July 15, 2024 • 47 mins
Microsoft has a new operating system, it's based on open source Android, will appear first in Teams meeting rooms, and it's called MDEP.
The latest TalkingHeadz podcast has Dave Michels and David Danto chatting with with Microsoft’s Ilya Bukshteyn exploring the Microsoft Device Ecosystem Platform (MDEP.) This will be a customized Android distribution aimed at enhancing device interoperability and security through centralized updates and rigorous standards. It addresses challenges like inconsistent Android versions across OEMs, emphasizing long-term benefits such as improved stability and reduced maintenance. While MDEP is poised to become integral to Microsoft Teams device certification, ensuring a cohesive ecosystem for users and partners alike, it has questions and challenges. These include some confusing aspects and some industry reluctance. These factors - both exciting and challenging - are thoroughly explored in this extensive conversation.
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Episode Transcript
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Unknown (00:21):
Welcome to Talking Heads, the informative,
entertaining and brilliantpodcast on enterprise
communications from the team attalking points.
Hi, this. Dave Michels, welcometo another talking points chat.
I'm here with Dave Danto, mycolleague, and we have a special
(00:42):
guest today. We have Billy ofBookstein. I said, Right. Oh,
yeah. Is that okay? It you knowwhat? I gave up so long ago?
Carrie, how people,every time, every time I see
you, two things are true. One isyou are smaller. Congratulations
on that. And two is your titleis longer, and so we got a brand
(01:03):
new title here. You're still avice president. Congratulations
on that. Now it's teams, callingdevices, events and premium.
Does that? Does that imply thatcalling devices and events are
not premium?
It's look, I will take allsuggestions for a better title.
(01:24):
So teams calling is, in fact,part of it's basically listing
what we sell as our licenses.
Teams calling is known to ourcustomers as teams phone. That's
the license devices is teams,rooms, plus other devices,
events, teams, live events, townhall, webinar that is actually
part of the team's premiumlicense. And so those teams are
(01:48):
ones that I have the privilegeof leading events. And teams
premium just moved into my teama few weeks ago. I've known you
a long time, and all thosethings are new, but devices,
you've been the devices guy fora long, long time.
(02:09):
I don't know.
Let's see. I can, I can rememberyou with the LCS days. I don't
wait. What were you involvedeven at Microsoft?
It's 30 years in September, soit's a long time, way longer
than I thought I would be, but Ikeep having fun in different
(02:30):
roles. So yeah. And so to putthat in context, Microsoft was
selling what 30 years ago, whenyou were brand new. So I joined
just before we launched Windows95 I had actually about a year
before I joined in September, 94we launched Windows 95 in
August, 95so that was the big thing where,
you know, if I wore a Microsoftpiece of swag, actually on the
(02:54):
street, people would stop me andask me about Windows 95 which
was amazing, and I'm one of thefew people I'm sure you'll
relate to this. I'm one of thefew people that when I hear the
Rolling Stones start me up, Iimmediately think of Windows 95
and soSteve Ballmer dancing again my
brain before we have aconversation,
(03:21):
we have a conversation todayaround the purpose of this
podcast is to talk aboutmdep is what I call it. Maybe
you call it mdep, who knows?
And I know what MDF is. I knowDavid knows what MDF is. I'm
sure you know what mdep is, butthis is so you know it is, it is
kind of alleged. I mean, itdoesn't really, it's like the,
(03:42):
it's like the Loch Nessmonsters. No one's really ever
seen this thing. So, oh mygod, maybe so let's see. So I'm
gonna, so the first question is,Ilia, why don't you explain or
introduce MDF, and what it is,sure. So I'm gonna give you the
really simple explanation, andthen, if you'll indulge me, I
want to give a little context.
So mdep stands for Microsoftdevice ecosystem platform. It is
(04:07):
an AOSP Android Open Systemsdistribution that Microsoft puts
together and works with OEMs toput on devices. Here's the
context, so you harken back tothe LCS days, live communication
server. So way back when, whenwe first said that Microsoft is
(04:27):
going to have software that doesUnified Communications, which at
that time was really chatcalling, video meetings,
one of the things we didn'treally tackle very well is what
happens in meeting rooms. Sovery initially, we looked at the
landscape and said, not a lot ofrooms have video video systems,
(04:48):
and they're big and expensive.
So our initial take was, hey,how about we enable people to
use their laptop plugged intosomething? And that initial
something was the round table.
And.
Little little bit of trivia atthe event that we did that
introduced unifiedcommunications. Jeff rakes did
that keynote. I was behind thescenes. I helped write a bunch
(05:12):
of that content and arrange thedemos. And we hired Rainn Wilson
of The Office fame, DwightSchultz in the office. That was
his first ever corporate gig. Heactually went out and bought a
suit to look like Dwight,because he didn't, you know,
have thatfrom office. And so he was in
that event, and he helpedintroduce roundtable. And so
(05:34):
roundtable was a USB device,which, back then, was cheap
relative to video systems. Itwas about 5k
and so that was interesting, butif I remember right, sold at
most about 10, maybe 15,000units. So didn't get super broad
adoption. We licensed it out toPolycom at the time.
(06:00):
And you know, one of the thingsvery quickly was it, it was
expensive for a USB device,cheap relative to video systems,
but laptops not the same asvideo systems. So then we took a
second shot with somethingcalled link room systems. And
link Room Systems tried to, if,with all respect to everybody.
It tried to duplicate what Ciscoand Polycom were doing. So it
(06:23):
said, Hey, there's going to be acodec. It's running an embedded
OS Windows, embedded, highlycustomized, and it'll be cheaper
than what we thought other VTCswere at the time, but still in
the several 10s of 1000s ofdollars. And that sold about 10
to 15,000 hard to have an exactnumber, because on premise, so
(06:45):
it wasn't tracked as closely aswe can with cloud connected.
So still not a big hit. That waswhen I was asked to take over
what was rooms, andwe it was an interesting time,
because Google had just launchedChromebox for Meetings at 999,
(07:07):
Bill Gates sent a memo saying,oh my god, this is going to be
incredibly disruptive. You guysgot to do something. And so I
was actually originally asked todo a sub $1,000 product. It was
going to be called Mbox. It wasgoing to be done with Polycom,
and I was super unpopular withmy higher ups, because I
actually came back and said,That's not the right product. I
(07:28):
don't think Google's going tosell a lot because they don't
have any IT controls, andthere's no price sensitivity at
least to two grand. And reallywhat we should do is something
that it will love and buy.
And so I came up with what wasknown as Project Rigel. It since
has become teams rooms. And thewhole idea of that was using
(07:49):
commodity PC hardware andsoftware. So it's a Windows
device with an app that we buildwe control the user experience
so it's consistent in everyroom. And, you know, $2,000
and up,and that has done pretty well.
We announced, I know you guyshad questions, so let me sort of
(08:10):
try to clarify. We announcedthat over a million teams rooms
have been sold.
I know I'm adding a little bitof language, so maybe someone
internally will hunt me down forthis, but that that was the
announcement, have been sold. Wepreviously announced that there
was over half a million monthlyactive teams rooms. We'll keep
(08:35):
announcing as we hit bigmilestones. But you know, you
can, you can get the factor ofgrowth over our previous
efforts. It is resonatingin that journey. And by the way,
I was super I was still supernervous about Chromebox like
that. That could have cost me myjob if that was the wrong
decision when they raised theirprice to two grand and added a
(08:56):
console, was when actually acoworker of mine sent my higher
ups an email saying, Okay, Ithink Ilya might have been
right. So that was what savedme, which is what they ended up
doing that.
But you know, we've been verysuccessful thanks to our
customers adopting this alongthe way, we did make a pretty
(09:17):
big decision, which is to haveAndroid based systems as well as
Windows. And really initially, Iwill say this was pushed heavily
by OEMs, because when you lookat our partners, Lenovo and HP
now, HP poly clearly have a tonof experience with Windows. They
(09:40):
make a lot of Windows devices.
Crestron has ended up gaining aton of experience with Windows,
lesser degree a link, but youknow, they still do okay?
Everybody else has no experiencewith Windows. Logy, you know,
I'm gonna miss somebody. So youguys all have to keep me honest,
because we have such a bigecosystem now.
Was the big one because theywere the first guys, and they
(10:03):
don't buy Windows from us, sothey were doing all this stuff
about meeting the channel blah,blah,
blah, Jabra, EPOS, everybodyelse, like Windows was was more
work, more cost. And so our OEMscame to us and said, Look, we're
going to do Android basedsystems. We will make them work
with Windows like we'll have aswitch in them to say, hey, it's
(10:25):
a USB device, but it's still gotAndroid inside.
You guys should consider doingan Android app. We did one that
was pretty limited early on andonly did kind of these bar form
factors andlots of customers bought them.
So we ended up saying, Okay, weare going to have to fully
(10:47):
support the Android platform.
Right now, Windows still has alot more installed devices, but
our run rate's about half andhalf. Some people would say lots
more Android devices being sold?
