Ralph Haupter, General Manager at Microsoft Germany, explained the corporate strategy to a large audience of journalists and bloggers at an opening press conference held for the first time on the trade show stand. ”Design also says something about the state of a company. We used to define ourselves by our software’s functionality. Today the question at Microsoft is how we people can get to grips with this wonderful new digital world and enjoy it, whether we want to entrust it with our data and if we can control it. This is a question of integrated design.”
There are three critical factors for Microsoft here. Firstly, the esthetics of the experience, because working with technology today should be both appealing and enjoyable. Secondly, the clarity of the function, because IT must stay controllable in times with a vast number of devices and data sources. And thirdly, the intelligence of the blueprint, because new technologies only become flexible and smart by being connected in the first place. Together these three factors result in a design that places the focus consistently on the user.
Quality of experience, flexibility and confidence in the digital world
The Metro Design makes the basic principles of the Microsoft approach visible and turns them into an experience: it is clearly designed and reduced to the essentials. It leads the user intuitively and stringently to relevant functions: no searching, no rethinking, no wasting time, because information appears where you expect it to and the operation is always the same. Various data sources including the Cloud are already bundled together in the blueprint in order to create access to the same and current information across all devices at all times. New flexibility is now also part of the intelligence of the blueprint: with its openness, interoperability, scalability and the choice of options Microsoft solutions allow an unexpected degree of freedom for designing system infrastructures and Cloud applications in companies and public authorities. This too, is part of the integral approach with which confidence and security in the digital world go hand in hand ”by default”. Since last year’s CeBIT, Microsoft has been conducting a debate about the particular responsibility of the IT sector for its technologies’ power to change under the term ”Corporate Technical Responsibility” (CTR). This is associated with a commitment to data protection, security, accessibility and transparency in the provision of new IT technologies such as Cloud Computing. Concrete results of these efforts are to be seen for example in the implementation of European and German data protection guidelines for drawing up contractual terms for Cloud Services such as Office 365 – A new level of confidence has been established here.
Developers rush to Windows 8 Workshops
The consumer preview of Windows 8 for consumers was downloaded more than one million times within just 24 hours, showing that interest remains high for the new Metro Design operating system. Microsoft is presenting Windows 8 at CeBIT and giving business customers and developers a detailed insight into the product strategy and app development. In less than one week, over 1,500 developers have registered for workshops to learn how to develop Windows 8 apps in the Metro Style.
One of the first German suppliers in the new Windows Store is the Berlin start-up company ”6Wunderkinder”. Their ”Wunderlist” app, a no-frills and easy-to-use Task Manager will soon be available to download. Christian Reber, CEO of the successful company, underlines that an attractive and effective operational concept is key factor for the app’s success. The Metro Design provides the ideal framework here. Plus Windows, which is by far the most popular operating system worldwide. ”We are not only convinced by the Metro Design approach, but also see an enormous potential for our company to reach far more people with our ideas and apps via Windows 8 in the future,” explained Reber.
Such apps will be offered in the new Windows Store by Windows 8 in the future. The Windows Store will be available worldwide and developers can then sell their apps in 231 different markets in more than 100 languages. No other platform provides developers with so many promising opportunities given the millions of customers who will be using a PC, desktop, laptop or tablet with Windows 8. ”Windows 8 is also ”Windows reinvented” for a whole new generation of devices. It will be the best operating system for hundreds of millions of PCs, tablets and other devices, and for way more than one billion people across the whole world”, says Ralph Haupter.
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq ”MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.
For further information go to:
http://www.microsoft.de/cebit
Barbara Steiger
Communications Manager Development Software and Innovation
Contact PR-Agency FAKTOR 3 AG
Dirk Friedrichs
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