Microsoft's Investment for Survival

Yes, even Microsoft has been hit with the downturn in the economy. Microsoft, like so many other companies, was forced to do an across the board layoff.  But one area that was spared the knife - research. At TechFest 2009 - Craig Mundie made some thought provoking statements about the future products from Microsoft and his position on research.

Now since Craig is Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer - you might expect him to champion investment in research. And in his talk on Tuesday this week, as expected -  he really strongly supports it, even suggesting that survival of the company is dependent on research.

Later he even supports his theory of survival by turning back the clock and looking at the early days of Microsoft when the company made a decision to start up a basic research operation. Other companies didn't invest in research, and most of those companies aren't with us any more.

Microsoft Research head Rick Rashid was even bold enough to define the future results of research by saying "If you knew what you were going to get, it wouldn't be basic research" 

Perhaps the most interesting response in the discussion was an answer to the question - which technologies are likely to help Microsoft in the future? Answer - Some of the new computer interfaces that will move the industry beyond the mouse and keyboard.

I found that interesting - not new OS, Office suites, mobile devices, cloud computing, or even Web 2.0 as the top research revenue hot spots - but new computer interfaces.

You can find more on this story on the cnet news page.

So what new computer interfaces would you like to see for Bentley products?