Microsoft working to make passwords redundant: Nadella

Getting muddled over your various passwords may soon be a thing of the past. With growing concerns over security of emails and mobile phones, technology giant Microsoft said on Thursday it is working on ways to rid tech users of their worries over passwords.

''One of the biggest security issues is passwords. One of the things that we are working on is a world where passwords are not going to be the ones that you know can get hacked but you really have other biometrics that really help us secure our computing interfaces,'' Microsoft Corporation chief executive Satya Nadella said in Mumbai.

He was delivering the keynote address at 'Future Unleashed: Accelerating India', Microsoft's largest ever customer conference, celebrating 25 years of the Richmond-based company's presence in the country.

Hyderabad-born Nadella said the company has a sense of purpose that is about empowering every person and every organisation on the planet to achieve more.

''We had a mission of putting a personal computer (PC) on every desk in every home, but in retrospect that was a goal … our mission was to empower every individual and organisation. That's really what I look at as we go forward,'' said Nadella, who has completed 25 years at Microsoft.

Nadella, who runs an average of 5 km a day - even on Thursday despite 16 hours of jet lag - and reads 10 books on weekends, said that with a changing world and technologies, the company has more ambitions to reinvent productivity and business processes.

''Our first ambition is about reinvention of productivity and business process. We want to make sure that work no longer is a place you go to. Work is about making things happen and getting things done wherever you are,'' he noted, adding that the purpose of Microsoft is to build an intelligent cloud.

He unveiled the new cloud start-up initiative to empower the smart cities.

Nadella also spoke about the tools which he uses daily to make decisions, to have discussion across his team and harness the information inside the company.

Talking about one of his personal phones, an iPhone, he said, ''this is not my phone, but it is an iPhone. I like to somehow refer to this as iPhone Pro because it has got all the Microsoft software on it … there is Word, Excel, Power Point.''

He also added that he uses a high-end Lumia phone as well.

Nadella suggested that all leaders should use digital tools to augment judgement, ingenuity and productivity.

Microsoft will bring the latest Surface Pro 4 here in January, which will be available for Rs75,000 and above, he said. ''We are not stopping at building a phone that can run apps. We are keen on creating a full PC experience from the phone. Windows Continuum is a great feature in a market like this.''

On the fast growing e-commerce space in India, Nadella said, ''It is mind-blowing to see how e-commerce is progressing in this country.. am not bothered about their valuations but am more interested in the quality of their ideas, which is pretty good.''

He went on to add that ''one thing we are excited about is what app developers can do. One such developer, StaffPad, has changed the way music is composed. A R Rahman is a big user of StaffPad.''

There is going to be more computing in our lives in next 10 years, Nadella said, adding that ''computing will be everywhere, what will be key is our mobility of our human experience through all this computing. That is where the cloud is important''.

(Also see: Microsoft ties up with Snapdeal, PayTm, Justdial)