Chairman Europe, Microsoft Corporation
Jan Mühlfeit is responsible for representing Microsoft Corporation and engaging with governments, large corporations, key partners and academic elites both within EU and on an international level. Jan Mühlfeit joined Microsoft in 1993 and, during his seven years in the company’s Czech and Slovak operations, held a variety of leadership roles. Jan Mühlfeit assumed the role of Vice President of Microsoft’s Public Sector team in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) in 2005. He was named Vice President, EMEA Corporate & Government Strategy in 2006 and was subsequently promoted to Chairman Europe, Microsoft Corporation in 2007. Jan Mühlfeit is a board member of the European Academy of Business in Society(EABiS) and of the Junior Achievement Young Enterprise Europe (JAYE). He is also a Co-Chairman of the European Industry Leadership Board on e-Skills and a member of the Board of AIESEC, world’s largest student-run organization. Jan Mühlfeit also represents Microsoft on the TABD, the Transatlantic Business Dialogue. He is a regular speaker at various European and global events. Jan Mühlfeit has received numerous public awards including the “Best Manager of Czech Republic for 1999″ from the Czech Prime Minister, the “Czech Brain Award” and was named the Czech IT Personality of the Year three times. Born in 1962, Jan Mühlfeit grew up in Czechoslovakia. He received a computer science degree from the Czech Technical University in 1986 and, before joining Microsoft, worked both in the public and private sectors.
Questions and Answers
Evan Switzer: Recently Microsoft has removed Internet Explorer from its Windows program in Europe after pressure from the EU. Microsofts stance was always that IE was essential to the workings of Windows. Now that Windows is available without IE in Europe, will an IE free version be available elsewhere in the world? And If not why?
Jan: As we announced at the end of July, Microsoft proposed a set of measures to the European Commission (the “EC”) that are intended to address antitrust concerns the EC has expressed relative to Windows and Internet Explorer. While these measures are still under consideration by the EC, based on feedback from partners and customers, Microsoft will now ship the same version of Windows 7 in Europe that we will ship world-wide, and not offer E editions of Windows 7 in any channel. If our proposal were to be accepted, Microsoft would then provide a web-based ballot to end users via Windows Update.
Brendan Donnellan: What possible uses is MS exploring for its Project NATAL outside of gaming and the few uses we have seen in their demo? I am especially interested in business uses. What timeline do you see for final product availability for NATAL-based devices? Will NATAL fundamentally change the way we interface with computers?
Jan: At this time, we are focused on bringing Project Natal onto Xbox 360 and reinventing entertainment in the living room. We are really excited about all the potential opportunities that Project Natal provides us at Microsoft, but beyond Xbox 360, we are not ready to discuss any further details or give any information around timings.
Emil Jimenez: Microsoft is a corporation that comes under constant scrutiny from governments and from customers for its dominant position on the market. With the rise in usage of Apple and the slow increase of open source software, how will Microsoft combat the big corporation perception, and improve its communication strategy?
Jan:
I certainly welcome competition as I think it is healthy for any company to be challenged by other players, especially when ultimately customer benefits the most. That’s why we invest in our product development in order to deliver to our customers the best total cost of ownership including training, support and implementation costs. IDC confirms in their three year server TCO study that Windows Server saves cost over other software that provide licenses for free. On top of that an independent economical impact study created by IDC clearly shows that for each 1 USD made by Microsoft, our local partner ecosystem makes 9 USD. That I think is a very strong message for the local economical growth and job creation and Microsoft will certainly continue showing these facts and telling this story. As a matter of fact, in mid October I have had the pleasure and opportunity to address the Innovation Exchange forum organized by the European Private Equity & Venture Capital Association and there is one more angle to this debate that we consider to be very important, which is IPR protection. Without an effective IPR protection and the corresponding policies, there would be much less investments into Europe resulting in less innovation and I am sure that it is not a way we want to go.
When you ask me specifically about open source software I do not believe that it is business model, it is the model for developing software. Microsoft supports open source developers and communities. Just another example you can see are the known open source projects and 9 of 10 are written primarily on Windows.
YPF (Young Professionals Forum): Ivan Vlasyuk has 5 years of project management experience in Ukraine, Democratic Republic of Congo and the Czech Republic. Excellent educational background from United States, Ukraine, Finland, Denmark, Slovenia and Hungary. Area of expertise - Internet / Media - marketing and promotion using social media and print, online video, online communities creation, web site and blog development. Ivan has successfully managed multiple international projects from Prague, Czech Republic that lead towards an improvement in an organization's performance and market share growth. Speaker and active networker in expat-czech communties. Ivan works in English and Russian and can be reached at ivan.vlasyuk@morkva.biz. Ivan put together some questions from YPF members below:
Jan: ---
YPF (Young Professionals Forum) - Brendan Donnellan: How far along is Microsoft with integration of augmented reality?Are you working with anyone on this (perhaps google maps?) to bring this exciting new software into commercial viability? What are the problems (if any) that you see with this new technology – i.e.privacy, cybercrime, spamming etc.
Jan: At the moment, our work with Project Natal is to ensure that we have the right entertainment experiences ready when we bring this to market and as we announced at the Tokyo Games Show, these partnerships are focused on working with our games partners and publishers to deliver transformative entertainment experience in the living room. Beyond this, we are not ready to discuss any further details of Natal in terms of the technology or potential future partnerships.
YPF (Young Professionals Forum) - Ondřej Pánek: How would you advise to invest personal income - real estate, art, stocks, governement bonds, life insurance etc.?
Jan: Hard to say. Your personal strategy depends on your age, financial goals, risk appetite. I would recommend you to read some of the investment strategy books eg Financial Planning from WSJ to make your decision, which will best suit to you.
