REDMOND, Washington -- Microsoft Chairman and CEO Bill Gates today outlined a strategy of "knowledge workers without limits," using technology to streamline corporate and customer communications and drive business growth.
That philosophy is being incorporated at Microsoft headquarters, Gates said in a keynote address here at the company's third annual CEO Summit. Within a year, the Redmond campus will have a wireless communications infrastructure for data to streamline employee interactions, Gates said.
More than 100 CEOs and business leaders are in Redmond this week for the summit, aimed at emerging information technology advances that drive business. Among the CEOs are Jacques Nasser of Ford, Paul O'Neill of Alcoa, Lawrence Bossidy of Allied Signal and Martha Stewart of Marth Stewart Living Omnimedia LLC.
Other executives expected at the three-day conference include Michael Dell of Dell Computer, Michael Eisner of Walt Disney, Rupert Murdoch of News Corporation and Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett.
Getting behind the 'digital dashboard'
In his keynote address, Gates outlined strategies for empowering knowledge workers. They ranged from wireless connectivity to corporate data from mobile phones and other small devices to so-called "digital dashboards," Microsoft's term for what others call an enterprise information portal.
Gates evangelized on the customizable digital dashboard as a key means for executives to gain a panoramic view of corporate data, with live data feeds, search capabilities, instant access to business intelligence applications, alert functions and urgent e-mails.
"You need a system that can pull data and put it at a very high level and let you dive into it," Gates said.
He also touted the concept of "meetings without walls," conducted instead over the Web, and discussed advances in software and hardware that help to bridge the gap between reading on paper and reading on a PC or smaller device.
On another emerging technology, a Microsoft official demonstrated a system that enabled him to check and respond to his e-mail over a phone line through a headset.
"There are a lot of revolutionary things that really are within our reach," Gates said.
But despite dramatic advances in widely available technologies, many individuals and companies remain behind the curve, Gates said.
"This is still a world that is very, very paper-driven," he said. "When you really look at the statistics and see how many people are using [technology], you get a clear sense that we have a long ways to go."
(On Tuesday, Microsoft and Xerox Corp. announced a joint technology and marketing initiative aimed at accelerating and simplifying knowledge-sharing in the office.)
Feedback from the execs
"I think finding out online what's going on with your customers is an absolute necessity for most businesses today," said Allied Signal's Bossidy following Gates' address.
Bossidy said he expects Allied Signal, a technology and manufacturing company, to maintain IT spending at approximately 4 percent of revenue per year, curtailing spending on legacy systems and investing more heavily in contemporary systems that help it improve operations.
Despite the dizzying pace of change in IT and the prospect of swift obsolescence, Bossidy said it's important that companies roll the dice with IT.
"There's always that chance of obsolescence, but the cost of waiting is worse," Bossidy said during a session with the press. "You may not bat 1.000, but you've got to take the shot."
Microsoft wouldn't complain if Allied Signal and its peers bought Microsoft goods, and this week's meeting appears to be something of an implicit sales pitch.
As for Gates' vision of a customizable digital dashboard, Martha Stewart said it shouldn't be limited to executives -- it should have a future with homemakers, too.
Microsoft is at www.microsoft.com.