Not true. It's about half andhalf, which is, in a way, great
because lots of growth. In away, it's the toughest place for
me to be as a person who has tobuild the two different
(11:10):
platforms. I swear I'm comingback to m depth now. So where we
find ourselves is but like Isaid, we have about 10 questions
here. So it's gonna be 100minute. Just want to be clear,
100 minute podcast. Minutepodcast. Go ahead. You take your
time. I'll be faster. On theother part out, don't worry
about sounds good. So Windows,we write once we have an app, we
(11:31):
do it once we get a bunch ofstuff from windows, like plug
and play. So any certifiedperipheral works with any
Windows system, Android, wefound ourselves in this really
tough spot where meet Androidwas different than logy Android
was different than YealinkAndroid was different than Cisco
Android, and we were effectivelyhaving to write and especially
(11:53):
test multiple times, and so wewere going a lot slower on
Android. You know, I feel reallyhorrible for our customers
there, because rightfully, theywere saying, hey,
we'd like these to be equal. Andwe have to say, Well, no, you
really need to look at featuresets and like, because I can't
stop Windows development so thatAndroid catches up. Have more
(12:17):
devs on Android than I than I doon Windows,
and at the same time, Microsoft,elsewhere in the company, in our
OS company, was looking at someother devices, first party and
third party, that made a lot ofsense to run Android, and we're
looking around at the AOSPecosystem, and basically made a
(12:39):
decision that that We think as acompany would make sense from
Microsoft to do our Android andI would say there are three key
reasons for us to do that, andthat is what has become amateur
one, and this is no particularorder one. Upgradeability with
Windows. It is up to us to saythere's a new Windows version.
(13:01):
We're going to test it on thehardware that's out there. We're
going to make sure the softwareworks. We're going to put it out
with Android. When there's a,you know, Android 1213,
it's up to each OEM, and itcosts them a bunch of money.
Just being very honest, theyhave to go to the chip
manufacturer and say, Hey, canyou make us what's called a BSP
(13:24):
abort support package to supportthis new Android chip
manufacturer says, Sure, pay us,as you know, millions of
dollars, and the OEM has to paythat with no real new revenue
coming into them. So we werefacing a situation where some of
the devices would be stuck onolder Android, which really is
difficult for us, as we havecloud connected systems that you
(13:47):
know may take advantage of newercapabilities. That's one, but
also two is security right when,when we went to our internal IT
and security organization andsaid we'd like to have some of
these devices deployedinternally. We got a hard No. We
actually just deployed the first100 Android devices internally,
(14:08):
room devices. It took, like,three years of work, and
frankly, the only reason we wereable to do that is because those
devices will upgrade to mdep. Sosecurity's number two, and
they're very tightly connectedupgradability and security. So a
Microsoft team will now beresponsible for making sure that
(14:29):
Android platform stays up todate, stays as secure as we can.
I know we'll come back tosecurity too. And then three is
value added, or sort ofadditional capability to help
AOSP catch up to Windows. Theone I use all the time is plug
and play. Android doesn't have aconcept of plug and play, so of
course, you know, logic willsay, hey, we did this stuff that
(14:50):
makes it work with, you know,these
USB peripherals. But Cisco didsome other stuff. Well, you know
who's who's still.
Stuff do we go with? So mdepkind of aims to address go
back to the original questionhere. What is m depth? So let me
(15:11):
just see if I can make thisshorter for you. It's a version
of Android. It's a version ofAndroid Microsoft has is
controlling or releasing andspecifying
for teams rooms, is that? Isthat accurate? Is that a
the last part is not quiteaccurate. It is a version of
(15:34):
Android, specifically AOSP.
There's two flavors of Android.
There's Google Android with abunch of Google services.
There's Android open systemsthat anyone can pick up that
does not have Google services.
So this is a flavor of AOSP thatMicrosoft builds, releases to
OEMs we work with, and itactually will be applicable to
rooms, teams, phones, teams,panels, all teams, Android
(15:58):
devices, we have not todayspecified it for our existing
partners. We have said any newpartners and new Android devices
should be using mdep, and todaywe have Jabra committed a
(16:21):
version of Android that partnerswill get from Microsoft, is that
accurateand Okay? All right, I think we
got question one down. Allright. Question two, Dave,
well, you've kind of answered alot of the questions in what you
talked about. You know, I dowant to give if you would do, if
(16:41):
you would indulge us again,because there's a lot of I will
indulge you all you want.
There's a lot of lot of termshere that people don't really
realize. Microsoft came out withan announcement last month about
having to switch to AOSP, andwhat is the difference between
mdep and AOSP, and is this twoswitches or one switch? Or what
was Microsoft asking thepartners to do? So
(17:05):
that switch, this is a littlemore technical, so it's not
switching to AOSP, it'sswitching to AOSP management. So
what happens with these Androiddevices is to be acceptable in
corporations, they have tosupport what's called MDM and
MAM mobile device management andmobile app management. Different
(17:31):
organizations mandate differentlevels of this. I would say
about half of our customers,Microsoft included, specify MDM,
meaning the device has to befully corporate managed.
The agent that allows intune todo that is today called Company
Portal. It uses a set of APIsthat Google and the AOSP
(17:55):
community have deprecated sogoing away will not work. The
new agent is called Intune AOSP,and it uses a set of newer,
better APIs. Don't ask me thedetails, because I'll have to
get someone else to tell you.
But it is a new agent that, inmany, many ways, is better,
(18:20):
smaller, faster, less memoryfootprint, etc. So these are
100% two different things,device management, and one is
the platform that it's on,right? Okay, one other
clarification question hereagain, because you went through
a lot of this journey, um, youhad announced, um, mdep
Initially, I think wasEnterprise Connect in 23 and I
(18:44):
don't, I'm not really still 100%sure if there's anything out
using it today. So I'm not goingto blame you for the delay. You
know, obviously you talked abouta whole journey that went on
over there, and there's a lotgoing on, but, but cannot, can
we use it? I mean, it was, itwas, I took the selfie with it
on the show floor, but they saidthey weren't shipping it. So
what is the status of it? Is itout? Is it not gonna be out?
(19:05):
Yeah. So the two partners who'veannounced going all in on MD,
abdep, but that mdep are Jabraand yay. Link. So Jabra have one
Android device out today.
That's, I think they call it theVSB video system bar. It's the
panic as 50 withVSP, yes, V Thank you. So that
(19:32):
internally is running on mdep. Iwill tell you I am blanking on
whether it's already out withMDP. I believe the way Jabra was
going to do, going back to yourearlier question, the device
management transition, is justby going to MD like so MDP has
the new agent built in theIntune AOSP engine. So agent, so
(19:57):
it's either out or it's going tobe out very.
Soon that Jabra device will bethe first mdep device. And I can
circle back with you guys, oryou guys can ask our friends a
jobber, but that'll be the firstone. Yay. Link. Have said that
all of their team's Androiddevices, all of them rooms,
phones, panels, will be m depthbased. They but it's an upgrade.
(20:20):
So they haven't yet come outwith that, but we'll see more
coming out.
The other curveball, forclarification, is that, when you
announced this and we werelooking at it, we were all
thinking, oh, all the Androidvideo bars. A lot of questions
around that. And then Barcocomes out at Infocom and
explains that they're using mdepth things that aren't video
bars. So has it expanded, or wasthat the original view all
(20:42):
along? Yeah. SoI guess it's important for me to
highlight again that it's twodifferent teams of Microsoft
with slightly different goals.
My goal, of course, is to getteams devices out, you know, as
in as great a shape as possible.
The m depth team is part of theoperating system group, and of
course, what they want to do ishave OEMs use their OSS as
(21:04):
broadly as possible. So Barco isa bit of a joint announcement.
So Barco is going to do theirAndroid devices on MDP. They
have also said that in thefuture they will have teams
devices, but no more detailsshared at this point. Okay,
okay, but the room control boxthat isn't necessarily a device,
(21:26):
because it's running Android, isgoing to have MDP on it. That's
the thing that's there. So it'snot just for the video devices.
It's anything in the meetingroom running Android. It's
actually anything runningAndroid, period, right? MDP is
an Android distribution. AnyAndroid device, probably a
business device, because it'sdefinitely sort of business
(21:49):
focused in terms of enterprisemanageability and so forth. Any
Android business device couldconsumer could consider MDP,
quite frankly, you know, you maysee other devices, even for the
consumer space, run amdep. It's,it's a Microsoft Android
platform that where Microsoftadds value in that at least the
(22:12):
three areas Microsoft makingthat freely available to the
public as well, and anybody candownload it. Or is it only going
to be restricted to yourapproved partners.
It's up to the mdep team at thispoint. It's only with partners
that we have an agreement for.
(22:34):
And the reason being thatAndroid is still not windows.
You can't, like grab Android ona stick easily as a consumer,
and install it, you do have tohave a board support package for
the chip and so forth and so on.
