You may have heard either Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer talking about something we call the Microsoft Quests.  Essentially, this is our long-term vision on how the magic of software will help our everyday lives in the future. The quests are really broken up into 70 areas, which are then put broadly into 6 categories affecting different people in different roles, which are really 5 categories with SaaS (Software as a Service) underlying all the quests:-

  • Effortlessly Connected & in Control - for the Information Worker
  • Empowering IT - for the IT Professional
  • Redefining Personal Entertainment - for Consumers
  • Rewiring the Economy - for the Business Decision Maker
  • Adding a Semantic Level - for Developers
  • Software as a Service (SaaS)

I was inspired at TechReady5 (our recent "internal-only TechEd") to hear Bill Gates take us through, and even demo, some of the areas that Microsoft is working on right now for the future, in alignment with these quests. It's truly inspirational that we have such a framework for solving the computing problems of the future.

Here are some pictures of Bill's talk:-

 This is our initial standing ovation.

Talking about the Quests...

Answering questions from the field...