Gates crystal ball gazes the future of tech

The industry has barely scratched the surface of what it's capable of in terms innovating to enrich the work and play of businesses and consumers.

So says Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft, speaking to an audience in London this morning at an Institute of Directors (IoD) event, in what looks set to be his UK swansong before turning his attentions more away from Microsoft and towards his foundation work.

Showcasing how touch will be a key part of the future for businesses and consumers, Gates demonstrated Microsoft's latest innovation called Surface.

"It's been in the hands of developers for the last two months. It will start showing up in offices, homes and retail shops later this year and as the price comes down it will be available everywhere," Gates said.

"The software sees any object on the table, scans it and reacts in the right way. [In the future we] won't talk about computers on the desk, we'll talk about computers in the desk.... Bringing touch, vision, the pen, speech, all of these things will be very relevant, very mainstream things in the future."

Gates talked generally about how far the industry has evolved since Microsoft has been around, the software breakthroughs that have been achieved and how the internet will grow in pervasiveness, with devices intelligent enough to enable users' information and preferences to follow them around.

More specifically, Gates was keen to discuss the business merits of software as we know it today and the tools and services we may have in the future.

"Think about this in the context of your own business," he told the audience of assembled directors and industry influencers. "I hope you can appreciate how it really applies very very broadly and it will be exciting to see how it all gets used."

"A lot has been talked about what this means at a consumer level. [But], another side to this is how software allows people to be more productive... Knowledge workers who have to look at data and make decisions... It empowers people to do their job in a better way and that actually has the biggest impact," he said.

"The [internet] is there to let you make faster decisions and better decisions. We've come a long way in the last 30 years but we're not enough halfway there to building the systems we want to have."

Gates' appearance in London today coincides with Microsoft announcing the general availability of its Dynamics CRM 4.0 in the UK.

"Customer relationships are the cornerstone of any successful business. In an increasingly competitive UK environment managing these relationships is crucial," said Paul White, UK director of Microsoft's Dynamics product group.

"With CRM 4.0, Microsoft is providing a tool that enables end users to track and record customer interaction, in a way that they are familiar with (the Outlook interface) and delivered in a way that matches their business requirements - be this on-premise or hosted remotely by one of our partners."

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