Ilya Bukshteyn.

Simon J Dudley (00:12:03) Hello everyone, Simon Dudley here. This is, as you well know, the before it was obvious podcast. You know, because you've already clicked the button that says watch this episode. And today I'm here with Ilya, a man I'm not yet friends with. ⁓ it means that we don't know each other very well. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna start with Ilya telling us what he does today, because he's a pretty important man at Microsoft and therefore a pretty important man in the A V space generally. And then we're gonna go backwards in time and work out how we got here, and then we're gonna move forward in time and see what he's gonna do in the future. So, Ilya, welcome to the show. Why don't you give the ladies and gentlemen an overview as to who you are and what you do today? Ilya Bukshteyn (00:12:53) Thank you Ilya Bukshteyn (00:12:58) Thank you, Simon. That's very, very kind of you in that ⁓ in that tee up. ⁓ I am the corporate vice president for Microsoft Teams calling meetings and devices. So that means I'm in the engineering team here in the Seattle area, ⁓ and I have the privilege of leading the parts of teams that enable a cloud phone system, that do video meetings, ⁓ and everything to do with. Devices ⁓ such as Teams rooms, which I had the pleasure of kind of ⁓ inventing, if you will, or being the father of. Simon J Dudley (00:13:38) That's great. Okay. So the before the obvious podcast is always about how in hindsight everything looked obvious. It was obvious that the world did ICN, it was obvious the world went to IP, it was obvious that we all ended up with teams. But it certainly wasn't obvious at the time. ⁓ And a lot of people look at this A V space and the VC space and the youths, whatever two letter acronym we want to use, and go, Well, you know, everyone's been doing this since they were a boy. I I suspect you You you weren't born to this. So let's go back and start from the very beginning. Where did you come from? ⁓ How did you start? What was school like? All of those good things. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:14:21) ⁓ I'm a first generation immigrant. I was born in Moscow in what was then the USSR. ⁓ my parents and I immigrated to Canada, actually, ⁓ where ⁓ I learned English as a second language. And then briefly, because my dad got a job in Montreal, briefly for about a year, learned French. And then when ⁓ unfortunately a lot of companies moved out of Quebec. ⁓ for those that don't know, Quebec. Has had two referendums to potentially separate from Canada. ⁓ This is the Quebec Brexit. ⁓ luckily both failed, but the first one failed very narrowly. And so after that first one, there were a lot of businesses that thought, ⁓ this might be not the best place to have our headquarters, ⁓ given they want to do business in Canada. So ⁓ lots of companies moved out. My dad got a job all the way on the other coast in Vancouver. Simon J Dudley (00:14:55) Mm. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:15:19) British Columbia, which is where I grew up. ⁓ So I promptly forgot most of my French because there you don't get French until grade eight or so. ⁓ so yeah, I grew up in Vancouver. ⁓ went to school at the University of Victoria. ⁓ And Vancouver is actually where I got my first job with Microsoft. ⁓ my very first job while still in college was at an SI ⁓ as a coder. I was a ⁓ DEC. Vax powerhouse developer. ⁓ those are words that ⁓ most people these days probably won't know. ⁓ and then ⁓ you know became a client server developer eventually on Visual Basic. Then a few of us joined some folks that knew the oil and gas industry and had a startup ⁓ as that was just getting deregulated, and from there I ended up ⁓ the first Microsoft consulting services person in Vancouver. So that's journey. ⁓ Simon J Dudley (00:16:22) Okay, so that's really I didn't know any of that. That's rather interesting. So what year are we talking you finished you you did what, by the way, at university? Ilya Bukshteyn (00:16:32) I ⁓ started in electrical engineering at and I don't mean anything bad by this at a university called Simon Fraser and I absolutely hated it. ⁓ have you ever watched the X Files? ⁓ Simon J Dudley (00:16:46) yes, yes. And I'm mu much of our audience are perhaps old enough to also have watch the X Files. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:16:51) So, you know, FBI headquarters, you can sort remember this gray kind of stoic FBI headquarters. That was Simon Fraser University. ⁓ it's ⁓ on top of a mountain ⁓ and gets the worst weather at all times. ⁓ And I didn't love being there, nor did I love electrical engineering. So I switched into computer science at University of Victoria. Simon J Dudley (00:17:16) Interesting. Okay. And what year are we talking here that you graduated? Ilya Bukshteyn (00:17:21) ⁓ sheesh. See, I know what year I joined Microsoft, which was in September 1994. ⁓ so I don't remember. I remember working, I mean I worked all through university. ⁓ I I had to fund myself. ⁓ so there was ⁓ a lot of ⁓ my my Simon J Dudley (00:17:28) Anyway. Right. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:17:46) What got me most of the money was ⁓ 'cause you could only do this back then, was that I bought parts wholesale and I built PCs and sold them to folks. ⁓ and you could make Simon J Dudley (00:17:57) Like a micro ⁓ Michael Dell type activity, just without billion. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:18:02) yeah. But but you can make good money back then doing that. Cause cause just the gap, you know, if you can imagine today, that's not a thing, but the gap between even low volume wholesale prices and then like putting these things together, you could ⁓ sort of do a good business. ⁓ the other funny part about that is I ⁓ tried to get evening and summer jobs selling computers back then at a Canadian chain called Future Shop. ⁓ and ⁓ I was turned down because I I they said I didn't have enough personality, couldn't be outgoing enough. So that's why that's why I sold my own PCs versus working in sales. Simon J Dudley (00:18:44) That's hilarious. ⁓ what was the name of the store again? You said it and it I thought to myself, that sounds very nineteen eighty four. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:18:49) The chain yeah, yeah. The chain was called Future Shop. I forget who bought them. I wanna say Best Buy ended up buying them ⁓ at some point. Simon J Dudley (00:18:58) Right. That's funny. And so your PCs were three like early four, eight, sixes, and you must have been involved in the points where ⁓ Windows was beginning to take over. