Microsoft chief Strategic Officer: will be the Cloud Computing War initiative

"You've experienced the Kinect sensor of the Xbox, it's fun!" "Talking about the micro software is more than the Apple ipad, 60-Year-old Mundie smile very bright, like a child." Mundie, Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer, is a member of Bill Gates ' successor, President Barack Obama's technology advisory Group, who attaches great importance to the Kinect. In the era of cloud computing, from ITunes, to the iphone, to the ipad, Apple is leading the way, and Kinect is playing a turnaround. 25 days after the Kinect listing, the body-sensing peripherals have sold 2.5 million units, and Apple has sold 2 million ipads for twice times. Interviewed by this newspaper reporter, Mundie, in the cloud computing era, the war is far from over, the war has just begun. The "Future Cloud World" he described to reporters was as beautiful as a fairy tale, and he believed that Microsoft would take the initiative in the war. The cloud is the internet world's band directing different devices that require a similar "band conductor" role, it also requires synchronization, and the cloud gives people the ability to do "21st century": In the past 40 years, IT industry through the PC, the Internet and mobile internet several stages, in the cloud computing phase, the human face what opportunities? Mundie: You mentioned the stage before the mainframe and the microcomputer era. As you say, the transition from one age to the next is a continuous process. The personal computer was primarily business-oriented, but when we added multimedia capabilities, it started to be used for entertainment, and recently it was used for communication, and the phone went into the smart age. The future may be in the car electronics, or intelligent dust, that is, each dust has the ability to compute. The diversity of these devices, the Internet has become the main channel of information dissemination, the vast number of data poses some additional challenges. The more terminals, the greater the difficulty of data processing, like no band conductor, no synergy. And the appearance of cloud is to solve these two problems--terminal too much, data processing difficulty too big. 21st Century: Why is it that cloud is the conductor of the internet world? Mundie: Different devices require a role like "band conductor", which needs to be synchronized, and the cloud gives people that ability. To make the most of all these computing functions, we cannot use the Internet as an information media, we want it to be an environment that can be processed and edited for a variety of tasks and applications. The cloud provides large-scale computing and storage capabilities to global developers to achieve editorial processing. "21st Century": What technological changes will emerge after cloud computing? Mundie: The natural user interface makes computers more like humans, able to see, hear, and speak. Computers will be more like assistants than tools. At present, the computer is more like a powerful tool, but requires you to use the tools of the experts to achieve the highest value. I think that the computer in the future will be able to better help us, without requiring users to have very high professional skills. The natural user Interface (NUI) will be PC, cell phone and even TVand other traditional graphical interfaces are important additions. "21st century": People are always worried that if the villain or hacker to access and manipulate the data or information, whether it will cause a catastrophe of mankind? How to avoid such a disaster? Mundie: I don't know if it's going to be a human catastrophe, maybe it won't be that bad. That's why I'm talking about encryption, and if you have a lot of important data that you want to store in the cloud, you need to encrypt it and manage the key well. Cloud service is only the guardian of data, even if there are security vulnerabilities, the bad guys have access to the data center, but the key is in the hands of the data owner, so there will be no large-scale data leakage. Historically, the same problem has been found in the past, where the enterprise data center has sensitive data, by not allowing the operator to access data in the database, because he only has the right to operate without having to know the exact data. The cloud just makes the problem worse, because there are many different organizations that put data into a single large facility. That's why I think encryption and key management systems will provide a general solution for developers and operators. Cloud can solve a lot of global problems in health and education, cloud computing will be able to shine on the 21st century: The human race faces a series of challenges, such as lack of education and medical resources and environmental degradation, how can cloud computing help people successfully solve these challenges? Mundie: In medical and educational fields, cloud computing will be able to flourish, with more powerful client devices and a natural user interface that will make cloud computing more important. A medical robot that can provide medical services to children in poor areas. Go to the computer and talk to it, and it will diagnose your health. Computers are similar to people, and even without professional doctors, people in poor villages can enjoy medical care. In education, too, personal computers will be strong enough to help in the education process, not just in classrooms, but also in classrooms that act like teachers. The trend has now been that American Khan Academy has created a video library with over 2000 video lessons that can be accessed through the Internet, teaching people a lot of academic skills that they can't master in the classroom. Technology breakthroughs are needed in many other areas, such as climate and energy. Not only large government or enterprise laboratories, but all engineers and scientists all over the world will be able to take advantage of cloud-scale computing facilities and obtain data and analyze data from massive data or super-large sensor platforms. Cloud computing will help accelerate the development of technology solutions and solve many global problems. "21st century": How much is the cost of a robot doctor for every patient, not the initial cost, but the total cost of ownership? Mundie: Robot doctors have not yet been put into formal use, and our prototype products are developed using an advanced personal computer. In a way, its cost is the cost of installing a PC at a rural health clinic. Like a village doctor., a village needs only one robot doctor. I think the cost is very low. In fact, much less than the cost of training a doctor for each village. The cost is much lower than the current medical model, and the challenge is to integrate it with the new medical model. In five years from now, I think we will see a strong rise in new medical diagnostics, which will be more personalized. Compared with the current medical system, we may be able to make the computer more accurate diagnosis, and the development of optimal treatment options. The traditional biological and pharmaceutical models will change radically in five years, with the help of computers. "21st century": How long does it take for a robot doctor to really show up? Mundie: Technically it may take five years, and the current computing capacity is almost enough to handle these things. Products we've just launched for the Xbox, such as the Kinect sensor, show that we can make a cheap machine sensing system, and Kinect only needs 149 dollars. After adding to the PC, you can have a lot of necessary functions, such as seeing, listening, speaking, etc. The current challenge is not platform technology, but the development of new applications, the need to integrate medical knowledge to achieve. "21st century": How to determine the right time? Mundie: I think it's an art issue and a science issue. Part of the science is that you have to answer a few basic questions: first, does the product have a new function? Can it meet the needs that people have but don't know? Second, the product's function and price to reach the right level. In addition, the requirement that the product function and cost must be superior to the old solution, so that people are willing to adopt your solution. The things that bring the ultimate change to society are never the products that users predict they will need, and always some smarter people realize it's important, but the market doesn't need it now. Creating new products is not the ability to teach, it is more like an instinct, and only a few people in the world have this instinct.