Just clarify for our audience,that the way Google makes
Android available is they have afree open source project, and
people can do things with that,and then they have a license
version, which has the GooglePlay Store and has a bunch of
(22:57):
other stuff and and that is nota free, open source product,
that is a product that you haveto buy. And so, so when you buy
acell phone with Android and it's
got all that stuff on there,that device maker probably paid
for that version of Android,where, if you buy maybe a phone
in China that doesn't have toplay store and doesn't have all
that stuff on there, theyprobably downloaded a free
(23:19):
version of Android. So you'rebasically downloading the free
version of Android, not just anyversion. You're taking the
Android, open source projects,version of Android, modifying it
and making it a Microsoftmagical device or operating
system, and then making thatavailable to your partners. I
think is that, is that a fair?
(23:39):
They get that right?
Yeah, that is fair. Yep, allright. One interesting tidbit
I've heard is that Googlelicensing prohibits the same OEM
from both buying the paidversion and doing AOSP devices
without explicit approval fromGoogle. So all kinds of fun
(24:00):
complications in the Androidspot. Okay,
so, so let's talk a little bitabout some of your existing
partners and the position thatthey're in. You obviously had
Jabra and Yealink, as youmentioned, and now Barco that
are that, are, you know,interested in joining and
getting all the benefits fromthis? But you've got other
partners out there now that havebeen using these bars on
(24:21):
Android, and as you point out,selling a lot of them for three
years. So it's an interestingwhy do we want to why would they
change Why do you want to changethat? Why do they want to change
that? And will they have tochange that? Yeah. So for us, we
want to make sure,I'll start with the customer. We
want to make sure our customershave a consistent experience,
(24:42):
not in terms of the UX, but interms of the manageability,
security and upgradability andthis, all three of those are
things our customers have asked,slash, really pushed us on and
today, the answer is, go talk tothe OEM. You.
I, you know, I have no abilityto say, XYZ device will be
(25:04):
supported for however manyyears, because in the Android
space, because it is up to theOEM to say, will they spend the
time and money and energy on anew Android version when that
comes out? Will how easy or hardwill that upgrade be? I have no
ability to say is the platformgoing to stay secure. I trust
(25:25):
our OEMs are great companies,but, but I you know, we as
Microsoft can't say that,because they are responsible for
those upgrades.
And last, but certainly notleast, I'm super
limited. Maybe it's not theright word, but it's super hard
to catch up on Android withoutgetting more consistent value
(25:48):
added services, not splinteredby each OEM. So that's that's
what we're trying to address.
The last point you know, is bothfor customers and ourselves. So
for us, we're really trying tostreamline what we do so that we
can move faster on bothplatforms. So it is, I think, an
interesting value proposition toOEMs, where, frankly, we take on
(26:10):
the cost, which is significant,of upgrades, security updates,
enhancing the OS. There is atrade off, because,
like you said, there's some OEMsthat have invested years in
their own flavor.
The mdap team is working witheach of those OEMs to kind of
(26:33):
try and find the right balance.
To say, hey, you can bring overyour value add and
AI, audio, video code that'srunning on the OS while still
getting the benefit of ourplatform at this point. Like I
said, any new devices, newpartners on Android will need to
be mdap. Can I envision at somepoint saying
(26:56):
we're only going to docertification for mdap devices?
Yeah, absolutely. We're notthere yet, but I'd certainly say
for all the reasons I justlisted, I think it'd be a great
benefit to both customers. So SoDave was asking. So you didn't
use an acronym, Dave, you haveto use acronyms when you ask
questions. But Dave was askingabout, I think it was called MTR
(27:20):
OA, right? That was meetingteams rooms on Android.
And when you introduced that,I believe you kind of diverged
what Android had these featuresand Windows based meeting rooms
had other features. You've kindof brought them mostly back
together. I think, okay, so Iguess with MD, my question is,
(27:42):
are they going to come backtogether more with the windows
and the that's, that's, that'sthe goal. So today, Windows is a
superset.
We for a while, I would sayWindows was mostly a superset,
but there were a couple offeatures on Android, like start
whiteboard from MTR, that wereunique. Within this next quarter
(28:07):
to two quarters, it's going tobecome Windows as a pure
superset. Andthe question is, When can it be
equal, right? When does Androidcatch up today without mdap? I
don't have a plan that would dothat. I can't stop windows. I
can't keep adding more and moredevs to Android. So it's going
(28:27):
to keep going as a superset withsome amount of delay.
The hope with MDP is that if wecan get one everybody onto MDP,
so we reduce our amount of workon Android and two, then the
ebdep team could keep addingvalue to the platform. The hope
(28:47):
is that we get to a place where,yeah, the two platforms would be
kind of equal, by the way, yeah,I can't ever promise that,
because, man, the pace ofinnovation and change
in terms of, you know, weannounced copilot running on
teams rooms. That's one of thethings we talked about at our
(29:07):
recent Build Conference. Thathas all kinds of interesting
implications. It's going to comeout first on Windows. We would
need, you know, there's probablysome hardware dependency to even
bring that on Android, so allkinds of stuff, but the goal
would be to get a lot closer.
You talked a minute ago aboutcertification and how you
(29:28):
foresee only m depth basedAndroid platforms being
certified for Microsoft Teams.
How will that work? Willcompanies lose their
certification? Or will it be anupgrade to it, or how do you
envision that happening? Yeah,great clarification. It's the
latter. So our certification isnot infinite. Our certification
(29:49):
has a specific time frame, andthen we say the device could be
recertified with future Androidversions. I think at some point
what we'll say is that future.
Android version to go forrecertification would need to be
m depth based. That's now, Idon't have a time frame in mind.
I don't have an Android versionin mind.
(30:11):
Yeah, I would say that's adesire for all the reasons I
listed earlier, both for us andour customers. So no one's at
risk of losing certification inthe near term, couple of years
that's going on based on mdep?
Well, you know, when you saycouple of years, there are
devices that were certifiedthree years ago that will expire
their certification in the nextcouple of years anyway, right?
(30:33):
So, and then the way it worksnow is it's up to the OEM to
say, OK, we are going to spendthe money to do Android version
XYZ and resubmit forcertification. So I don't want
to say the couple of years orany time frame part. All I'm
saying is there's definitely adesire for us at some point to
(30:53):
make that recertificationrequirement. BM, depth based.
Well, that was a tough question,but now I have even a tougher
one, and and I, I got to tellyou, you know, you know, I
respect you and your employer.
They're greatly respect you andyour employer, but I think it's
legitimate question here. So areyou ready for this one?
(31:15):
Hold on. SoI already mentioned a few times
that mdep is really about asecurity. Really about security.
Some of your partners have saidthis as well. We were listening
to Jabra. They were talkingabout the key benefits of mdap,
and that they and they said, youknow, Microsoft takes full
responsibility for the securityof the meeting room, which is
(31:36):
kind of what you touched on aswell. Now some may, some people
may have concerns about thatlucky timing, I guess, because
just last month, I'm sure youknow, the Homeland Security
issued a scathing report onMicrosoft. They were
(31:57):
investigating a email hack andso nothing to do with teams, but
they were investigating an emailhack, and they wrote this report
that went public, and theyidentified operational and
strategic decisions at Microsoftthat quote collectively pointed
to a corporate culture Thatdeprioritized enterprise
security. Unquote. Wow. Now, sohow can you come and tell people
(32:22):
in the enterprise that don'tworry about your meeting rooms,
Microsoft's Got Your Back onsecurity and so help us
understand that?
Well, I'll start by saying I'veread that report as I think
have, frankly, the majority ofour 200,000 some employees at
(32:42):
this point, it is humbling.
I don't you know. Think I canput it better than our vice
chairman Brad Smith, in terms ofhis testimony to Congress,
where, to paraphrase, he said,we take full responsibility and
we're going to make the changesnecessary to make sure we
address all those issues. What Ican tell you is, since then,
(33:04):
security isit's beyond job one, the word
Satya, used in a communicationto everybody, is when it comes
to a choice between security andanything else, security wins. We
are currentlydelaying roadmap items because
we are going back and addressinga very significant list of
(33:29):
things that aren't necessarily,quote, unquote broken, but we
believe could be better. So yes,absolutely, a humbling moment
for us? Yes, absolutely, we takefull responsibility.
You know, in my 30 years ofMicrosoft, unfortunately, this
isn't the first time thattechnology changes and kind of
(33:52):
cultural changes impact thecompany. I don't know if you
guys remember back to Windows XPService Pack two, but that was
basically where we said, oh mygosh, we put out Windows XP, and
it turns out that all thesecomputers that are connected to
each otherare a great target for hackers.
(34:12):
And we'd said security had to bea feature of the OS, and so we
built antivirus, and, you know,a bunch of stuff into the OS
before that, I happened to beworking on SQL Server when there
was a pretty significant issuewhere there was a embeddable,
small version of SQL Server thatwas used in a lot of apps, and
(34:34):
it shipped with a default Twoletter username and a default
two letter password, so notsecure by default. And it turned
out that that was a easy vector.
You know, the only thing I couldsay is, in my experience, every
(34:54):
time something happens, we learnand we get better. In this case.
Way the environment has changed.
They're state sponsored. It'snot the same hacker as it used
to be. It's groups witheffectively boundless resources.
It's cloud services and cloudtenants. We have to do better.
