Bill Gates uses Reddit chat to talk about new role advising Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella — and he names the actor Melinda Gates wish to watch play Bill in a film.

What sort of counsel will Bill Gates provide in his role as adviser to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella? The Microsoft co-founder and previous CEO provided insight into his new job during an “Inquire from me Anything” chat Monday on Reddit.

“I make certain we pick ambitious scenarios and that we have got a powerful architecture to deliver on them,” Gates said when asked to explain his duties.

“i’m fascinated about how the cloud and new devices can help you us communicate and collaborate in new ways,” he continued. “The OS won’t just be on one device and the info won’t just be files — it’ll be your history including having the ability to review memories of items like kids growing up.”

[Nadella’s priorities must also be your priorities. See Microsoft’s Satya Nadella: Marching Orders For Digital Business.]

Gates, who reiterated he’s going to spend a 3rd of his time at Microsoft, said he was “thrilled” Nadella asked him “to pitch in,” and that the cloud can transform even well-established products, resembling Office.

He also identified growth in deep learning technologies as one in every of today’s most vital trends. “The final is computers that learn,” he stated.

As a seasoned media figure, Gates confined his Microsoft-related comments to abstract, high-level remarks. But they link to statements he and other Microsoft execs have revamped the last year in support of retiring CEO Steve Ballmer’s “One Microsoft” strategy.

Last summer, Ballmer sent employees a memo detailing his plans and the corporate-wide reorganization they’d entail.

“Our machine-learning infrastructure will understand people’s needs and what’s available on this planet, and may provide information and assistance. We are going to be great at anticipating needs in people’s daily routines and providing insight and assistance after they need it,” Ballmer wrote in that memo, evoking the similar cloud and deep-learning concepts that Gates referenced Monday.

Ballmer elaborated in his memo, stating Microsoft will provide users a “deeply personalized [experience], in response to the advanced, almost magical, intelligence in our cloud that learns increasingly more over the years about people and the area. Our shell will natively support all of our essential services, and should be great at responding seamlessly to what people ask for, or even anticipating what they wish before they ask for it.”

At July’s Microsoft Faculty Summit, Gates echoed a majority of these remarks. He noted that the cloud has made “infinite computing and infinite storage … almost a reality,” enabling software to become “a resounding assistant which may help us get things done, and help us derive deep insights.”

Last November, Nadella, who was on the time running Microsoft’s cloud and enterprise group, told journalist David Kirkpatrick that Microsoft has the assets to be “a relevant infrastructure guy at some point” since it supports various SaaS applications by itself cloud service, which supplies it the angle, expertise, and resources essential to become a cloud mega-provider.

What do these types of comments from recent months have in common? All of them paint Microsoft as an ecosystem-based, cloud-driven corporation. The corporate became the biggest software maker on the planet when PCs were the stewards of our files and knowledge, and, with the cloud usurping a lot of these duties, Microsoft sees how to maintain its world-beating stature.

But the remarks also hint at Microsoft’s controversial effort to chase consumers, rather than fully throwing its resources behind lucrative enterprise services.

“In case you are going to be in email, you’ll be in email. You can not say, okay, I only wish to be enterprise email,” Ballmer said last fall, adding that the opposite is to “be like Oracle and never take part in certain high-value activities.”

In his conversation with Kirkpatrick, Nadella seemed to agree. He argued that his company’s cloud platform, Windows Azure, has only become popular as an infrastructure service since it first supported various Microsoft products, including consumer-oriented properties equivalent to Xbox Live and Bing. This experience, Nadella said, gives Microsoft the insight to support clouds efficiently and at scale.

Gates seemed in high spirits in the course of the Reddit chat. He advertised his appearance with a brief animated video wherein he praised less heralded philanthropists and espoused the price of aid efforts.

He didn’t speak specifically to any consumer products, but his connection with “memories of youngsters growing up” doesn’t sound like a workplace-oriented service. Rather, his words suggest a worldwide wherein Microsoft services flow across devices, from the lounge to the office and everywhere between.

Moreover, the Microsoft leader’s references to machine learning likely refer to

Michael Endler joined InformationWeek as an associate editor in 2012. He previously worked in talent representation within the entertainment industry, as a contract copywriter and photojournalist, and as a teacher. Michael earned a BA in English from Stanford University in 2005 … View Full Bio

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