Gates' Tech Vision: By 2010 'It Will All Come Together'

Gates characterized some technology developments as "a big surprise on the positive side," pointing to what he said is continued improvement in price performance and storage capacity.

Speaking of storage, he noted that "[PC hard] disks have moved from a megabyte to 10 gigabytes [in capacity]. By the end of the decade, a terabyte will be the typical storage on a personal computing device."

He also cited advances in wireless technologies, helped by "easy and inexpensive connections to get high-speed capabilities."

Gates also spoke of significant gains in server performance. "Its clear now that you can buy industry standard Intel/Windows-type servers and get performance that in the past you would have had to pay five to 10 times as much for," he noted. This is a milestone that weve waited for and that was just achieved this year."

However, "on the more sober side, there are a number of things that have made this a tough year," Gates asserted. One negative factor, he said, is a more conservative attitude toward capital investments, particularly in IT spending, as well as the overall economic climate. "Its very challenging," he said. "It requires that companies have the strength to see these [technology] advances through." Some of these advances, he added, will take "many, many years of development."

Gates also said that "the complexity of managing systems is still a black mark in that category, and as you get more servers and more clients, the challenge that this represents is even worse. Management software today is not systematically bringing those costs down the way that they will in the future. So theres a lot more work to be done there."

A final negative, said Gates, is slow broadband deployment. "Yes theres been growth in the last year, but the prices have gone up somewhat, and its not as fast-moving as many, including myself, would have hoped it would be."

In terms of office workflow, Gates said Microsoft has "identified some of the inefficiencies that take place in the office." Recent introductions of tablet PCs have aimed at automating and increasing efficiency where tasks like note taking, reading and annotation are necessary, he explained. "Its gratifying that this year, we had the tablet PC launch, which has included some 15 systems with many more coming based on that concept."

Reproduced from National Underwriter Life & Health/Financial Services Edition, November 25, 2002. Copyright 2002 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.