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:19:12) Yeah, well, I mean, like personally, I've had PCs since 286, you know, the ATPC running DOS ⁓ and ⁓ every version of DOS. ⁓ And I ⁓ actually remember when Windows 10 came out. Most people don't. Most people don't know Windows until three or three point one. But ⁓ I remember Windows 10 and it was sitting there like a box. Simon J Dudley (00:19:34) Yeah. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:19:41) At the SI that I was working at part-time, and nobody cared. It's always like, hey, you you guys mind if I grab this and install and I go? ⁓ so I grabbed it, installed it. ⁓ I I remember ⁓ trying to do homework for You know, I that was in the SI when I worked there in summer even during high school. So I remember trying to do homework in ⁓ it would have been notepad, I guess, because there's no there wasn't any word processor that ran on Windows one. Simon J Dudley (00:20:11) Mm. Simon J Dudley (00:20:24) remember Windows one, I will say I don't, but I do remember Excel running in Windows 2.15, ⁓ I think, runtime. So it was you kind of you ran a DOS machine and then you ran ⁓ an version of Excel, which looked like a Windows, was a Windows GUI, but it was only for that one application. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:20:44) Interesting. ⁓ I don't remember that until Windows 3. I don't remember the Office apps until you know Windows 3, which was huge. That was a big deal. ⁓ that was when I when I joined Microsoft was about a year before Windows 95 came out. And so ⁓ the big Windows release, ⁓ this is a trivia question I actually use for my team. The big Windows release was Windows for Work Groups 3.11, because it had a native networking stack. Simon J Dudley (00:20:55) Yes, it was. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:21:14) My trivia question was what was on the box? What was the art on the box? Any any recollection? Simon J Dudley (00:21:21) I ⁓ no I was there at the time because I was just for the for the record, I was selling Harvard Graphics. That that was one of the worst decisions I ever made as a career. You ⁓ you we we saw I I joined Harvard Graphics ⁓ right they were the people who made PowerPoint before PowerPoint in the DOS era, for those of you who aren't old enough to remember it. ⁓ And and then Microsoft came up with Office ⁓ and ⁓ gave away PowerPoint. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:21:28) Yeah. Simon J Dudley (00:21:49) which we were trying to sell for four hundred and forty five pounds ⁓ and it took up forty meg of hard drive and no one wanted to use it because forty meg of hard drive was too much hard drive space. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:21:59) I mean a forty mega hard like the first hard drive I had that sounded like a jet engine and was about this big was ten meg maybe? So yeah, forty mega hard drive. Simon J Dudley (00:22:11) Yeah. Quite possibly. Well there's all that clip art. You've got the you've got the you've got the ⁓ you've got the guy with the Inspector Cluso outfit on and the big ⁓ the big magnifying glass and the large eye and the duck hitting the penny key with a hammer and all of those important bits of clip art that we used to have. It was. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:22:21) Ha ha. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:22:30) That was big deal back then. ⁓ minor side topic before I answer my trivia question. ⁓ I have a podcast I want to recommend for everyone if you don't know it already. It's the Acquired Podcast. And so the Acquired Podcast is two guys, Ben and David, who do an amazing job of going back in history and looking at the history of successful companies. But they started doing shorter, much shorter podcast episodes about acquisitions. And one of them was about. PowerPoint. And ⁓ I I'm completely up to date with acquired. So I started going into their backlog and listening to stuff. And I found it fascinating because I like lots of little things I didn't know. Like ⁓ Bill apparently wanted to make PowerPoint a feature of Word, ⁓ where you've just sort of presented stuff, ⁓ which I thought was interesting. But anyhow, a ⁓ very good episode. The answer to the trivia question is. The logo was a greyhound with a rocket strapped to its back because the whole thing of Windows for Workgroups 3.11 was it was fast. We had done a bunch of stuff to optimize it, as well as having ⁓ a network stack. The other trivia was back then we used to do boxes, ⁓ which would combine hardware with software, because some of the things we did in Windows needed hardware to fully work. So for Windows. 3.1, one of the boxes we had had a at the time relatively rare ⁓ sound card in it. ⁓ because we wanted to to show off Windows Sound, so you get a sound card. Windows for Work Groups had a package where it was two licenses and two Ethernet coax cards and a run of coax. ⁓ so like because networks were still Simon J Dudley (00:24:07) Do remember that. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:24:27) relatively rare. And so yeah, I in my ⁓ little basement that I had back then, I had two PCs with coax like running along the edge of the the the room to the other room and had two PCs network. Simon J Dudley (00:24:28) Yeah, yeah. Simon J Dudley (00:24:41) that's hilarious. And what a what a that's a real trip down memory lane for both of us because ⁓ for ⁓ this show isn't about me, so I'll probably cut this from the show, but just so you know, ⁓ I ⁓ did a lot of work with Harvard and I also did a lot of work with Compaq and I did a lot of work with WordPerfect. And WordPerfect had this rule that said they wouldn't buy directly from somebody else, and so did compact. So I made friends with the compact res compact people and friends with the word perfect people. ⁓ And I would sell WordPerfect lots and lots of compact laptops to show off ⁓ word perfect, particularly WordPerfect for Windows, and the other way round I would sell compact loads of ⁓ WordPerfect licenses as well. It was hilarious. I just used to sit there at lunch and people would pass ⁓ purchase orders to each other through me. ⁓ great job. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:25:33) ⁓ So, anyhow, that 1994 joined Microsoft, ⁓ got to use what was then codenamed Chicago, ⁓ Windows 95. That was a big deal for about a year before it came out. And then ⁓ the Windows 95 launch was amazing. ⁓ I would wear some of my Microsoft swag like ⁓ out on the street, and I would actually literally get stopped and asked about Windows 95. Reason I brought that up is ⁓ that was when Office and Windows were just like driving each other. So Office ninety-five, Windows ninety-five, that was just the combination that really was was driving a ton of usage. Simon J Dudley (00:26:11) Yeah. Simon J Dudley (00:26:19) It it really did change the industry. There was, you know, in the in the early nineties, there were lots and lots of different PC manufacturers, quite fat margins in it. So someone like you could build PCs and make money doing it. ⁓ by the end of that decade, it had all collapsed down to three or four hardware vendors, and Windows had become the de facto standard. You know, obviously Apple was in there, although they were having a very tawdry 1990s. