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Gates: 'Where are the costs coming from?'
Microsoft CEO offers down-to-earth keynote
June 3, 1997
Web posted at: 5:35 p.m. EDT (2135 GMT)From CNN Interactive Writer Andy Walton
ATLANTA (CNN) -- Legs crossed, sitting in a director's chair, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates opened Comdex's second day with an informal question-and-answer session.
The session was simple and direct, focusing on Microsoft products and specific issues, rather than broad themes. For example, Gates offered a video clip of a 20-node Windows NT server cluster that Microsoft says processes 1.6 billion simulated transactions a day.
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Gates' nuts-and-bolts focus was a match for the down-to-business air of Comdex in general.
"Our big jihad last year was getting out products to incorporate Internet standards," Gates said. "This year, the thing we've really tried to learn a lot about is, where are the costs coming from?"
Gates took his most ardent stand of the day on network computers, claiming that putting software and hardware development in the same hands would lead to a jumble of conflicting standards.
"That's why they call them NCs," Gates said. "Not Compatible."
In the final question, Gates' traditional broad strokes surfaced, as he returned to a theme that he has used in recent appearances and columns: the notion of a corporate "nervous system."
"The nervous system is how you deal with information broadly: meetings, memos, forms," Gates said. The electronic nervous system is the part where you have computers to move that information around."
"One thing I did at Microsoft was say, 'Bring me all of the paper forms that we've created,'" Gates said. "They brought in about a thousand." For example, joining the retirement plan required one form and leaving it required another.
This led, Gates said, to his push for greater use of e-mail: "You want to make sure that even the mundane tasks are done as efficiently as possible."
Wednesday's keynote speakers are Oracle Chairman and CEO Larry Ellison and Time Warner Vice Chairman Ted Turner. Time Warner owns Cable News Network.
- Newsmaker Profile: Bill Gates
- CNN Message Boards: Comdex '97
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