Microsoft's Brad Anderson and Scott Guthrie talk tech over lunch

It was a sunny day when Brad Anderson, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President of Enterprise Client and Mobility, finished his lunch in 10 seconds and used the rest of his 30-minute break to drive and chat with Microsoft guru and familiar face, Scott Guthrie, in a video published today. Part of Brad’s web series where he spent his lunch break with the industry’s top leaders and influencers, the video offered an interesting and informative look into Scott Guthrie and his work at Microsoft.

Scott Guthrie, who looked rather comfortable in his now-signature red polo shirt, shared some good laughs with Brad on the rumor and running joke about Scott being a basketball star in his university days. The joke even got on his Wikipedia page and was the basis for a hilarious misunderstanding in one of his conferences.

Scott’s programming career started at the young age of 10, when he first made money with his skills in FoxPro, having done many years of BASIC programming. Scott went on to write the first ever customer-relationship-managment (CRM) software for his father’s telemarketing business. The knowledge and Scott’s interest in data management was carried to his long career at Microsoft and beyond, till finally he took over CEO Satya Nadella’s former position as Executive Vice President of Microsoft’s Cloud and Mobility group.
The interview then continues with a discussion about the increasingly important role of mobility and the mobile-first mentality in today’s enterprise solutions. The current focus of Microsoft in enterprise mobility is on” improving the end-user experience all around IT,” and achieving the balance between customer empowerment and protection of corporate assets, which is also what differentiates Microsoft solutions from other offerings, explained Scott.
 

 
Microsoft’s recent release of its Active Threat Analytics (ATA) for Active Directory, which is based on last year’s acquisition of Aorato, is a prime example of Microsoft’s clear focus on cloud and services. The product gathers info on the who, what, where, when, why and how of corporate data access and pinpoint abnormal behaviors and threats using machine learning. The enormous amount data being processed from this and across all of Microosft’s offerings necessitates a service-based, cloud-based software model, which also allows for tracking changes and using data in a deeper way.
For more informative talks and fun tidbits regarding industry leaders, check out other videos from Brad Anderson’s Lunch Break series on Youtube.