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:26:49) But do you remember what the ⁓ actual big according to the press, the media competitor to Windows ninety five was when Windows ninety five came out? Simon J Dudley (00:26:59) No. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:27:00) OS2 warp. ⁓ IBM took out TV ads with Singing Nuns. That was their campaign. And there were articles like I don't remember if it was Wall Street Journal. I do remember it was in the Canadian press of you know which one of these two is gonna win. ⁓ Warp came out first, if I remember right, and and was in full swing, you know, marketing. ⁓ but ⁓ but yeah, that that was actually like. Nobody was really talking about Mac versus Windows the way that happened later. It was ⁓ definitely IBM warp versus versus Windows. Simon J Dudley (00:27:35) They did later. Yeah, yeah. Fair enough. Simon J Dudley (00:27:41) I knew what I knew because I also I was selling PCs as we talked about earlier. ⁓ I knew OS two was in trouble when a young guy from and I was a young guy too at the time, can you believe it? A young guy from Microsoft from ⁓ IBM came along to tell us about why we should be selling OS two devices with their operating with their word processor on it. And he pointed out that it needed twenty four meg of RAM to run properly. And I pointed out that that would cost £12,000 for the memory, ignoring the PS2 you had to run it on. I was like, it's just just ridiculous. No one's gonna run. I mean, 24 mega brand now is nothing, of course. But then it was enormous and the cost was just ridiculous. ⁓ as small as size, being a trivia, the London DLR, the the noddy Toy Town Railway that goes around, it's the overland thing that goes around London Canary Wharf. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:28:26) ⁓ Yeah. Simon J Dudley (00:28:36) That ran on OS2 for over 20 years. And it the the train would stop at a station, which they never actually ended up building. ⁓ And they could the software was so complicated they could never work out how to take it out. So the conductor would have to be on the train and stop the doors opening automatically to a station that wasn't there. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:28:39) Wow. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:28:57) That's ⁓ wow. Yeah. ⁓ there was a in the acquired episodes on Microsoft, they talked about this a little bit, but it was definitely a case of ⁓ I think IBM trying to put the genie back in the bottle. You know, PS2 microchannel architecture, trying to say, hey, we don't we screwed up opening this stuff up. Here's an alternative that's only IBM. ⁓ they tried to do that later in networking with token ring. ⁓ Simon J Dudley (00:29:21) Yes. Simon J Dudley (00:29:25) Yes. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:29:26) ⁓ and OS2. And yeah, it's very hard to compete against an ecosystem. That was my Simon J Dudley (00:29:33) I mean, I think IBM proved it very well that you couldn't. Token Ring ⁓ was technically a superior networking standard to Ethernet, but I remember there was a point where you couldn't buy OS2 or microchannel architecture token ring cards for over a year. So that stopped anyone buying them. And then they were twice the price. And then the whole NE2000s thing, the price fell off the floor, yeah, fell off the off the perch, and they were just dirt cheap. And ⁓ yeah, ⁓ IBM never worked it out. It's very interesting to see how how much innovation there was at that time. A really and you must have gone through a whole bunch of because you didn't join and then sit there waiting for twenty years for teams to come out. So well, I'm assuming you didn't anyway. So what ⁓ how did you progress there? What what did you end up starting at Microsoft and then moving through? Ilya Bukshteyn (00:30:15) No. ⁓ Ilya Bukshteyn (00:30:25) I've been ⁓ incredibly fortunate. My plan when I joined Microsoft, by the way, was to be there for three years and to use it as a jump off to ⁓ either another startup or you know some something bigger and better. ⁓ So I was in Microsoft consulting in Vancouver. ⁓ I then found I really enjoyed presenting and talking to customers. So I actually moved ⁓ from consulting to pre-sales. Back then we used to call it ⁓ an SE, a systems engineer. Then we called it a TSP, a technology solution professional. ⁓ I don't actually know what they're called now, but ⁓ anyhow, technology pre-sales. ⁓ and then ⁓ again, I found boy, I really, really enjoy presenting. ⁓ And there was an opportunity to move to Redmond and to build content to lead a team. Eventually, at first it was just me ⁓ building content for all of our field ⁓ to do what we called at the time developer evangelism to actually, you know, ⁓ build stuff that our field would use to present to developers. So I moved ⁓ to headquarters in late 1998. I worked on developer evangelism content and then moved to actually developer evangelism. So when we were doing dot net ⁓ and Visual Studio dot net and Simon J Dudley (00:31:47) Yeah. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:31:47) ⁓ The very controversial at the time, Visual Basic.net, ⁓ where someone started a campaign to say you shouldn't even call it Visual Basic, you should call it Fred, because it's so different from Visual Basic and you've abandoned your roots. ⁓ I still remember that. So developer evangelism. And then ⁓ at the time, the way Microsoft was organized, what we call product management now, which is Listening to customers and deciding what do we need to build? What do we want to build? That was actually in marketing. And I have zero marketing background. So I had no basis for trying to go into marketing, but ⁓ I wanted to ⁓ work on that. ⁓ And as I said, I was pretty good at presenting. ⁓ So ⁓ I saw a role posted for executive speechwriter. And it was actually for Steve Ballmer, our CEO at the time. And I interviewed for that and I came in second. I lost. So to speak. ⁓ but ⁓ one of our other ⁓ whatever he was at the time, senior VPs, one of our top executives, a guy named Paul Flesner, ran the server and tools business, and he needed an executive speechwriter. ⁓ And the team referred him to me, and so I did that. ⁓ which I loved. I loved being an executive speechwriter, I have to say. I love putting together stories and presentations and then helping them look great. And I got to do amazing fun stuff. ⁓ I hired Samantha B of Daily Show Fame for her first corporate gig at one of our events. ⁓ I hired this is gonna get all all the way to UC. So I was an executive speechwriter ⁓ and I used that to parley my way. I led a team of exec speechwriters and then finally landed in marketing. I was in marketing for ⁓ SQL Server when we did the 2025 launch. ⁓ no. Sorry, not the 2020. My gosh. 2005. Forwarded 220 years, 2005 launch. I I got to do fun stuff. I hired the Orange County Choppers crew, the Tuttles, to be at our launch. ⁓ and had had a custom chopper. And then ⁓ as is very typical of Microsoft, ⁓ there was a whole bunch of reorgs ⁓ and Simon J Dudley (00:33:52) Right. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:34:12) Rather than go through the various reorgs, I took a different job for a gentleman named Zig Serafin, who later went on to Amazing Things. He was the CEO of Qualtrics. He led ⁓ Unified Communications, which was brand new, UC marketing at the time. Marketing and business development, working for a guy named Gurdeep ⁓ sorry, he and Gurdeep, I think, were peers at the time, working for a guy named Anoop Gupta. Simon J Dudley (00:34:31) Yeah. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:34:41) And the first thing they wanted to do is to tell the world that Microsoft's in on UC. ⁓ We called it UC Strategy Day. Jeff Rakes was the gentleman, the executive who delivered it. And I wrote that keynote and I hired ⁓ not the UK office, but the American TV show, The Office. ⁓ the guy who ⁓ who played the ⁓ my gosh. I am getting old, I'm blanking on all the names. Who played kind of the ⁓ Dwight, the the Dwight. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ So so that was his first corporate gig. He had to actually go out and buy his own Dwight outfit because all the outfits are provided by the network. He ⁓ so he went to, I think it was Walmart or something, and he was fantastic. So I was behind the scenes for that UC strategy day. That was my first brush with UC. Simon J Dudley (00:35:16) Dwight, yeah. Yeah. I think I've seen the ads. There were some ads around this too, right? Ilya Bukshteyn (00:35:40) ⁓ time about not obvious, ⁓ lots of things there by the way, not obvious. ⁓ we at Microsoft had had a video meeting product, ⁓ which was NetMeeting, if I remember right. It was free, it was pretty bad. ⁓ Simon J Dudley (00:35:57) this was T dot one twenty stuff. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:36:00) It was very early. ⁓ we bought a company called Placewear, which had also online meetings. ⁓ we ⁓ Simon J Dudley (00:36:02) Yeah. Yeah. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:36:14) Ended up learning a lot, including that the actual money at that time was not in meetings, it was in calling. ⁓ and so we pivoted and ⁓ Cisco clear leader in in you know IPPBX on-prem, but by the time ⁓ Link rolled around a couple of versions, so it was ⁓ office communication server. No. Live communication server, then office communication server, then link. And by the time we got to link. 2010, I believe, ⁓ we had more ⁓ on-prem IPPBX lines than Cisco. ⁓ and we're we're doing really well. But meetings was sort of an add-on to that that product at the time. ⁓ and ⁓ you know, the average number of attendees in a video meeting was I think like two or like two point two. ⁓ yeah, ⁓ and so Simon J Dudley (00:37:06) Mm. Simon J Dudley (00:37:17) That sounds about right. Yeah. Yeah. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:37:21) There was a very clear divide at that time between what folks would call high-end video conferencing. At Microsoft, we had a couple of telepresence rooms. They were under lock and key for use by like Steve Ballmer for negotiating, you know, acquisitions only kind of thing. And then everybody else, and everybody else was ⁓ laptop, maybe you'd have a USB something in rooms. We we had our offering which was round table ⁓ later ⁓ polycom but that was our you know you could see the whole room plug in and and i thought it was an amazing experience at the time but it was about five grand or so ⁓ Simon J Dudley (00:38:06) No, you sold Microsoft sold those roundtables, like a quadrillion of them. But did you not? I always thought you sold a lot because they we had resellers who would tell us, we're selling a lot of these. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:38:11) No, no, no. ⁓ Ilya Bukshteyn (00:38:18) How many would you guess we sold? Simon J Dudley (00:38:21) ⁓ I mean what globally over a few years? I mean ⁓ a few hundreds of thousands, I would have assumed. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:38:29) Now it was, it's hard to get exact numbers, ⁓ but it was about 20,000, we think. ⁓ Yeah. ⁓ Because so if you think about the timeline, ⁓ again, lots of things not obvious. ⁓ Our going in position for meetings was the laptop would win, and we just needed a thing for people to plug into that would compete with. Simon J Dudley (00:38:36) Really? Ilya Bukshteyn (00:38:57) Cisco rooms, telepresence rooms, you know, polycom rooms, etc. ⁓ Now, this is ⁓ Windows ⁓ XP, I think, time frame primarily, maybe Windows seven. So if you think about Simon J Dudley (00:39:10) So so give us a year. What year are we talking here about twenty ten, twenty twelve? Ilya Bukshteyn (00:39:14) Yeah. ⁓ So UC Strategy Day was 2008. So this would be about 2010. So look, the the ⁓ first, that hardware round table, about that five thousand bucks. Second, it turns out that not everybody has a network connection or even a power connection in the center of their table. So but those were relatively minor. The biggest things were that people would come in. And their laptop may or may not work on the Wi-Fi at the time, or may or may not work well. And the drivers may or may not be up to date. ⁓ And Windows may or may not be up to date. And then when you plug in round table, where is your link client? You gotta find it. And so the typical meeting would start 10, 12 minutes late. At least. ⁓ and that was the number one problem that I heard when I rejoined the team. So I actually, we again, typical Microsoft had a big reorg. Zig moved to something else. And so after UC Strategy Day, I actually did a stint in Windows Embedded, which I loved. It was selling Windows. ⁓ back then it was called Embedded, later IoT, to device makers. But ⁓ Zig ⁓ found me again in 20. