Microsoft Build – Bots and bobs.

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Steady evolution but existing issues still need fixing. 

• Microsoft launched a series of evolutionary upgrades to Windows 10 and the devices that run it, at its /build// developer conference in San Francisco.
• This is the key conference that gives visibility on where Microsoft intends to take its ecosystem over the next few years.
• While there were some interesting developments, some of the short comings of the existing ecosystem were not addressed.
• The top spots were:
• Conversations as a platform.
  • This is all about instilling a much greater level of intelligence into every device that user has including iOS and Android.
  • The initial focus is around intelligent bots that can allow companies offering goods and services to interact with their customers much more easily.
  • The fact that bots are very early stage is highlighted by Microsoft’s Tay AI chat bot on Twitter that this week became a racist, sexist bigot as it was not smart enough to realise that this was inappropriate.
  • The failure of this experiment is why things are starting off from a very simple premise.
  • Microsoft has launched a framework for creating simple bots (.bot) that can take orders and recognise a degree of natural language and escalate to a human when it gets stuck.
• Cortana
  • As part of this initiative Cortana is becoming much more deeply integrated into Windows 10 and developers can also integrate its intelligence into the apps that they build.
  • This will work on Android right away but typically it will not work for iOS just yet, although Microsoft promised that it is coming.
  • These are all the right places to take Cortana, but I still think that its fundamental intelligence needs a lot of work as it still significantly underperforms Google Now when tested.
  • This is evident in the fact that usage of Cortana remains very low.
  • There are 270m installations of Windows 10, each of which is Cortana enabled, not to mention Cortana’s presence on non-Windows devices.
  • However, it is only answering 1m questions per day meaning that only 0.37% of users use it daily.
  • In the best case scenario this translates into 11% of users using it once per month but I suspect that in reality this is more like 3-5%.
  • To get this number up, Cortana must become much smarter although the deeper integration launched here will help.
• Windows 10 Anniversary update.
  • The uptake of Windows 10 is coming along very nicely with 270m devices using the code with an encouraging trajectory of take up.
  • Against this backdrop, Microsoft will enhance certain aspects of the experience to make it more intuitive and easy to use:
    • First. The Windows Hello authentication used for logon will now be available to be embedded into apps and websites visited with the edge browser.
    • Second. The use case for Ink will be enhanced such that the pen can be used to make smart annotations in multiple programs.
    • The aim here is to encourage the 72% of users who still use pen and paper to switch some of that usage to digital.
    • Third. Xbox One games will run on all Windows 10 devices and the device can now be used as a development environment to make development more straight forward.
    • Fourth. Visual Studio will be usable to develop apps for all platform including Android and iOS.
    • This went hand in hand with improving on the code converters making porting across these platforms more straight forward.
• Cross device.
  • The story of services and functionality working across all platforms was hammered home at every opportunity.
  • This includes not just the whole range of Windows 10 devices, but also iOS and Android devices as well.
  • The demonstrations of services jumping from one device to another and one platform to another were seamless and convincing.
  • This reinforces my view that when it comes to cross device and platform, Microsoft has developed an edge over its competitors that needs to be aggressively marketed to users.
• While these updates represent a solid evolution of the offering, there was no real mention of addressing some of the real problems that the Windows ecosystem is still grappling with.
• This includes the problem that all of the data that Microsoft collects from its different services is not pooled together to provide a better and more enhanced experience for the user.
• Furthermore, integration between the different services also remains very weak and it remains to be seen how well these new updates address these problems.
• The net result is a good development path for the ecosystem, but the existing problems have to be fixed before the user experience will really shine and appeal to users.
• Microsoft is still quite attractive even it completely messes up its ecosystem strategy, making it a very low risk investment with plenty of upside, should it get it right.