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Bill Gates, Chairman & Chief Software Architect, Microsoft Corp. |
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Gates Gives a Long-Range View of Innovation
29 March 2004
Long-awaited innovations in IT, such as highly reliable speech recognition software, tablet PCs and more secure computing, will finally take hold in the next ten years or even sooner, Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect, William H. Gates assured an audience at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, Monday in San Diego.
"Many of the 'Holy Grails' of computer science that have been worked on for over thirty years will be solved in this ten-year period," Gates said.
During a one-hour Gartner Mastermind Interview conducted by Gartner Chairman and CEO, Michael Fleisher, Gates also cited the continued rise of Web services in enabling dissimilar software systems to work together and of less-complex modeling tools that will allow non-developers to tailor software for specific business requirements.
Fleisher pointed out that many IT consumers might be skeptical about such improvements, given the failure of these technologies to meet expectations in the past. Ten years ago, speech recognition and dictation software was projected to be one of the next big advances in computing and he asked Gates why the technology would succeed this time around.
Gates answered that the hurdles, to date, have been in the areas of eliminating background noises that confuse the software transcriber and selecting the proper text when presented with two or more similar sounding text options. This latter hurdle Gates called the "wreck a nice beach" problem, as the artificial intelligence might confuse the audible command of "recognize speech" with "wreck a nice beach."
"In our case, we're putting our money where our mouth is and investing record levels in these breakthrough technologies," Gates said. He added that coming improvements in speech recognition software and the uptake of tablet PCs, also known as digital notepads, would not eliminate computing keyboards altogether, but would contribute to the momentum of mobile computing and enhance remote project collaboration, adding things like annotation capability.
Security Area Is Ripe for Innovation
Security is the next biggest area of innovation, Gates said. When Fleisher asked him when members of the audience would finally be able to sit back and eliminate spam and social engineering attacks from list of top-five IT concerns, Gates was optimistically confident. He said that will be achieved by about 2006, via a combination of software innovations and sound user enterprise practices. "I think in the next two years, [security] will get off the top-five list." Gates said that one area of security-related innovation will be better developed of and in use of e-mail sender identification programs — that is, caller-ID systems for e-mail. Enterprise IT departments must take steps on their own to keep their systems safe, such as isolating security breaches when they occur so damage is contained to as few assets as possible.
Customers, Help Thyselves
Fleisher then asked Gates how Microsoft would improve its perception among customers as being strong on technology, but not on service.
Gates said the Internet and Microsoft's product-specific Web sites have allowed the software giant to enter a constant feedback loop with its customers and thus work to provide better products and service.
"That's the beauty of having hundreds of millions of people who use your software," Gates said. "They want you to make it better."
But he added that Microsoft wanted to help customers help themselves, bringing to mind the adage about giving a man a fish and feeding him for a day vs. teaching a man to fish and feeding him for a lifetime. "We want to enable organizations to be self-sufficient," he said.
Dean Lombardo
Gartner Staff
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