So all I could tell you is, likeI said in such as words, when it
(35:17):
comes to a choice betweensecurity and anything else,
security is going to win, andwe're going to address those
operational culture decisionsthat the report mentions are not
going to we are addressing them.
Okay, all right, I did read, Idid read a report just the other
day that Microsoft employees inChina where I asked to get rid
(35:41):
of their Android phones andswitch over to iPhone for
security, and there are a fewother things like that, so you
see the little pieces of that.
Moving on. Yeah, I fun story.
Was it last week? No, the weekbefore, for a whole day, I lost
all access to corporateresources.
We keep upping the bar. Youknow, for Microsoft employees to
(36:05):
log in, we used to have to useauthenticator with a two digit
code. We don't choose weactually type it in that was
deemed not secure enough. Wemoved to a passkey based
system. And, yeah, we we takesecurity very seriously
(36:26):
internally as well, and that'scoming back to mdep. One reason
that I'm that I believe thatmdep will up the bar in security
and manageability is because ithas to pass our own security
organization that, as you canimagine now, is extremely high
bar, you know, highly focused.
So mdep is working super closelywith our CISO organization to
(36:49):
just get those devices to beinternally acceptable. So when
do we see it? I mean, let's comeback to that for a second. You
know, you mentioned that we'veseen it on, I personally have
seen it on the job or bar,although they said they weren't
releasing it. When does it getout in the wild? Or if I'm one
of your partners, when do I putit out
at jobra bar on amdap was goingto be out? You know? Now I'll
(37:13):
circle back right after this andask, I It's very soon for that.
I think yay. Link has the firstset of devices coming by end of
this calendar year. So the waythey're doing it is, of course,
new devices first, right? Soanything new that comes out,
they're putting MDP on it, goingback and trying to upgrade
(37:34):
devices. They're going to dothat based on the cycle of
recertification and so forth.
Barco, I don't remember theschedule. I thought it was also
by end of this calendar year forthe first set of devices. And
then you're going to seeadditional partners get
announced. For sure,the benefit of having room
collaboration on Android as achoice. And as you point out,
(37:57):
for even your own customers,about 50% of the choice, as
opposed to that, is that it wasa platform that you could very
easily, if not immediately,switch to another vendor. You
can use it with Zoom, you canuse it with Tencent. You use it
with Google. It's meant to be anopen platform, and I'm just
wondering if anyone inMicrosoft, or if you, or if
(38:18):
you've heard about if there'sany consideration about how this
might upset customers orpartners, or how this might
change the strategy, if one ofthe platforms that may or may
not be competing with you nowneeds to use a piece of software
that you're generating, asopposed to something that's open
source. So So couple of things.
(38:39):
One, you may not know this, butas far as I know, there are
still more zoom rooms on windowsout there than there are zoom
rooms on Android. So zoom has agood history of picking up
windows, which is also an openplatform right zoom, if you even
look at desktop, I think morezoom runs on Windows than any
(39:00):
other OS. I think just lookingat share of Macs versus PCs. So
Windows is, of course, an openplatform, and there are OEMs who
you know basically say, Hey, youwant to switch. There's an image
you can re image your deviceson Windows. So we know customers
that have gone I'll just do thecase I'm most interested in,
(39:24):
from zoom rooms to teams roomsby reimaging devices
on Android. There's multipleways of doing that. There could
be a reimaging. There can be areset to out of box. Basically,
you have two images on thedevice. You reset the out of
(39:45):
box, you choose us or zoom. Noneof that changes when mdep.
So first of all, the mdep teamwould love to have zoom devices
running on mdep. There isnothing. There are no teams,
pieces that are in.
Currently part of mdep. There'sthe Intune manageability,
there's, you know, some otherMicrosoft security and
(40:08):
manageability components.
Nothing about teams. So we wouldlove, and I believe the mdep
team has and will continue,talking to zoom. We would love
to have OEMs use mdap for zoomdevices also,
and therefore they can have, aswe said, two images on the
device. They can switch. The OEMcan choose not to do that. They
(40:31):
can choose to do m depth forteams and not m depth for zoom
and switch. Now, since webrought up security and
upgradability. The only thingMicrosoft will stand behind in
those cases is the mdep part ofthe device. So if there is a
partition, you know, on thedevice with a non mdep image,
(40:57):
we can't say how or whetherthat's going to be updated or
presents a security attackvector. We're going to focus on
the m depth piece of thatdevice. Did that answer your
question?
I think so. I mean, I it's ait's a complicated situation,
and I'm speaking on behalf oflike, three or four different
(41:20):
manufacturers that that wouldn'twant to be named, they wouldn't
want to say this, but I've heardthis, you know, privately and in
backrooms. It's like, why wouldwe want to re engineer our piece
with a lot of manpower and a lotof work to just bring it to
where we are already today andgive up where we were going in
the future? So it's going to bea tough call for a company like,
like HP poly, that's got all orneat that's got a lot of
(41:43):
features, or or even Cisco,which is kind of doing it a
little bit differently, butthey're in their partitions on
mdep. It's going to be a lot ofwork for them to bring that to
where it needs to be. And Idon't know if the incentive is
there to do that quickly. Maybeit is, I don't know. I hear you.
I think what we would say is,hey, the payback is around the
(42:04):
cost of every new major Androidversion, plus the Upgradeability
and so forth. And I'm not evenreally hearing much of a
conflict, because if I, if Iunderstand what Ilya is saying,
it's still Android. It's just aMicrosoft version of Android. So
if they have a lot of expertiseand skills that they've
developed over the past fewyears on Android that should be
(42:24):
mostly applicable as they moveover and and, and they should
still be able to reboot withdifferent applications running
and things like that. So as faras I can tell, you haven't said
anything that would be aproblem. Everything you said,
Dave is correct. But also, infairness, I've heard some of the
concerns that David's talkedabout. I'll say,
(42:47):
with all respect to our OEMpartners, primarily, I think the
concerns are competitive betweenthem. So you know, a vendor that
has a big install base inAndroid would say, well, now
anyone can come in, pick up mdepand sort of be where I am pretty
quickly, maybe not with theinternal expertise, but with the
(43:10):
platform and with the ability tokeep that platform upgraded so
much like Windows does kind ofbring a level playing field, if
you will, to to PC makershaving an Android distribution
for Microsoft does sort of levelthe playing field. Where before
OEMs, you know, kind of werebuilding their own OS and have
(43:34):
that advantage so that that isreal,
I would say again, with all duerespect to our OEMs, our focus
is on the customersversus necessarily, how the OEMs
position against each other. Sofor us, again, it's about
saying, look,the OEM is the customer for
(43:55):
mdef, for the OS, and so therewe're going to deliver a set of
benefits, lower cost forAndroid, major version upgrades,
keeping them secure, more addedvalue in the platform. We have
to be flexible enough that theycan take code that they've
already written and bring it tothe platform. But,
(44:16):
you know, there's a choice thatOEMs will have to make, and so
it's up to us to have a reallygood value proposition. So I
want to wrap this up with but Igot an important question, and
it actually is going to use thatother part of your title we
haven't gotten into yet, aboutcalling.
You know, I'm thinking aboutthis. It's interesting that you
you've got calling and devices,because
(44:39):
Cisco snoring. I know, I know,you know, he used to only do the
new devices, and he ended upwith phones as well. And so I
guess that's kind of emerged.
And then, you know, Cisco'sobviously expanded into desktop
devices in their deviceportfolio, which borderline on
phones. D 10 has their pro.
(45:00):
You've got zoom, you got neatwith their frame, you've got a
number of kind of companies kindof moving into the desktop
realm, and now that you've gotcalling, and you assume are
responsible somehow with phonesout there, which we haven't
heard a lot of updates on thephones in a while. Do you
envision this m depth story?
Because I've heard, I've heardcrazy accusations that Android
(45:21):
actually works on phones too. Sodo you envision that
you'll see a new generation ofphones, slash video devices
designed for the desktop,running mbip.
So actually, let me catch youup. Every team's native phone.
(45:41):
Desk phone is an Android device.
Yay. Link audio codes poly,they're Android devices.
We do have a sip gateway audioonly that lets us work with
other you know, older phoneszoom, by the way, takes exactly
the same approach. I don'tremember the their names, but
(46:04):
they have like, a SIP phonesupport, and then they have a
phones running a zoom app, andthose are Android. So yeah, the
yay link announcement coveredevery Android device that's
video and desk phones they'regoing to be using m depth for
desk phones as well.
(46:25):
And Cisco under snore is one ofthe largest, I don't know the
exact ranking, but largestsellers of phones in the world.
I'm going to guess it's them.
Yay, link and poly in some orderthat I don't remember, but you
guys could look it up. So yeah,like, it's complicated, because
(46:45):
obviously, WebEx has a callingservice, and that's a great
business for Cisco. But I'lljust say, from my perspective,
since you brought it up, whywould I love to have Cisco do
more teams native devices inevery category.
So really seeing the convergenceof video and voice, we've been
(47:07):
talking about it for years interms of the apps, apps like
teams, but now we're reallyseeing it
around the devices as well.
