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ORLANDO, Fla. -- Microsoft's annual Ignite event has become the company's most visible method for broadcasting where it sees the computing industry going -- or where it plans to guide it. Look at the clear messaging of 2015's "mobile first, cloud first computing" or the last two years' "digital transformation." This year, Microsoft's advanced a new narrative: The age of desktop computing and tidy application suites is over.
Let's look at how it built this story.
First: Satya Nadella's keynote kicked off with him talking about ubiquitous computing
The Microsoft CEO opened his keynote on Monday, Sept. 24, by saying, "Every place, whether it be the home or work, the stadium or a hospital, has got computing. Computing is not just about the computing industry, it's about the entire world."
By breaking computing out of the desktop and the office, and reframing it as a collection of devices that can collect and act on data to improve the world around us, Nadella is effectively saying that the mobile-first, cloud-first world is here and it's habituated us to the idea that computing is...