Cloud is still in early-to-intermediate innings. We see tremendous momentum when it comes to cloud adoption,” he said.

Nadella said the cloud-native application has really not yet begun. By 2025, most of the applications will be built on cloud-native platforms.

Sharing his vision for a tech-enabled India, Nadella highlighted how the cloud will be foundational to scaling the country’s digital journey.

“When you move to the cloud, it is 70-80 per cent more energy efficient. So if you want to be energy efficient on any workload, the first thing to do is move to the cloud. By moving to cloud, you can also hedge against the demand cycle as you are consuming only when you need it,” he noted.

Nadella said Microsoft has 60-plus regions and 200 plus data centres worldwide. In India itself, the company has regions everywhere and is expanding by adding a fourth region in Hyderabad.

“We are very committed to making cloud infrastructure available everywhere,” he said.

According to him, India’s lead in building digital public goods is amazing.

Speaking on the topic of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Nadella commented, “Let’s think about how it can augment every one of us in whatever it is that we are doing. Every knowledge worker is going to be more creative, more expressive, more productive.

“Every frontline worker will be able to do more knowledge work than they ever did. Every design task, whether it’s software engineering, mechanical design, architecture, is going to be that much more productive going forward. So, it’s ultimately, in my opinion, going to accelerate human creativity, human ingenuity and human productivity across a range of tasks.”

Hyderabad-born Nadella said India is a hub of innovation and resourcefulness. India will be the third largest economy by the end of the decade. It is already the second largest economy for start-ups, he said.

“If you want to have economic growth going forward, you have to have an economic growth paradigm that doesn’t consume energy at the rate at which we are consuming. And it is going to be the key thing and key imperative in the context of India and India’s growth,” Nadella said.