Increase tech R&D despite downturn: Bill Gates
Posted by Kheldar on 14 September 2001 - 16:08 · no comments & 458 views
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COMPANIES worldwide should continue to increase their spending in technology research despite the tough economic environment, says Microsoft chairman Bill Gates.
Emphasising the long term economic and social value of technology research, Mr Gates told analysts and journalists at a conference last week that Microsoft's own investment in basic research in the last 10 years had paid off beyond its highest expectations.
'It's very interesting at this time that a lot of people are questioning research, thinking about cutting back, and so it's particularly fitting for us to stand here today and say that research has more than paid off for us,' he said. 'We're continuing to increase that investment, even as the economy goes through its ups and downs here in the next several years.'
Between Microsoft's basic research arm, Microsoft Research (MSR), and its product development teams, the company spent US$3.8 billion last year on R&D. It plans to spend US$5 billion this year.
'I never thought I'd get up and be proud of spending US$5 billion,' said Mr Gates. 'Can't we write the software forUS$1 billion? But no we can't. The problems that we're tackling are not problems that lend themselves to overnight success. So it takes some real faith on the part of management that you're planting these seeds that take many, many years to pay off.
'The benefits accrue not only to society as a whole, but to these companies, in terms of understanding where their products should go and bringing out products at a lower cost. The really big advances come from long-term research investments.'
MSR, which celebrated its 10th anniversary last week, now has more than 620 computer scientists, pure scientists, psychologists, sociologists and other employees working in labs in Redmond, Washington; Silicon Valley; Cambridge, England; and Beijing. The labs work on products with a three- to 10-year time horizon.
Research from its labs have benefited Microsoft's Windows 95/98/NT/2000 as well as Office 95/97/2000, SQL Server, and the Encarta encyclopaedia, among others. For Windows XP, the new operating system which will be launched on Oct 25, MSR contributed high-resolution ClearType LCD technology and code enhancements for Windows Media Player, among others.
For Office XP, a more sophisticated grammar checker has been added, together with SmartTags, anti-piracy tech nologies, and speech recognition in Chinese and other languages.
The next 10 years will see more new breakthroughs than have occurred in the last 20 years, Mr Gates said. Microsoft demonstrated several early-stage research projects that could fundamen tally change the way computing is done in the future.
Among them was the 'Sensing Pocket PC', in which inexpensive sensors mounted on a Pocket PC allows the software to adjust the viewing orientation when the device is tilted, prepare itself when the user is coming close to the de vice, or act as a dictaphone by sensing when the user is talking to it. A user's interaction with the device thus becomes more natural, rather than relying on learned techniques such as typing, mousing or keyboard commands.
The future, according to Mr Gates, will offer the following:
Productivity: Microsoft's .Net strategy will deeply affect business processes, he said. Its .Net is a distributed computing framework which allows similarly-encoded information residing on different servers to be presented seamlessly to users on all types of client devices.
Communications: Intelligent information agents which can learn a user's preferences will be able to help prioritise his electronic correspondence and eliminate junk mail, while knowing when and to what device to forward e-mail, voicemail and other information.
Digital reading: Microsoft's Tablet PC - to be launched next year - will be a fully functioning PC. It will be a lightweight, portable tablet featuring handwriting recognition and other cutting-edge technology; high-res screens help alleviate eyestrain.
Listening to music: 'The day will come when music will not be something that you (move) around on physical media; when your right to listen to a certain music travels with you,' Mr Gates said. 'As you get into your car, it's there. If you visit a friend's house and you want to share a new tune with him, there's your music. Anytime there is a device, you ought to have access to it. In some ways, some of this stuff is like science fiction. And of course, when you make it real, it's no longer science fiction.'