That's fantastic. All right.
Well, I want to thank you somuch for doing this podcast with
us. And I know you're very, verybusy and we and I think this is
really informative. So thank youso much for participating. I
(47:29):
want to thank you guys forhaving me on. I follow both of
you. I think you guys have agreat insight into the industry,
and I am happy to come back andcover other topics.
I think it's great for customersto have this podcast as a
information source. You.
Welcome to Talking Heads, the informative,
entertaining and brilliantpodcast on enterprise
communications from the team attalking points.
Hi, this. Dave Michels, welcometo another talking points chat.
I'm here with Dave Danto, mycolleague, and we have a special
(00:42):
guest today. We have Billy ofBookstein. I said, Right. Oh,
yeah. Is that okay? It you knowwhat? I gave up so long ago?
Carrie, how people,every time, every time I see
you, two things are true. One isyou are smaller. Congratulations
on that. And two is your titleis longer, and so we got a brand
(01:03):
new title here. You're still avice president. Congratulations
on that. Now it's teams, callingdevices, events and premium.
Does that? Does that imply thatcalling devices and events are
not premium?
It's look, I will take allsuggestions for a better title.
(01:24):
So teams calling is, in fact,part of it's basically listing
what we sell as our licenses.
Teams calling is known to ourcustomers as teams phone. That's
the license devices is teams,rooms, plus other devices,
events, teams, live events, townhall, webinar that is actually
part of the team's premiumlicense. And so those teams are
(01:48):
ones that I have the privilegeof leading events. And teams
premium just moved into my teama few weeks ago. I've known you
a long time, and all thosethings are new, but devices,
you've been the devices guy fora long, long time.
(02:09):
I don't know.
Let's see. I can, I can rememberyou with the LCS days. I don't
wait. What were you involvedeven at Microsoft?
It's 30 years in September, soit's a long time, way longer
than I thought I would be, but Ikeep having fun in different
(02:30):
roles. So yeah. And so to putthat in context, Microsoft was
selling what 30 years ago, whenyou were brand new. So I joined
just before we launched Windows95 I had actually about a year
before I joined in September, 94we launched Windows 95 in
August, 95so that was the big thing where,
you know, if I wore a Microsoftpiece of swag, actually on the
(02:54):
street, people would stop me andask me about Windows 95 which
was amazing, and I'm one of thefew people I'm sure you'll
relate to this. I'm one of thefew people that when I hear the
Rolling Stones start me up, Iimmediately think of Windows 95
and soSteve Ballmer dancing again my
brain before we have aconversation,
(03:21):
we have a conversation todayaround the purpose of this
podcast is to talk aboutmdep is what I call it. Maybe
you call it mdep, who knows?
And I know what MDF is. I knowDavid knows what MDF is. I'm
sure you know what mdep is, butthis is so you know it is, it is
kind of alleged. I mean, itdoesn't really, it's like the,
(03:42):
it's like the Loch Nessmonsters. No one's really ever
seen this thing. So, oh mygod, maybe so let's see. So I'm
gonna, so the first question is,Ilia, why don't you explain or
introduce MDF, and what it is,sure. So I'm gonna give you the
really simple explanation, andthen, if you'll indulge me, I
want to give a little context.
So mdep stands for Microsoftdevice ecosystem platform. It is
(04:07):
an AOSP Android Open Systemsdistribution that Microsoft puts
together and works with OEMs toput on devices. Here's the
context, so you harken back tothe LCS days, live communication
server. So way back when, whenwe first said that Microsoft is
(04:27):
going to have software that doesUnified Communications, which at
that time was really chatcalling, video meetings,
one of the things we didn'treally tackle very well is what
happens in meeting rooms. Sovery initially, we looked at the
landscape and said, not a lot ofrooms have video video systems,
(04:48):
and they're big and expensive.
So our initial take was, hey,how about we enable people to
use their laptop plugged intosomething? And that initial
something was the round table.
And.
Little little bit of trivia atthe event that we did that
introduced unifiedcommunications. Jeff rakes did
that keynote. I was behind thescenes. I helped write a bunch
(05:12):
of that content and arrange thedemos. And we hired Rainn Wilson
of The Office fame, DwightSchultz in the office. That was
his first ever corporate gig. Heactually went out and bought a
suit to look like Dwight,because he didn't, you know,
have thatfrom office. And so he was in
that event, and he helpedintroduce roundtable. And so
(05:34):
roundtable was a USB device,which, back then, was cheap
relative to video systems. Itwas about 5k
and so that was interesting, butif I remember right, sold at
most about 10, maybe 15,000units. So didn't get super broad
adoption. We licensed it out toPolycom at the time.
(06:00):
And you know, one of the thingsvery quickly was it, it was
expensive for a USB device,cheap relative to video systems,
but laptops not the same asvideo systems. So then we took a
second shot with somethingcalled link room systems. And
link Room Systems tried to, if,with all respect to everybody.
It tried to duplicate what Ciscoand Polycom were doing. So it
(06:23):
said, Hey, there's going to be acodec. It's running an embedded
OS Windows, embedded, highlycustomized, and it'll be cheaper
than what we thought other VTCswere at the time, but still in
the several 10s of 1000s ofdollars. And that sold about 10
to 15,000 hard to have an exactnumber, because on premise, so
(06:45):
it wasn't tracked as closely aswe can with cloud connected.
So still not a big hit. That waswhen I was asked to take over
what was rooms, andwe it was an interesting time,
because Google had just launchedChromebox for Meetings at 999,
(07:07):
Bill Gates sent a memo saying,oh my god, this is going to be
incredibly disruptive. You guysgot to do something. And so I
was actually originally asked todo a sub $1,000 product. It was
going to be called Mbox. It wasgoing to be done with Polycom,
and I was super unpopular withmy higher ups, because I
actually came back and said,That's not the right product. I
(07:28):
don't think Google's going tosell a lot because they don't
have any IT controls, andthere's no price sensitivity at
least to two grand. And reallywhat we should do is something
that it will love and buy.
And so I came up with what wasknown as Project Rigel. It since
has become teams rooms. And thewhole idea of that was using
(07:49):
commodity PC hardware andsoftware. So it's a Windows
device with an app that we buildwe control the user experience
so it's consistent in everyroom. And, you know, $2,000
and up,and that has done pretty well.
We announced, I know you guyshad questions, so let me sort of
(08:10):
try to clarify. We announcedthat over a million teams rooms
have been sold.
I know I'm adding a little bitof language, so maybe someone
internally will hunt me down forthis, but that that was the
announcement, have been sold. Wepreviously announced that there
was over half a million monthlyactive teams rooms. We'll keep
(08:35):
announcing as we hit bigmilestones. But you know, you
can, you can get the factor ofgrowth over our previous
efforts. It is resonatingin that journey. And by the way,
I was super I was still supernervous about Chromebox like
that. That could have cost me myjob if that was the wrong
decision when they raised theirprice to two grand and added a
(08:56):
console, was when actually acoworker of mine sent my higher
ups an email saying, Okay, Ithink Ilya might have been
right. So that was what savedme, which is what they ended up
doing that.
But you know, we've been verysuccessful thanks to our
customers adopting this alongthe way, we did make a pretty
(09:17):
big decision, which is to haveAndroid based systems as well as
Windows. And really initially, Iwill say this was pushed heavily
by OEMs, because when you lookat our partners, Lenovo and HP
now, HP poly clearly have a tonof experience with Windows. They
(09:40):
make a lot of Windows devices.
Crestron has ended up gaining aton of experience with Windows,
lesser degree a link, but youknow, they still do okay?
Everybody else has no experiencewith Windows. Logy, you know,
I'm gonna miss somebody. So youguys all have to keep me honest,
because we have such a bigecosystem now.
Was the big one because theywere the first guys, and they
(10:03):
don't buy Windows from us, sothey were doing all this stuff
about meeting the channel blah,blah,
blah, Jabra, EPOS, everybodyelse, like Windows was was more
work, more cost. And so our OEMscame to us and said, Look, we're
going to do Android basedsystems. We will make them work
with Windows like we'll have aswitch in them to say, hey, it's
(10:25):
a USB device, but it's still gotAndroid inside.
You guys should consider doingan Android app. We did one that
was pretty limited early on andonly did kind of these bar form
factors andlots of customers bought them.
So we ended up saying, Okay, weare going to have to fully
(10:47):
support the Android platform.
Right now, Windows still has alot more installed devices, but
our run rate's about half andhalf. Some people would say lots
more Android devices being sold?