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:40:41) 10 or 11 and asked me to come back. ⁓ And ⁓ I worked actually on what he was running at the time, which is speech at Microsoft. So we did the speech engine for the Xbox ⁓ Connect and ⁓ Windows Phone. ⁓ and eventually Zig and Gurdieep went back to what was then the Skype division. So Gurdeep ran Skype, Zig ran Skype for business. ended being called Skype for business and I worked for Zig. ⁓ And so just catching up between twenty ten and then the really not obvious things were that what Cisco was selling and Polycom were, hey, this costs a lot, but it works ⁓ and it's high quality and you don't have to mess around with laptops. That's what they were selling in meeting rooms. And that sold really well. ⁓ it was super expensive, super expensive. Like I think Simon J Dudley (00:41:32) Yes. Simon J Dudley (00:41:38) It for the audience who aren't aware, by the way, we're talking entry level at fifteen thousand dollars and you could spend fifty on a room if you chose to. And that's not telepresence. This is just a normal meeting room. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:41:50) Yeah, it was tens of thousands of dollars. So when I came back, ⁓ we had pivoted from round table to ⁓ link room systems. ⁓ And we basically said, okay, let's Ilya's words, not what the team intended at the time, but ⁓ let's basically ⁓ you know compete with Cisco at their own game. So we had ⁓ we were partnered with Prestron. Polycom. I'm missing one. Smart. No. ⁓ No. So. ⁓ Simon J Dudley (00:42:22) Life size. Well, ⁓ I was in the room when Craig Malloy, they were meant to build one for you, and then he came back after two years and said, We're not building it. And I said to him, Do you not want to see it before you ⁓ kill it? And he went, No, I don't want to see it. And I had to go down and see the engineers and say, You know that project you've worked on for two years? ⁓ Craig Malloy's first action is to kill it. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:42:49) Yeah, Life Size was interesting. They were a link partner. We used Life Size internally because the Speecher Microsoft team that came about as part of an acquisition ⁓ of a company called Tell Me. Their offices were in Silicon Valley. So we had to connect Silicon Valley and Redmond. We bought a bunch of life size systems. It was ⁓ okay at best, in my opinion. ⁓ but but yeah, and life size ended up being bought by Logitech and Simon J Dudley (00:43:17) Yes. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:43:17) All that IP being used and then spun out again, ⁓ which I think ended up being super good for Logitech. But anyhow, the so Link Room Systems was ⁓ sort of big, expensive, custom hardware, software, ⁓ and ⁓ also did not sell super well. So if I remember right, it peaked at about 12,000 rooms. ⁓ and so my Entry back into that was Zig and Gurdeep asked me to take on rooms. ⁓ what are we gonna do about meeting rooms? ⁓ And ⁓ I was actually hesitant at the time, and ⁓ thank goodness gurdeep and zig really pushed me to do that. ⁓ and we had a project going, which was gonna be called Mbox with with Poly Polycom. ⁓ And After three months of listening to customers, partners, and anyone I could find, one of the first things I had to do was cancel that project, super unpopular, and say we want to pivot to ⁓ what ⁓ became Teams Rooms eventually. It was Project Rigel. And the whole idea was that we would have a different point of view on the space. It would be fundamentally a Windows PC with a Windows piece of software ⁓ and You could manage it like a Windows PC. At first, we used Surface for both the compute and the console because it was really easy for us. But we then opened it up. ⁓ and it was really trying to say, look, we we want to bring the PC ecosystem to room systems. ⁓ And ⁓ Simon J Dudley (00:44:54) This this was about 2015, right? Because I or 16 maybe, ⁓ because I joined Logitech, ⁓ having honestly been disillusioned with the market and thinking maybe it's time to go and do something else, which was a big deal for me. I'd already been in the market over 30 years at that point. ⁓ and then Scott Wharton showed me what he was gonna do with the surface, and I thought, this is it. We if once we can do compute on a PC. ⁓ Ilya Bukshteyn (00:44:58) ⁓ Fifteen, fifteen. ⁓ Ilya Bukshteyn (00:45:15) Yes. Simon J Dudley (00:45:23) We're not talking about a twenty thousand dollar room anymore. We're talking about a I don't know how much at the time, four, five thousand dollar room. And it fundamentally changed the way that people thought about the market. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:45:34) Yeah, one of the things that I looked at when I was ⁓ doing my first three months in the job, Z Zigginger Deep kept sending me email going, hurry up. ⁓ but I looked at price sensitivity, ⁓ and there was effectively no price sensitivity up to two thousand dollars and somewhat price sensitivity to five thousand. And then there's sensitivity up to five thousand or over five thousand, I should say. And so then like the thing we were really Focused on was that Google had introduced their Chromebox for meetings at 999. And there was a lot of concern that this was going to be really disruptive and we need to have a thing 999. And I came back and said, I don't think it will succeed. Their model ⁓ of having a person pull out their personal mobile phone and use that to control the room ⁓ is not popular. And the biggest thing is they have no IT controls. So they're making an assumption that like 999 is cheap enough for workers to buy these and bring them in and leave them in a room because it's not going to. And I came back and said, no, we need something IT is gonna feel good about installing and is comfortable with and like knows, and it has to have a console in the room because what we're competing with is the phone. Like even back then, video conferencing was in under 5% of rooms. Most rooms had phones that people would use to dial into audio conferencing. So you have to make joining a meeting as simple or simpler than dialing in. Simon J Dudley (00:47:02) Yeah. Simon J Dudley (00:47:13) The the other angle I think that a lot of people missed at the time, which I don't think you did, was this understanding that IT departments generally aren't overly excited, or weren't at the time, certainly overly excited about video, because it gave it gave a lot of senior executives the opportunity to be mad at the IT department if it didn't work. And these, you know, it was a scary technology that that didn't work very well, and your ability to be humiliated in front of others was very high. And I think a lot of people certainly then, maybe still now, but certainly then didn't really trust Google. I mean, their products are fine, but the problem with Google is they do have this nasty habit of orphan wearing their products. So we got bored, it wasn't really very interesting. We're just gonna stop doing it now. And I think that helped you greatly. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:47:55) Yeah, yeah. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:48:02) I gotta tell you, I th you reminded me one of the moments of my career where I really felt like, boy, I got this one right. About a year after we launched Project Rigel, ⁓ Google raised their prices to $2,000, added a console, and focused on an IT management portal. And I was like, okay, we we called that one. ⁓ Simon J Dudley (00:48:25) You did, but and for them they didn't do any better with that. It the boat had sailed by that point. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:48:29) They well, you know, giving him credit, like now Google Meets actually, you know, doing relatively well, but they're they're doing that based on a suite sale. They're saying, hey, if you're on on whatever they call G Suite now, Google Workplace, this makes sense. But but you know, going back to to ⁓ to rooms, to your point about video, again, most workers ⁓ at the time experience video in a meeting room, not on their laptop. They cared more about audio and content than they did video, which is why video is tiny squares. ⁓ And ⁓ every meeting room, it was like a box of chocolates. You didn't know what you were going to get because all of the user experience was based on which VTC and which firmware version did you have in that room. And so the other point that we said is this is going to be at the time Skype, Skype for business. Like we control the user experience. And boy, did we get a bunch of flack. There were a bunch of ⁓ traditional industry folks who posted that I was stifling innovation and not letting them, ⁓ you know, differentiate. And the and the anecdote I kept bringing up was: look, I was at Polycom for a meeting ⁓ in their big fancy room with lots of monitors and a VTC. And they were trying to join a Skype for business meeting and it took them on their equipment 15, 20 minutes to get it right. ⁓ And that stuck in my head. ⁓ And I'm like, that can't, that can't be it. So we did actually for the first multiple years really focus on time to join until it got down to on average under a minute. ⁓ and and that was a key metric for us. Simon J Dudley (00:49:57) Okay. Simon J Dudley (00:50:16) I think there's a really I read some stuff years ago about user interfaces because we I've gone through them all. I was at Polycom as well, I was at Life Size, I was at Logitech. So we've gone through all of this. And a lot of people talk about, I need an intuitive user interface. And I'm like, no, no, stop it. There is no intuitive user interface. There's a familiar experience. the the one I use, I met a man once who had one of these 1930s Bentleys, and he said the most scary thing about it was that the clutch and the brake were actually the other way round. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:50:35) Yes. Simon J Dudley (00:50:46) Now, if all cars were that way round, you'd know how to drive it. But with them just the other way round and two inch tires and a four-ton car, it was apparently terrifying to drive. And and I think Jerry Seinfeld said it best. He said, People are more afraid of public humiliation than they are of death. And video Ilya Bukshteyn (00:51:04) That's actually backed up by studies. ⁓ I when I did presentation training from a gentleman named Jerry Weissman, who's amazing, ⁓ he actually had studies. I don't remember if it was Harvard. When people list their top fear, public speaking, same thing as humiliation, is above death, which is mind-blowing to me, astounding. Simon J Dudley (00:51:30) Yes, it i it ⁓ yes, but I suspect you and I are not ⁓ I think a lot of you know, you ask my mother. My mother would tell you it's the top of the list. She's quite she's quite she's quite reconciled with being dead, but she's definitely wouldn't want to do a speech. Absolutely remarkable. And I think most people are like that. And I do credit where it's due. I think what you've done with with teens is you've codified it to the point now where people walk in the door and go, I know what that button does. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:51:47) And by the way. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:51:57) Well, a couple of things I'd say. One, ⁓ just since you mentioned Teams, our job is not done. So, like our console over ⁓ it's it's a typical law of physics, right? Everything, frankly, becomes more complicated over time. ⁓ because you look to add features. We've added too much, we have to go back and redo our console, and we will, and we're continually looking at that. So I'm responsible for Teams meetings now as well. We just redid our meeting controls. and we're still looking at it. Like we're con the amazing thing about where we are in software is the amount of signal and feedback we get, because we really can look at what people are clicking on and not clicking on, not finding it at great detail. But the one anecdote I was gonna mention about your point of there's no such thing as intuitive, there's just familiar, the telephone dial. Like the thing I was competing with that is very familiar to people your age and my age. Is completely non-intuitive for my kids. Like, could they just click on a name? ⁓ And and to be to give credit where credit's due, by the way, when I first had my interview with Gurdeep, ⁓ Gurdieep St. Paul, and and he was ⁓ showing me, like kind of telling me his vision, his vision is like, why would anyone ever dial a dial pad again? You you find a person and you say, I want to talk to them or I want to see them. ⁓ Clearly that's now true, right? And so and so like the dial pad that was the gold standard of intuitive for the longest time ⁓ is ⁓ completely unfamiliar to my kids. ⁓ Simon J Dudley (00:53:30) Yeah, and quite rightly so. By the way, have you ever noticed how calculators and ⁓ telephones, when they do have dial pads, they have them the other way round from each other? Ilya Bukshteyn (00:53:39) No, I didn't notice that. Simon J Dudley (00:53:41) No idea why, completely irrelevant, one of those weird things. No one, it's just a strange experience. So Ilya Bukshteyn (00:53:46) No one knows. I'm sure it goes back to two people at some point who had ⁓ very strong convictions and ended up being successful in two different industries. Simon J Dudley (00:53:56) And or they just didn't even ask each other. We at a company I won't name, we had two remote controls that were meant to be the