Close
  • Latest News
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Video
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Networking
  • Cybersecurity
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Storage
  • Sponsored
  • Mobile
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
Read Down
Sign in
Close
Welcome!Log into your account
Forgot your password?
Read Down
Password recovery
Recover your password
Close
Search
Logo
Subscribe
Logo
  • Latest News
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Video
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Networking
  • Cybersecurity
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Storage
  • Sponsored
  • Mobile
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
More
    Subscribe
    Home Development
    • Development

    Microsoft Research Brings Breakthroughs to Bottom Line

    Written by

    Peter Coffee
    Published November 11, 2002
    Share
    Facebook
    Twitter
    Linkedin

      eWEEK content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.

      Im still assimilating pages of notes, and hours of recordings, from two full days at Microsoft last week. Youll see some of what we learned there, including comments from almost an hour of Q&A with Steve Ballmer, in eWEEK on Nov. 18–but right now, Id like to share some things that probably wont be featured in that coverage.

      Of more than a dozen discussions, the one that most fits the mission of these letters may have been our hour with Rick Rashid, senior VP of Microsoft Research. Rashid commands my attention because his labs continually demonstrate that a research group can do it all: produce publishable work on the fringe of science, and also contribute to near-term product improvement.

      “The first goal we have is creating new science, moving the state of the art forward,” said Rashid, adding that Microsoft contributes a disproportionate number of the papers at many professional conferences: In graphics, for example, he estimated, “weve had more papers published over the last six years than any [other] two or three organizations combined; just our China labs publish more papers than almost any other organization.”

      Assessment through the peer review process of conferences and journals, he said, is “the only way for a corporate research lab to make sure that its not fooling itself in thinking its doing good stuff. Youve got a lot of outside eyes looking at what youre doing.”

      But if Microsoft Research isnt keeping itself on a short leash, and taking its mandate from the product development groups as to where it will focus its attention, then why has it been so successful in bringing its results to market in the form of significant product improvements? Microsoft seems to be better than most at cultivating “demand-side” awareness, in the product groups, of the possibility that pure research may yield unexpectedly useful results.

      “Microsofts a very receptive organization, and we have a number of systematic things we do: I have a team of program managers whose sole job is to manage interactions between product groups and research groups, to shepherd technology transfer,” Rashid explained. He emphasized the importance of personal relationships across group boundaries: “Ideas flow because people trust each other, not because people are just dumbstruck by the great idea. You develop a track record of creating good things, and people come to believe that putting your ideas into their products will give them better products.”

      Rashid isnt about to get into the business of trying to guide research based on preconceived ideas of what it would be useful to discover. “The things you really dont expect to have an impact, all of a sudden have an impact,” he said. “Extremely theoretical work turns out to be important to the Windows team: An algorithm turns out to be applicable to networks, or scheduling.

      “Support vector machines, a very off-the-beaten-path thing from the graphics world, relate to drawing the best plane to divide two groups of things in a multidimensional space: It was always extremely slow, but some of our teams thought they might be able to use it and developed some revolutionary techniques to speed up that technique for real-time classification. Its found applications all through our products for handwriting recognition, speech recognition, its used in our Commerce server for managing categorization of things that consumers might want based on what other peoples interests have been in the past.

      “All of a sudden, something thats been around for a long time becomes widely used because of a theoretical breakthrough in the way its implemented.”

      When the people on the leading edge of science are in regular, collegial contact with the people on the grinding edge of bringing products to market, they want to help each other: “We dont do anything specifically to make what the researchers do be relevant to our products, other than to put people in contact with each other, so that when one of them has a problem, the other may be able to respond, Oh, I know what you can do about that,” said Rashid. Doesnt that sound like the kind of conversation youd like to hear in your halls?

      Tell me how IT R&D needs to deliver the future today.

      Peter Coffee
      Peter Coffee
      Peter Coffee is Director of Platform Research at salesforce.com, where he serves as a liaison with the developer community to define the opportunity and clarify developers' technical requirements on the company's evolving Apex Platform. Peter previously spent 18 years with eWEEK (formerly PC Week), the national news magazine of enterprise technology practice, where he reviewed software development tools and methods and wrote regular columns on emerging technologies and professional community issues.Before he began writing full-time in 1989, Peter spent eleven years in technical and management positions at Exxon and The Aerospace Corporation, including management of the latter company's first desktop computing planning team and applied research in applications of artificial intelligence techniques. He holds an engineering degree from MIT and an MBA from Pepperdine University, he has held teaching appointments in computer science, business analytics and information systems management at Pepperdine, UCLA, and Chapman College.

      Get the Free Newsletter!

      Subscribe to Daily Tech Insider for top news, trends & analysis

      Get the Free Newsletter!

      Subscribe to Daily Tech Insider for top news, trends & analysis

      MOST POPULAR ARTICLES

      Artificial Intelligence

      9 Best AI 3D Generators You Need...

      Sam Rinko - June 25, 2024 0
      AI 3D Generators are powerful tools for many different industries. Discover the best AI 3D Generators, and learn which is best for your specific use case.
      Read more
      Cloud

      RingCentral Expands Its Collaboration Platform

      Zeus Kerravala - November 22, 2023 0
      RingCentral adds AI-enabled contact center and hybrid event products to its suite of collaboration services.
      Read more
      Artificial Intelligence

      8 Best AI Data Analytics Software &...

      Aminu Abdullahi - January 18, 2024 0
      Learn the top AI data analytics software to use. Compare AI data analytics solutions & features to make the best choice for your business.
      Read more
      Latest News

      Zeus Kerravala on Networking: Multicloud, 5G, and...

      James Maguire - December 16, 2022 0
      I spoke with Zeus Kerravala, industry analyst at ZK Research, about the rapid changes in enterprise networking, as tech advances and digital transformation prompt...
      Read more
      Video

      Datadog President Amit Agarwal on Trends in...

      James Maguire - November 11, 2022 0
      I spoke with Amit Agarwal, President of Datadog, about infrastructure observability, from current trends to key challenges to the future of this rapidly growing...
      Read more
      Logo

      eWeek has the latest technology news and analysis, buying guides, and product reviews for IT professionals and technology buyers. The site’s focus is on innovative solutions and covering in-depth technical content. eWeek stays on the cutting edge of technology news and IT trends through interviews and expert analysis. Gain insight from top innovators and thought leaders in the fields of IT, business, enterprise software, startups, and more.

      Facebook
      Linkedin
      RSS
      Twitter
      Youtube

      Advertisers

      Advertise with TechnologyAdvice on eWeek and our other IT-focused platforms.

      Advertise with Us

      Menu

      • About eWeek
      • Subscribe to our Newsletter
      • Latest News

      Our Brands

      • Privacy Policy
      • Terms
      • About
      • Contact
      • Advertise
      • Sitemap
      • California – Do Not Sell My Information

      Property of TechnologyAdvice.
      © 2024 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved

      Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.