Not true. It's about half andhalf, which is, in a way, great
because lots of growth. In away, it's the toughest place for
me to be as a person who has tobuild the two different
(11:10):
platforms. I swear I'm comingback to m depth now. So where we
find ourselves is but like Isaid, we have about 10 questions
here. So it's gonna be 100minute. Just want to be clear,
100 minute podcast. Minutepodcast. Go ahead. You take your
time. I'll be faster. On theother part out, don't worry
about sounds good. So Windows,we write once we have an app, we
(11:31):
do it once we get a bunch ofstuff from windows, like plug
and play. So any certifiedperipheral works with any
Windows system, Android, wefound ourselves in this really
tough spot where meet Androidwas different than logy Android
was different than YealinkAndroid was different than Cisco
Android, and we were effectivelyhaving to write and especially
(11:53):
test multiple times, and so wewere going a lot slower on
Android. You know, I feel reallyhorrible for our customers
there, because rightfully, theywere saying, hey,
we'd like these to be equal. Andwe have to say, Well, no, you
really need to look at featuresets and like, because I can't
stop Windows development so thatAndroid catches up. Have more
(12:17):
devs on Android than I than I doon Windows,
and at the same time, Microsoft,elsewhere in the company, in our
OS company, was looking at someother devices, first party and
third party, that made a lot ofsense to run Android, and we're
looking around at the AOSPecosystem, and basically made a
(12:39):
decision that that We think as acompany would make sense from
Microsoft to do our Android andI would say there are three key
reasons for us to do that, andthat is what has become amateur
one, and this is no particularorder one. Upgradeability with
Windows. It is up to us to saythere's a new Windows version.
(13:01):
We're going to test it on thehardware that's out there. We're
going to make sure the softwareworks. We're going to put it out
with Android. When there's a,you know, Android 1213,
it's up to each OEM, and itcosts them a bunch of money.
Just being very honest, theyhave to go to the chip
manufacturer and say, Hey, canyou make us what's called a BSP
(13:24):
abort support package to supportthis new Android chip
manufacturer says, Sure, pay us,as you know, millions of
dollars, and the OEM has to paythat with no real new revenue
coming into them. So we werefacing a situation where some of
the devices would be stuck onolder Android, which really is
difficult for us, as we havecloud connected systems that you
(13:47):
know may take advantage of newercapabilities. That's one, but
also two is security right when,when we went to our internal IT
and security organization andsaid we'd like to have some of
these devices deployedinternally. We got a hard No. We
actually just deployed the first100 Android devices internally,
(14:08):
room devices. It took, like,three years of work, and
frankly, the only reason we wereable to do that is because those
devices will upgrade to mdep. Sosecurity's number two, and
they're very tightly connectedupgradability and security. So a
Microsoft team will now beresponsible for making sure that
(14:29):
Android platform stays up todate, stays as secure as we can.
I know we'll come back tosecurity too. And then three is
value added, or sort ofadditional capability to help
AOSP catch up to Windows. Theone I use all the time is plug
and play. Android doesn't have aconcept of plug and play, so of
course, you know, logic willsay, hey, we did this stuff that
(14:50):
makes it work with, you know,these
USB peripherals. But Cisco didsome other stuff. Well, you know
who's who's still.
Stuff do we go with? So mdepkind of aims to address go
back to the original questionhere. What is m depth? So let me
(15:11):
just see if I can make thisshorter for you. It's a version
of Android. It's a version ofAndroid Microsoft has is
controlling or releasing andspecifying
for teams rooms, is that? Isthat accurate? Is that a
the last part is not quiteaccurate. It is a version of
(15:34):
Android, specifically AOSP.
There's two flavors of Android.
There's Google Android with abunch of Google services.
There's Android open systemsthat anyone can pick up that
does not have Google services.
So this is a flavor of AOSP thatMicrosoft builds, releases to
OEMs we work with, and itactually will be applicable to
rooms, teams, phones, teams,panels, all teams, Android
(15:58):
devices, we have not todayspecified it for our existing
partners. We have said any newpartners and new Android devices
should be using mdep, and todaywe have Jabra committed a
(16:21):
version of Android that partnerswill get from Microsoft, is that
accurateand Okay? All right, I think we
got question one down. Allright. Question two, Dave,
well, you've kind of answered alot of the questions in what you
talked about. You know, I dowant to give if you would do, if
(16:41):
you would indulge us again,because there's a lot of I will
indulge you all you want.
There's a lot of lot of termshere that people don't really
realize. Microsoft came out withan announcement last month about
having to switch to AOSP, andwhat is the difference between
mdep and AOSP, and is this twoswitches or one switch? Or what
was Microsoft asking thepartners to do? So
(17:05):
that switch, this is a littlemore technical, so it's not
switching to AOSP, it'sswitching to AOSP management. So
what happens with these Androiddevices is to be acceptable in
corporations, they have tosupport what's called MDM and
MAM mobile device management andmobile app management. Different
(17:31):
organizations mandate differentlevels of this. I would say
about half of our customers,Microsoft included, specify MDM,
meaning the device has to befully corporate managed.
The agent that allows intune todo that is today called Company
Portal. It uses a set of APIsthat Google and the AOSP
(17:55):
community have deprecated sogoing away will not work. The
new agent is called Intune AOSP,and it uses a set of newer,
better APIs. Don't ask me thedetails, because I'll have to
get someone else to tell you.
But it is a new agent that, inmany, many ways, is better,
(18:20):
smaller, faster, less memoryfootprint, etc. So these are
100% two different things,device management, and one is
the platform that it's on,right? Okay, one other
clarification question hereagain, because you went through
a lot of this journey, um, youhad announced, um, mdep
Initially, I think wasEnterprise Connect in 23 and I
(18:44):
don't, I'm not really still 100%sure if there's anything out
using it today. So I'm not goingto blame you for the delay. You
know, obviously you talked abouta whole journey that went on
over there, and there's a lotgoing on, but, but cannot, can
we use it? I mean, it was, itwas, I took the selfie with it
on the show floor, but they saidthey weren't shipping it. So
what is the status of it? Is itout? Is it not gonna be out?
(19:05):
Yeah. So the two partners who'veannounced going all in on MD,
abdep, but that mdep are Jabraand yay. Link. So Jabra have one
Android device out today.
That's, I think they call it theVSB video system bar. It's the
panic as 50 withVSP, yes, V Thank you. So that
(19:32):
internally is running on mdep. Iwill tell you I am blanking on
whether it's already out withMDP. I believe the way Jabra was
going to do, going back to yourearlier question, the device
management transition, is justby going to MD like so MDP has
the new agent built in theIntune AOSP engine. So agent, so
(19:57):
it's either out or it's going tobe out very.
Soon that Jabra device will bethe first mdep device. And I can
circle back with you guys, oryou guys can ask our friends a
jobber, but that'll be the firstone. Yay. Link. Have said that
all of their team's Androiddevices, all of them rooms,
phones, panels, will be m depthbased. They but it's an upgrade.
(20:20):
So they haven't yet come outwith that, but we'll see more
coming out.
The other curveball, forclarification, is that, when you
announced this and we werelooking at it, we were all
thinking, oh, all the Androidvideo bars. A lot of questions
around that. And then Barcocomes out at Infocom and
explains that they're using mdepth things that aren't video
bars. So has it expanded, or wasthat the original view all
(20:42):
along? Yeah. SoI guess it's important for me to
highlight again that it's twodifferent teams of Microsoft
with slightly different goals.
My goal, of course, is to getteams devices out, you know, as
in as great a shape as possible.
The m depth team is part of theoperating system group, and of
course, what they want to do ishave OEMs use their OSS as
(21:04):
broadly as possible. So Barco isa bit of a joint announcement.
So Barco is going to do theirAndroid devices on MDP. They
have also said that in thefuture they will have teams
devices, but no more detailsshared at this point. Okay,
okay, but the room control boxthat isn't necessarily a device,
(21:26):
because it's running Android, isgoing to have MDP on it. That's
the thing that's there. So it'snot just for the video devices.
It's anything in the meetingroom running Android. It's
actually anything runningAndroid, period, right? MDP is
an Android distribution. AnyAndroid device, probably a
business device, because it'sdefinitely sort of business
(21:49):
focused in terms of enterprisemanageability and so forth. Any
Android business device couldconsumer could consider MDP,
quite frankly, you know, you maysee other devices, even for the
consumer space, run amdep. It's,it's a Microsoft Android
platform that where Microsoftadds value in that at least the
(22:12):
three areas Microsoft makingthat freely available to the
public as well, and anybody candownload it. Or is it only going
to be restricted to yourapproved partners.
It's up to the mdep team at thispoint. It's only with partners
that we have an agreement for.
(22:34):
And the reason being thatAndroid is still not windows.
You can't, like grab Android ona stick easily as a consumer,
and install it, you do have tohave a board support package for
the chip and so forth and so on.
Just clarify for our audience,that the way Google makes
Android available is they have afree open source project, and
people can do things with that,and then they have a license
version, which has the GooglePlay Store and has a bunch of
(22:57):
other stuff and and that is nota free, open source product,
that is a product that you haveto buy. And so, so when you buy
acell phone with Android and it's
got all that stuff on there,that device maker probably paid
for that version of Android,where, if you buy maybe a phone
in China that doesn't have toplay store and doesn't have all
that stuff on there, theyprobably downloaded a free
(23:19):
version of Android. So you'rebasically downloading the free
version of Android, not just anyversion. You're taking the
Android, open source projects,version of Android, modifying it
and making it a Microsoftmagical device or operating
system, and then making thatavailable to your partners. I
think is that, is that a fair?
