Dear Satya,

As I approach the six month mark of my retirement and your appointment as CEO, I have been reflecting on my life, my ongoing ownership of Microsoft stock, and my involvement with the company. I have reached some conclusions and wanted to share them with you. I know August is the key month during which the company starts to prepare the proxy statement for the next shareholders’ meeting, and so these thoughts are probably timely for that too.

First, Microsoft has been my life’s work and I am proud of that and excited by what I see in front of the company and this leadership team. There are challenges ahead but the opportunities are even larger. No company in the world has the mix of software skills, cloud skills, and hardware skills we have assembled. We draw talent as well as any company in the world. We have the profitability to invest in long-term opportunities and still deliver superior shorter term performance. You’re off to a bold and exciting start.

Microsoft will need to be bold and make big bets to succeed in this new environment. Writing great software is a tremendous accomplishment and selling software has been a fabulous business. In the mobile-first, cloud-first world, software development is a key skill, but success requires moving to monetization through enterprise subscriptions, hardware gross margins, and advertising revenues. Making that change while also managing the existing software business well requires a boldness and fearlessness that I believe the management team has. Our board must also support and encourage that fearlessness for shareholders to get the best performance from Microsoft. You must drive that.

I had not spent any time really contemplating my post-Microsoft life until my last day with the company. In the six months since leaving, I have become very busy. I see a combination of the Clippers, civic contribution, teaching and study taking a lot of time. I have confidence in our approach of mobile-first, cloud-first, and in our primary innovation emphasis on platforms and productivity and the building of capability in devices and services as core business drivers. I hold more Microsoft shares than anyone other than index funds and love the mix of profits, investments and dividends returned in our stock. I expect to continue holding that position for the foreseeable future.

Given my confidence and the multitude of new commitments I am taking on now, I think it would be impractical for me to continue to serve on the board, and it is best for me to move off. The fall will be hectic between teaching a new class and the start of the NBA season so my departure from the board is effective immediately.

I bleed Microsoft — have for 34 years and I always will. I continue to love discussing the company’s future. I love trying new products and sending feedback. I love reading about what is going on at the company. Count on me to keep ideas and inputs flowing. The company will move to higher heights. I will be proud, and I will benefit through my share ownership. I promise to support and encourage boldness by management in my role as a shareholder in any way I can.

All the best,

Steve

Satya Nadella response to Steve Ballmer

Steve,

First, thank you for all of your support during my transition this year and for the past 34 years. It’s been a great privilege to have worked with you and learned from you. Under your leadership, we created an incredible foundation that we continue to build on — and Microsoft will thrive in the mobile-first, cloud-first world.

While your insights and leadership will be greatly missed as part of the board, I understand and support your decision.

As you embark on your new journey, I am sure that you will bring the same boldness, passion and impact to your new endeavors that you brought to Microsoft, and we wish you incredible success. I also look forward to partnering with you as a shareholder.

On behalf of all of Microsoft and the Board of Directors, thank you.

Satya

Version 3.4.0 of DBD::Pg, the Perl driver for Postgres, has been released: http://search.cpan.org/dist/DBD-Pg/

This version greatly enhanced the table_info() and column_info() methods.

REDMOND , Wash. — Aug . 18, 2014 — Addressing the unique document management and collaboration requirements of today’s legal professionals, Microsoft Corp. on Monday announced a preview version of Matter Center for Office 365 at the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) annual conference in Nashville, Tenn. Matter Center, an intuitive document management and collaboration solution catered toward law firms and law departments, works seamlessly with Office 365 and offers legal professionals a way to easily find, organize and collaborate on files without leaving the familiar Microsoft productivity tools they use the most.

“Microsoft has built a security-enhanced, cloud-based document management application that allows our professionals to quickly locate and collaborate on documents with our counsel from virtually anywhere,” said John Frank, vice president and deputy general counsel at Microsoft. “We’ve decided to make this solution more broadly available at the request of our outside counsel, who want to utilize it in their own environments.”

Matter Center for Office 365 offers benefits to both legal professionals and IT.

Valuable b enefits for l egal p rofessionals

Matter Center gives legal professionals security-enhanced access to the information they need — virtually anywhere, anytime, and from virtually any device.

• Your briefcase in the cloud. Matter Center works with OneDrive for Business, providing 1 TB of individual storage and a personal briefcase, which automatically synchronizes your documents so you can access them online and offline from virtually any device.
  

• Get more work done together. Share your files with others, both within and outside your firm. Work simultaneously on your documents with other attorneys, and easily track changes with automatic version control.
  

• Robust matter and document search. Easily search and find matters and related documents directly within Outlook or Word. Track or pin frequently used or recent matters and documents.
  

• Integrated and automated document management. Drag, drop and save emails and attachments from Outlook into the right matter. Tagging and sharing each document separately is no longer necessary, as the matter documents are automatically saved with the right metadata, permissions and version control.
  

• Security-enhanced access and permission controls. Users can be granted or excluded access to a matter. All subsequent documents associated with the matter will inherit the same permissions, thereby reducing the worry about ethical walls and data leakage.
  

• Reduce overhead and maximize time with clients. Matter Center helps you to reduce the amount of administrative resources needed to support a document management system, enabling you to spend more time working with clients.
  

Maximizing ROI for IT p rofessionals

Matter Center offers a way to begin your journey to the cloud, enabling you to maximize the ROI on your existing infrastructure with enterprise-grade security, management and administrative controls.

• Deploy based on your terms. Matter Center can be deployed in the cloud, in a hybrid scenario, or as part of an on-premises SharePoint environment based upon a firm’s needs and existing infrastructure.
  

• Maximize ROI on existing IT investments. Adding Matter Center to existing on-premises solutions such as SharePoint and Exchange will help you realize greater value from a unified productivity platform.
  

• Built on an industrial strength platform. Matter Center includes enterprise-grade security, management and administrative controls, and is compliant with multiple industry standards. Permission control and taxonomy are centrally managed and applied automatically; legal professionals don’t need to manage with the back-end settings.
  

• Always up to date. By deploying in the cloud, you can reduce the cost and time of upgrades and migrations as Office 365 is always up to date. No patches or software upgrades are necessary, and Microsoft frequently adds new value and capabilities.
  

• Higher adoption rates. Matter Center has an intuitive interface, simplifies processes, and can be accessed directly from Microsoft Office products that are used every day. This tool satisfies the most important needs of users, while reducing training and support efforts.
  

“Matter Center for Office 365 is the product of months of collaboration between Microsoft’s Legal and Corporate Affairs (LCA) division, outside law firms, and our Office 365 product engineering teams,” said Tejas Mehta, group product manager for Matter Center at Microsoft. “We are very excited to bring Matter Center to market in the near future.”

Matter Center for Office 365 is available in a limited preview. Interested customers can learn more about participating in a beta program at http://www.microsoft.com/mattercenter. More information about Matter Center and other solutions for customers in the legal vertical can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/legalproductivity.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services, devices and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/news/contactpr.mspx.