Jeff Raikes
Jeff Raikes
Jeffrey Scott "Jeff" Raikeswas the chief executive officer of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Until early 2008, Raikes was the President of the Microsoft Business Division and oversaw the Information Worker, Server & Tools Business and Microsoft Business Solutions Groups. He joined Microsoft in 1981 as a product manager. He retired from Microsoft in September 2008, after a transitional period, to join the Gates Foundation. Raikes is credited with driving much of Microsoft’s early work in business applications. He...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBusinessman
Date of Birth29 May 1958
CountryUnited States of America
Until now, business intelligence software has been too complex, costly and disconnected from the software tools people use to do their everyday jobs.
Within a month, Ray was putting his thoughts on software-as-services on paper.
We are on schedule for the launch of Office 2007 by the end of this year for businesses and by early 2007 for consumers. We have scheduled the launch of consumer version in such a way that it is available after the holiday season.
In order to succeed... you have to put a stake in the ground.
In business, there's a constant focus on developing strategies, reviewing executive performance against those strategies each year, engaging with opposing or different points of view, and having intellectual dialogue.
You know, being an entrepreneur is super hard work, and if you're not passionate about what you're doing, you're probably not going to succeed.
Even bad results teach you something, and you can learn your lessons and get better.
At Microsoft, the magic of software is used to take on very interesting challenges.
One of my great values that my father intuited, and indirectly taught me, is that you should always have a plan but be open to opportunity.
I'm a person who enjoys the hands-on experience of anything I do. Get your hands dirty - that's the thing that drives and motivates me.
Lawyers don't run sales forces.
With Microsoft Office Live, we are making online services available for small businesses to create an enterprise-like IT infrastructure for them without the management requirements. Our goal is to make it easy and affordable for small businesses to have a more customizable Internet-based solution.
What Microsoft has done over the years is bring technology to mass markets, and we think the time has come to do that with business intelligence software. And we're building it into the Office tools that are familiar to everyone.
What we want to do is to make sure that we're working with you and our partners, the community.