(23:39):
They get that right?
Yeah, that is fair. Yep, allright. One interesting tidbit
I've heard is that Googlelicensing prohibits the same OEM
from both buying the paidversion and doing AOSP devices
without explicit approval fromGoogle. So all kinds of fun
(24:00):
complications in the Androidspot. Okay,
so, so let's talk a little bitabout some of your existing
partners and the position thatthey're in. You obviously had
Jabra and Yealink, as youmentioned, and now Barco that
are that, are, you know,interested in joining and
getting all the benefits fromthis? But you've got other
partners out there now that havebeen using these bars on
(24:21):
Android, and as you point out,selling a lot of them for three
years. So it's an interestingwhy do we want to why would they
change Why do you want to changethat? Why do they want to change
that? And will they have tochange that? Yeah. So for us, we
want to make sure,I'll start with the customer. We
want to make sure our customershave a consistent experience,
(24:42):
not in terms of the UX, but interms of the manageability,
security and upgradability andthis, all three of those are
things our customers have asked,slash, really pushed us on and
today, the answer is, go talk tothe OEM. You.
I, you know, I have no abilityto say, XYZ device will be
(25:04):
supported for however manyyears, because in the Android
space, because it is up to theOEM to say, will they spend the
time and money and energy on anew Android version when that
comes out? Will how easy or hardwill that upgrade be? I have no
ability to say is the platformgoing to stay secure. I trust
(25:25):
our OEMs are great companies,but, but I you know, we as
Microsoft can't say that,because they are responsible for
those upgrades.
And last, but certainly notleast, I'm super
limited. Maybe it's not theright word, but it's super hard
to catch up on Android withoutgetting more consistent value
(25:48):
added services, not splinteredby each OEM. So that's that's
what we're trying to address.
The last point you know, is bothfor customers and ourselves. So
for us, we're really trying tostreamline what we do so that we
can move faster on bothplatforms. So it is, I think, an
interesting value proposition toOEMs, where, frankly, we take on
(26:10):
the cost, which is significant,of upgrades, security updates,
enhancing the OS. There is atrade off, because,
like you said, there's some OEMsthat have invested years in
their own flavor.
The mdap team is working witheach of those OEMs to kind of
(26:33):
try and find the right balance.
To say, hey, you can bring overyour value add and
AI, audio, video code that'srunning on the OS while still
getting the benefit of ourplatform at this point. Like I
said, any new devices, newpartners on Android will need to
be mdap. Can I envision at somepoint saying
(26:56):
we're only going to docertification for mdap devices?
Yeah, absolutely. We're notthere yet, but I'd certainly say
for all the reasons I justlisted, I think it'd be a great
benefit to both customers. So SoDave was asking. So you didn't
use an acronym, Dave, you haveto use acronyms when you ask
questions. But Dave was askingabout, I think it was called MTR
(27:20):
OA, right? That was meetingteams rooms on Android.
And when you introduced that,I believe you kind of diverged
what Android had these featuresand Windows based meeting rooms
had other features. You've kindof brought them mostly back
together. I think, okay, so Iguess with MD, my question is,
(27:42):
are they going to come backtogether more with the windows
and the that's, that's, that'sthe goal. So today, Windows is a
superset.
We for a while, I would sayWindows was mostly a superset,
but there were a couple offeatures on Android, like start
whiteboard from MTR, that wereunique. Within this next quarter
(28:07):
to two quarters, it's going tobecome Windows as a pure
superset. Andthe question is, When can it be
equal, right? When does Androidcatch up today without mdap? I
don't have a plan that would dothat. I can't stop windows. I
can't keep adding more and moredevs to Android. So it's going
(28:27):
to keep going as a superset withsome amount of delay.
The hope with MDP is that if wecan get one everybody onto MDP,
so we reduce our amount of workon Android and two, then the
ebdep team could keep addingvalue to the platform. The hope
(28:47):
is that we get to a place where,yeah, the two platforms would be
kind of equal, by the way, yeah,I can't ever promise that,
because, man, the pace ofinnovation and change
in terms of, you know, weannounced copilot running on
teams rooms. That's one of thethings we talked about at our
(29:07):
recent Build Conference. Thathas all kinds of interesting
implications. It's going to comeout first on Windows. We would
need, you know, there's probablysome hardware dependency to even
bring that on Android, so allkinds of stuff, but the goal
would be to get a lot closer.
You talked a minute ago aboutcertification and how you
(29:28):
foresee only m depth basedAndroid platforms being
certified for Microsoft Teams.
How will that work? Willcompanies lose their
certification? Or will it be anupgrade to it, or how do you
envision that happening? Yeah,great clarification. It's the
latter. So our certification isnot infinite. Our certification
(29:49):
has a specific time frame, andthen we say the device could be
recertified with future Androidversions. I think at some point
what we'll say is that future.
Android version to go forrecertification would need to be
m depth based. That's now, Idon't have a time frame in mind.
I don't have an Android versionin mind.
(30:11):
Yeah, I would say that's adesire for all the reasons I
listed earlier, both for us andour customers. So no one's at
risk of losing certification inthe near term, couple of years
that's going on based on mdep?
Well, you know, when you saycouple of years, there are
devices that were certifiedthree years ago that will expire
their certification in the nextcouple of years anyway, right?
(30:33):
So, and then the way it worksnow is it's up to the OEM to
say, OK, we are going to spendthe money to do Android version
XYZ and resubmit forcertification. So I don't want
to say the couple of years orany time frame part. All I'm
saying is there's definitely adesire for us at some point to
(30:53):
make that recertificationrequirement. BM, depth based.
Well, that was a tough question,but now I have even a tougher
one, and and I, I got to tellyou, you know, you know, I
respect you and your employer.
They're greatly respect you andyour employer, but I think it's
legitimate question here. So areyou ready for this one?
(31:15):
Hold on. SoI already mentioned a few times
that mdep is really about asecurity. Really about security.
Some of your partners have saidthis as well. We were listening
to Jabra. They were talkingabout the key benefits of mdap,
and that they and they said, youknow, Microsoft takes full
responsibility for the securityof the meeting room, which is
(31:36):
kind of what you touched on aswell. Now some may, some people
may have concerns about thatlucky timing, I guess, because
just last month, I'm sure youknow, the Homeland Security
issued a scathing report onMicrosoft. They were
(31:57):
investigating a email hack andso nothing to do with teams, but
they were investigating an emailhack, and they wrote this report
that went public, and theyidentified operational and
strategic decisions at Microsoftthat quote collectively pointed
to a corporate culture Thatdeprioritized enterprise
security. Unquote. Wow. Now, sohow can you come and tell people
(32:22):
in the enterprise that don'tworry about your meeting rooms,
Microsoft's Got Your Back onsecurity and so help us
understand that?
Well, I'll start by saying I'veread that report as I think
have, frankly, the majority ofour 200,000 some employees at
(32:42):
this point, it is humbling.
I don't you know. Think I canput it better than our vice
chairman Brad Smith, in terms ofhis testimony to Congress,
where, to paraphrase, he said,we take full responsibility and
we're going to make the changesnecessary to make sure we
address all those issues. What Ican tell you is, since then,
(33:04):
security isit's beyond job one, the word
Satya, used in a communicationto everybody, is when it comes
to a choice between security andanything else, security wins. We
are currentlydelaying roadmap items because
we are going back and addressinga very significant list of
(33:29):
things that aren't necessarily,quote, unquote broken, but we
believe could be better. So yes,absolutely, a humbling moment
for us? Yes, absolutely, we takefull responsibility.
You know, in my 30 years ofMicrosoft, unfortunately, this
isn't the first time thattechnology changes and kind of
(33:52):
cultural changes impact thecompany. I don't know if you
guys remember back to Windows XPService Pack two, but that was
basically where we said, oh mygosh, we put out Windows XP, and
it turns out that all thesecomputers that are connected to
each otherare a great target for hackers.
(34:12):
And we'd said security had to bea feature of the OS, and so we
built antivirus, and, you know,a bunch of stuff into the OS
before that, I happened to beworking on SQL Server when there
was a pretty significant issuewhere there was a embeddable,
small version of SQL Server thatwas used in a lot of apps, and
(34:34):
it shipped with a default Twoletter username and a default
two letter password, so notsecure by default. And it turned
out that that was a easy vector.
You know, the only thing I couldsay is, in my experience, every
(34:54):
time something happens, we learnand we get better. In this case.
Way the environment has changed.
They're state sponsored. It'snot the same hacker as it used
to be. It's groups witheffectively boundless resources.
It's cloud services and cloudtenants. We have to do better.
So all I could tell you is, likeI said in such as words, when it
(35:17):
comes to a choice betweensecurity and anything else,
security is going to win, andwe're going to address those
operational culture decisionsthat the report mentions are not
going to we are addressing them.
Okay, all right, I did read, Idid read a report just the other
day that Microsoft employees inChina where I asked to get rid
(35:41):
of their Android phones andswitch over to iPhone for
security, and there are a fewother things like that, so you
see the little pieces of that.