same. And then I picked them up and looked at them and said, You do know one of these is the mirror image of the other? And then they tried to tell me that it was actually they designed it that way. And I'm like, No, you didn't. You just Ilya Bukshteyn (00:54:13) That was another ⁓ most people don't remember. Very common for VTCs, the way you controlled them was remote controls, which IT hated out of battery, would leave the room. Like you don't and so again, lots of credit to Gurdeep and Zig. They were ⁓ very firm with me and and ⁓ they were completely right. No extra hardware on the table. You get to have a console. That's it. And and make sure it can't walk away. Simon J Dudley (00:54:42) Yeah, we used to spend an I mean this is a long time ago now, but we used to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to explain near end and far end. Your near is their far and their far is your and they're like, I just want to have a meeting. Stop giving me all these buttons to press. So ⁓ you in the last five years or so, you know, Teams has become a a monster. I mean, you are I don't think anyone would doubt that you are now the the I I don't know, the standard, I don't know what the word right. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:54:55) Yep. Yeah. ⁓ Simon J Dudley (00:55:12) You are and you know, if having worked for Logitech, I'm sure you don't like the word dominant either, but you have become an enormous player. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:55:17) Okay. ⁓ We ⁓ were amazingly fortunate to ⁓ have a vision that resonated ⁓ and ⁓ frankly worked very hard and built the right things during the pandemic. ⁓ it's actually gonna be 10 years ⁓ in April for Teams, ⁓ for Teams GA. ⁓ November is, I think, 10 years of when we announced it, and then April was GA. Amazing vision by the leader at the time, a guy named Brian McDonald, to to say that the way we work has changed and work is going to be collaborative. You know, it's very different from ⁓ when I look at my desktop, for example, it's I work in teams. ⁓ Like that's where my work happens. I also outlook because there's still email, especially external. So Simon J Dudley (00:55:47) Well. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:56:16) Brian was very ⁓ had an amazing vision for the the way work would change. Early on, ⁓ meetings was not a huge part of that. ⁓ it was very much about collaboration, chat channels. ⁓ And ⁓ I think pre-pandemic we had on the order of 20 million monthly active users. And then came the pandemic. ⁓ And ⁓ most people may not remember, but I do. We had a max of Simon J Dudley (00:56:31) Yeah. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:56:46) Four people in video. ⁓ that was it. ⁓ so Zoom had the perfect product at the time. They skyrocketed in usage, and we had to learn how to rebuild the product. Because it turns out you have to be very performant when you can have many video ⁓ windows on up plus content. ⁓ so we had to rebuild it. while scaling the infrastructure. And we came out the other end with, you know, I think the last public announcement was 320 million monthly active users. So ⁓ amazing work by so many amazing people. Scott Van Vliet ⁓ led our infrastructure team at the time and gentleman named Mahendra, who now ⁓ leads that infrastructure, like imagine scaling. ⁓ I was on the team side, the sort of the client and watching the team Simon J Dudley (00:57:24) Grief. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:57:43) Rebuild everything, so to speak, ⁓ and ⁓ rapidly deliver new capabilities while constantly focusing on performance. ⁓ crazy time, but incredibly gratifying because, as you said, we saw a ton of customer adoption. ⁓ And I think coming out of the pandemic, we had the right product for what our customers wanted. And now we get to have a foundation upon which we can build a product for the future. So one that delivers great meetings, calls, collaboration, but now also is really well positioned to help humans work with AI agents, ⁓ because they will be like coworkers in an environment built to work together. Simon J Dudley (00:58:35) It and so that brings us to up to date with what you've been up to. What does the next few years look like for you? You better stick with this? Seems to work pretty well so far. Ilya Bukshteyn (00:58:45) ⁓ I mean I don't get to decide what my boss thinks I'm capable of in the future. ⁓ I mean I think I have an incredible job. ⁓ the the The thing I love is that I run into people who use our product all the time, and they always have feedback, and there's always things we can do better. And it's everything from simplicity to ⁓ performance, kind of what we think of as fundamentals, like we can never stop on that. The product always gets bigger and you always have to push it into a smaller performance envelope. The product gets bigger and you have to figure out ways to simplify it. To features and capabilities. ⁓ like for IT, for example, back to rooms. ⁓ I keep telling customers that every room should have eyes, ears, and a brain. ⁓ And they get that and they see the value. And then they say, but I'm not gonna hire more people to manage those rooms. I can't. I have to spend the money elsewhere. ⁓ So how do you help me? Well, I think we can have. instead of human room sweeps where someone walks, looks, walks down, looks in every room, we can have AI do that. So I think there's a ton for us to work on to make Teams a platform for humans and agents to collaborate, to make Teams a platform that specifically in my area, you want to have ⁓ ambient in every space so that you and I can walk in anywhere and have. A one-on-one where AI takes notes ⁓ and is a knowledge expert of worldwide knowledge and do all that while helping IT departments maintain a really high level of quality, which again, you know, as we add more stuff, they have to figure out a way to manage all of that at a level of quality without letting quality suffer. We've got to help them with that. Simon J Dudley (01:00:52) You it's really interesting. I've always thought about technology as going through four stages. There's basically the science experiment level, right? It kind of works, but only just. Then there's the user works around the technology. ⁓ you know, NVIDIA collab, that would probably be the ICN era. And then there would be the ⁓ user, sorry, the technology works around the user. ⁓ one could argue that's the Ilya Bukshteyn (01:01:13) No. Simon J Dudley (01:01:20) IP video collab market, including Polycom, Life Size, Cisco, Zoom. And then there's the ⁓ product or the solution dissolves into something larger, which is what you've done with Teams, right? And others are trying to