PhillyDeals: Microsoft rebounds, eyeing the 'digital lifestyle'

Since Indian American engineer

Satya Nadella

took over from

Steve Ballmer

as CEO of

Microsoft

in February, shares of the software giant that gave the world Windows, Excel, and Exchange have gained $100 billion on the stock market. It's now worth as much as

Google

, more than any U.S. company but

Apple

or

ExxonMobil

.

Wall Street believes in Microsoft again, even after it reported a loss last quarter, laid off 18,000 Nokia workers and other employees, shut its Xbox Entertainment Studios, and has seen its sky-high profit margins slip a bit each year with competitors on many fronts.

Nadella is rallying salespeople and investors with oracular projections. (He is also wrapped in a firestorm over advising women not to ask for pay raises and instead to believe "karma" will bring them better compensation.)

"Nearly everything we do will become more digitized: our interactions with other people, with machines, and between machines," he told stock analysts in July. "This is the mobile-first and cloud-first world. It's a rich canvas for innovation and a great growth opportunity for Microsoft."

D.P. Brightful is Microsoft's new Mid-Atlantic boss, heading offices in Malvern, Washington, Richmond, and Pittsburgh that sell to companies such as Merck, Vanguard, PNC, and Capital One. At the Microsoft Technology Center in Malvern, a showroom studio for Microsoft-based "solutions," Brightful put Nadella in context: He is "a very different leader" from Steve Ballmer, who bounded around stage at sales meetings and spent billions on bold acquisitions.

Brightful sees Nadella more in the vein of Microsoft founder Bill Gates: "subdued, visionary, a brilliant technical mind with his finger on the pulse."

Big tech has changed, even in the last year, Brightful says. As kids who grew up with smartphones rise to buy and use tech for big companies, they're not just focused on cutting costs. They're asking whether and how Microsoft's familiar products and the new ones it it is pitching can filter vast operations to secure voice and smartphone networks, remote cloud servers, social media accounts, and instant data calculus.

Clients want to be Netflix, using cool new gadgets and apps to wreck Blockbuster, says Brightful.

For all of Microsoft's new emphasis on cloud and mobile solutions, its sales are still based on its "office-era" products.

"They still want the database to run. We still make billions on that," says Brightful. But Nadella also looks forward to "this blurring of the lines between the tech we use at home and the tech we use at work, coming together in what he calls the digital lifestyle," Brightful explained.

For example, Microsoft wants employers to see Xbox not just as a game appliance, but as a face-scanner that taps stored financial data when customers visit bank offices.

Tim Pash, manager of the Microsoft Technology Center in Malvern, one of more than 30 worldwide showrooms for the company's software, demonstrates more razzle-dazzle.

"Have you seen Perceptive Pixel?" he asked, walking up to a white wallboard. He taps; it glows.

With his hand, Pash writes a few numbers, and a keyword. The whiteboard then links to unseen Excel lists, and columns of figures spread across the board, birthing colorful charts and links to more.

Excel is more than your bookkeeping spreadsheet, it's a "business intelligence tool: 95 percent of company reporting ends up in Excel," Pash says.

Isn't all this disruption stressful?

Risk brings rewards, says Pash: "We've had to change a lot of processes to embrace the cloud, from product engineering to marketing and sales compensation.

"We've had to move products from a three-year cycle to a two-week cycle. It's one of the biggest bets Microsoft has made. It seems to be working, given our stock price lately."