Moving on. Yeah, I fun story.
Was it last week? No, the weekbefore, for a whole day, I lost
all access to corporateresources.
We keep upping the bar. Youknow, for Microsoft employees to
(36:05):
log in, we used to have to useauthenticator with a two digit
code. We don't choose weactually type it in that was
deemed not secure enough. Wemoved to a passkey based
system. And, yeah, we we takesecurity very seriously
(36:26):
internally as well, and that'scoming back to mdep. One reason
that I'm that I believe thatmdep will up the bar in security
and manageability is because ithas to pass our own security
organization that, as you canimagine now, is extremely high
bar, you know, highly focused.
So mdep is working super closelywith our CISO organization to
(36:49):
just get those devices to beinternally acceptable. So when
do we see it? I mean, let's comeback to that for a second. You
know, you mentioned that we'veseen it on, I personally have
seen it on the job or bar,although they said they weren't
releasing it. When does it getout in the wild? Or if I'm one
of your partners, when do I putit out
at jobra bar on amdap was goingto be out? You know? Now I'll
(37:13):
circle back right after this andask, I It's very soon for that.
I think yay. Link has the firstset of devices coming by end of
this calendar year. So the waythey're doing it is, of course,
new devices first, right? Soanything new that comes out,
they're putting MDP on it, goingback and trying to upgrade
(37:34):
devices. They're going to dothat based on the cycle of
recertification and so forth.
Barco, I don't remember theschedule. I thought it was also
by end of this calendar year forthe first set of devices. And
then you're going to seeadditional partners get
announced. For sure,the benefit of having room
collaboration on Android as achoice. And as you point out,
(37:57):
for even your own customers,about 50% of the choice, as
opposed to that, is that it wasa platform that you could very
easily, if not immediately,switch to another vendor. You
can use it with Zoom, you canuse it with Tencent. You use it
with Google. It's meant to be anopen platform, and I'm just
wondering if anyone inMicrosoft, or if you, or if
(38:18):
you've heard about if there'sany consideration about how this
might upset customers orpartners, or how this might
change the strategy, if one ofthe platforms that may or may
not be competing with you nowneeds to use a piece of software
that you're generating, asopposed to something that's open
source. So So couple of things.
(38:39):
One, you may not know this, butas far as I know, there are
still more zoom rooms on windowsout there than there are zoom
rooms on Android. So zoom has agood history of picking up
windows, which is also an openplatform right zoom, if you even
look at desktop, I think morezoom runs on Windows than any
(39:00):
other OS. I think just lookingat share of Macs versus PCs. So
Windows is, of course, an openplatform, and there are OEMs who
you know basically say, Hey, youwant to switch. There's an image
you can re image your deviceson Windows. So we know customers
that have gone I'll just do thecase I'm most interested in,
(39:24):
from zoom rooms to teams roomsby reimaging devices
on Android. There's multipleways of doing that. There could
be a reimaging. There can be areset to out of box. Basically,
you have two images on thedevice. You reset the out of
(39:45):
box, you choose us or zoom. Noneof that changes when mdep.
So first of all, the mdep teamwould love to have zoom devices
running on mdep. There isnothing. There are no teams,
pieces that are in.
Currently part of mdep. There'sthe Intune manageability,
there's, you know, some otherMicrosoft security and
(40:08):
manageability components.
Nothing about teams. So we wouldlove, and I believe the mdep
team has and will continue,talking to zoom. We would love
to have OEMs use mdap for zoomdevices also,
and therefore they can have, aswe said, two images on the
device. They can switch. The OEMcan choose not to do that. They
(40:31):
can choose to do m depth forteams and not m depth for zoom
and switch. Now, since webrought up security and
upgradability. The only thingMicrosoft will stand behind in
those cases is the mdep part ofthe device. So if there is a
partition, you know, on thedevice with a non mdep image,
(40:57):
we can't say how or whetherthat's going to be updated or
presents a security attackvector. We're going to focus on
the m depth piece of thatdevice. Did that answer your
question?
I think so. I mean, I it's ait's a complicated situation,
and I'm speaking on behalf oflike, three or four different
(41:20):
manufacturers that that wouldn'twant to be named, they wouldn't
want to say this, but I've heardthis, you know, privately and in
backrooms. It's like, why wouldwe want to re engineer our piece
with a lot of manpower and a lotof work to just bring it to
where we are already today andgive up where we were going in
the future? So it's going to bea tough call for a company like,
like HP poly, that's got all orneat that's got a lot of
(41:43):
features, or or even Cisco,which is kind of doing it a
little bit differently, butthey're in their partitions on
mdep. It's going to be a lot ofwork for them to bring that to
where it needs to be. And Idon't know if the incentive is
there to do that quickly. Maybeit is, I don't know. I hear you.
I think what we would say is,hey, the payback is around the
(42:04):
cost of every new major Androidversion, plus the Upgradeability
and so forth. And I'm not evenreally hearing much of a
conflict, because if I, if Iunderstand what Ilya is saying,
it's still Android. It's just aMicrosoft version of Android. So
if they have a lot of expertiseand skills that they've
developed over the past fewyears on Android that should be
(42:24):
mostly applicable as they moveover and and, and they should
still be able to reboot withdifferent applications running
and things like that. So as faras I can tell, you haven't said
anything that would be aproblem. Everything you said,
Dave is correct. But also, infairness, I've heard some of the
concerns that David's talkedabout. I'll say,
(42:47):
with all respect to our OEMpartners, primarily, I think the
concerns are competitive betweenthem. So you know, a vendor that
has a big install base inAndroid would say, well, now
anyone can come in, pick up mdepand sort of be where I am pretty
quickly, maybe not with theinternal expertise, but with the
(43:10):
platform and with the ability tokeep that platform upgraded so
much like Windows does kind ofbring a level playing field, if
you will, to to PC makershaving an Android distribution
for Microsoft does sort of levelthe playing field. Where before
OEMs, you know, kind of werebuilding their own OS and have
(43:34):
that advantage so that that isreal,
I would say again, with all duerespect to our OEMs, our focus
is on the customersversus necessarily, how the OEMs
position against each other. Sofor us, again, it's about
saying, look,the OEM is the customer for
(43:55):
mdef, for the OS, and so therewe're going to deliver a set of
benefits, lower cost forAndroid, major version upgrades,
keeping them secure, more addedvalue in the platform. We have
to be flexible enough that theycan take code that they've
already written and bring it tothe platform. But,
(44:16):
you know, there's a choice thatOEMs will have to make, and so
it's up to us to have a reallygood value proposition. So I
want to wrap this up with but Igot an important question, and
it actually is going to use thatother part of your title we
haven't gotten into yet, aboutcalling.
You know, I'm thinking aboutthis. It's interesting that you
you've got calling and devices,because
(44:39):
Cisco snoring. I know, I know,you know, he used to only do the
new devices, and he ended upwith phones as well. And so I
guess that's kind of emerged.
And then, you know, Cisco'sobviously expanded into desktop
devices in their deviceportfolio, which borderline on
phones. D 10 has their pro.
(45:00):
You've got zoom, you got neatwith their frame, you've got a
number of kind of companies kindof moving into the desktop
realm, and now that you've gotcalling, and you assume are
responsible somehow with phonesout there, which we haven't
heard a lot of updates on thephones in a while. Do you
envision this m depth story?
Because I've heard, I've heardcrazy accusations that Android
(45:21):
actually works on phones too. Sodo you envision that
you'll see a new generation ofphones, slash video devices
designed for the desktop,running mbip.
So actually, let me catch youup. Every team's native phone.
(45:41):
Desk phone is an Android device.
Yay. Link audio codes poly,they're Android devices.
We do have a sip gateway audioonly that lets us work with
other you know, older phoneszoom, by the way, takes exactly
the same approach. I don'tremember the their names, but
(46:04):
they have like, a SIP phonesupport, and then they have a
phones running a zoom app, andthose are Android. So yeah, the
yay link announcement coveredevery Android device that's
video and desk phones they'regoing to be using m depth for
desk phones as well.
(46:25):
And Cisco under snore is one ofthe largest, I don't know the
exact ranking, but largestsellers of phones in the world.
I'm going to guess it's them.
Yay, link and poly in some orderthat I don't remember, but you
guys could look it up. So yeah,like, it's complicated, because
(46:45):
obviously, WebEx has a callingservice, and that's a great
business for Cisco. But I'lljust say, from my perspective,
since you brought it up, whywould I love to have Cisco do
more teams native devices inevery category.
So really seeing the convergenceof video and voice, we've been
(47:07):
talking about it for years interms of the apps, apps like
teams, but now we're reallyseeing it
around the devices as well.
That's fantastic. All right.
Well, I want to thank you somuch for doing this podcast with
us. And I know you're very, verybusy and we and I think this is
really informative. So thank youso much for participating. I
(47:29):
want to thank you guys forhaving me on. I follow both of
you. I think you guys have agreat insight into the industry,
and I am happy to come back andcover other topics.
I think it's great for customersto have this podcast as a
information source. You.
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