do the same thing, you know. ⁓ hats off to Zoom and and ⁓ Cisco and Google for trying to do the same thing as well, but you're clearly leading there. And video now becomes a a ⁓ part of a larger workflow, right? Everything from contacts and addresses and ⁓ and all the communications that happen before and after the meeting and then the meeting as well. ⁓ it's very interesting to me see how that goes because there's also the issue of, and you just touched on it, where the the technology in the room is used for a video call sometimes, but is used in every meeting to record it, to ensure that we can do sentiment analysis and we can Ilya Bukshteyn (01:01:57) Yes. Simon J Dudley (01:02:17) check who's in the room and we can have all the minutes taken from the room and it's gonna be interesting to see how that develops over the next few years. It it it seems to me that's that's a pretty clear space for advancement. Ilya Bukshteyn (01:02:29) Well, I think ⁓ I think there's many spaces for advancement, but I think our industry is ⁓ I think shifting to be outcome focused versus tools focused. And that's being driven by this incredibly quick AI shift. And what I mean by that is: look, companies needed tools to connect during the pandemic. ⁓ Meetings went from largely physical to entirely online. Companies needed the tools to use to carry on their business as is while connecting. The industry has done that. Coming out of that ⁓ and where we're going now, I think ⁓ as you said, workflows have been kind of redesigned to be collaborative. And the next step is the workflows will be redesigned to make use of AI and agents. ⁓ And what that all means is, I think, is that companies are going to say, not how many meetings did we have, but like, ⁓ are we delivering. Our outputs ⁓ on time or faster, you know, and and especially as the industry frankly moves to charging for some of these agentic AI capabilities based on ⁓ usage, it's going to be on us to prove that that usage ⁓ pushes outcomes. ⁓ so I think that you're gonna see that across the industry, a really significant focus on yes, we can still give you. Technology tools, but but really, what are we doing for outcomes? What outcomes can we impact with the solutions? Simon J Dudley (01:04:14) I think that's great. ⁓ anyway, I've lost your video for a little while, which yes, are you you still seeing yourself? therefore, it's probably gonna be fine in the record. I'll I wanna finish this with ⁓ because I'm I'm aware we're over time and I I don't wanna be I want I'm conscious of your time. ⁓ So let me let me ⁓ restart as it were the conversation. ⁓ you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna no actually I'm just gonna keep this going. I think it'll be fine. Ilya Bukshteyn (01:04:18) really? Ilya Bukshteyn (01:04:22) I am. Simon J Dudley (01:04:43) When when I stop press when I press ⁓ stop recording, it might take a few seconds to to catch up. And I have no idea why it's slow. It's probably the Riverside Service. So anyway, so anyway, it's been a remarkable journey. And I don't think I've ever met anyone who's been at at Microsoft as long as you have. ⁓ I've got two final questions for you. The first one is: in all the time you've been at Microsoft, what do you think you've learned the most? And the second part, the same question is. If you were twenty-five today, what or if you were the if you had the opportunity to talk to yourself at twenty five, what would you say differently? And you can't say buy NVIDIA stock, right? That's not or or Microsoft stock. ⁓ you you can what would you what advice would you give? Ilya Bukshteyn (01:05:32) ⁓ those are two really good questions. So I ⁓ Ilya Bukshteyn (01:05:40) I think the earlier stages of my career were driven ⁓ primarily by two things: by ⁓ my communication skills ⁓ and my customer skills, ⁓ meaning my ability to communicate in a compelling way and to talk with customers and represent their stories and take in their feedback. ⁓ I think those are. More valuable than ever. ⁓ So part one of what I would say to a 25-year-old or 20-year-old ⁓ would be forget what technology is changing around you. I mean, yes, learn the technology, use the technology, but the skills that make people successful are still going to be ⁓ very focused on ⁓ communicating and like deep, deep customer empathy. ⁓ And I think the latter part of my career ⁓ has really been helped by internalizing a very different culture and approach to teamwork. ⁓ if you think about my Microsoft career, it's been three different CEOs. I came in when Bill was still CEO, and Steve, now Satcha. Three very different cultures. I do think the cultures are kind of driven from the leader down. ⁓ And ⁓ the thing that that ⁓ that changed for me during the pandemic ⁓ is you know i saw people having a hard time ⁓ it was hard it was isolating ⁓ and if you approached interactions with others in a ⁓ i'm gonna be right and i don't care about you kind of way ⁓ it was really tough so i ⁓ at one point, remember sort of saying to myself, I really want to make sure every interaction I have with someone else, that person walks away not feeling badly, like feeling good, even if we disagree strongly. ⁓ and ⁓ I think that integrated into how I think about leadership and team, you know, it's ⁓ it's made a huge difference for me. Ilya Bukshteyn (01:08:04) So re the second piece of advice I would have is ⁓ it's not winner take all. It's not you have to be always the smartest person. It's not you have to prove other people wrong. It it is about working together. It's about collaboration. Use your communication skills and your customer skills to help others, ⁓ not just help yourself. ⁓ Simon J Dudley (01:08:28) I think that's wonderful. Well look, Ilya, I've taken an hour of your time. I really wanted to say firstly thank you. What a fascinating journey you've had. ⁓ thank the audience. If you like the show, you know, press all the buttons, as they say. ⁓ I really want to make this in ⁓ interesting rather than clickbaity, but I guess if you've got this far in a recording, you're past the clickbaity bit. Ilya Bukshteyn (01:08:53) Yeah. Huge thanks if you got this far. I hope all that history is interesting to someone. ⁓ Simon J Dudley (01:08:58) I think it is. And and ⁓ I think it's important that it's recorded. ⁓ you know, let's be honest, I'm not gonna be Marcus Brownlee ⁓ and that's fine. I don't need to be Marcus Brownley and doing this as a passion project ⁓ because I'm interested in what everyone did to get where they are today. So, Ilya, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. And everyone, we will see you next week. And Ilya, I've just stopped recording. Ilya Bukshteyn (01:09:22) Thank you.