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Clad in a white Nike polo shirt with the Office 365 logo added on, Sareen spoke with GeekWire about the future of Outlook, what he\u2019s learned from Nadella and how Microsoft thinks about email in the smartphone era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A couple years ago, Sareen, then working on the Bing search engine, was looking for something new to do. He talked to his mentor Nadella, and set his sights on Outlook. Sareen and Nadella became close when the future CEO was running Bing. Sareen wanted to help people get things done, and he found that Outlook was his most important tool for completing tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Outlook at the time was close to 20 years old, and it had a web version, a Mac version, and a fairly new mobile app. Sareen came in with a mindset that is now very common at Microsoft for addressing apps across devices. A regular practitioner of Vinyasa Yoga \u2014 a style of yoga that focuses on stringing together multiple poses fluidly \u2014 Sareen is passionate about removing the digital clutter and making it so people can quickly move through tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThese were all sort of siloed products, so what I came in to do was to see how can we think of Outlook as one service that spans devices, and then position us to help people connect, organize and get things done,\u201d Sareen said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sareen and his team sit in the Experiences and Devices Group, and the work fits under the umbrella of Microsoft 365. Sareen\u2019s manager is Rajesh Jha, the executive vice president of the group who reports directly to Nadella.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Smartphones have replaced PCs as the must-have tech gadget, a reality that could have been a blow for Microsoft, given the company\u2019s struggles to compete in smartphone hardware and mobile operating systems. Microsoft has adjusted, embracing Android and iOS and designing apps specifically for those platforms, while adding extensions for a variety of competitive productivity offerings like Dropbox and Google Drive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Microsoft has offered a widely accessible mobile Outlook app for\u00a0close to four years<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 based on the email app Acompli that the company\u00a0acquired in 2014<\/a>\u00a0for a reported $200 million \u2014 and it is a major focal point today. Before that, Microsoft offered mobile email for Office 365 subscribers via the Outlook Web Apps for Android and iOS that were\u00a0retired last year.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n There are more than 100 million active Outlook mobile users, and the app just underwent a significant redesign on iOS. Microsoft added new features as well as some goodies that have already debuted on the Android version. The move is part of a broader reimagining of the company\u2019s core offerings, including Office and Windows 10.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On a phone, interactions are a lot shorter than a desktop or laptop that someone might be sitting in front of for hours. Much of the recent improvements to Outlook on mobile focus on speeding things up. Here are a few new features for Outlook mobile that have debuted recently or are coming over the next few months:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Like almost every other part of the company, Microsoft is infusing artificial intelligence into Outlook on smartphones. We\u2019ve been hearing about AI for decades, but only recently has it been possible to actually develop the technology and program it into products, Sareen says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Microsoft has embraced AI as much as anyone, making the technology a companywide centerpiece after a major engineering reorganization last year. Sareen thinks we are just starting to see what the technology can do, but it also must be developed and deployed with care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe do want to make sure it\u2019s still about the human first, and AI is there to help you in being a more complete you, rather than being substitutive,\u201d Sareen said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In addition to helping users manage the deluge of information, AI in Outlook is also there for protection. Microsoft uses the technology to flag messages that might be spam or malicious to warn users from clicking on them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Though it\u2019s not as cool as the newer collaboration apps like Teams and its rival Slack, email remains the dominant form of communication among Microsoft customers. The amount of email sent and received is still growing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sareen called email a means to an end, and that end is connecting people throughout an organization. Someday the most effective means of communication could change, so Microsoft is making sure Outlook connects to a variety of other programs, such as Skype video calling via Outlook.com, and its document sharing services as well as those from the competition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Microsoft\u2019s $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn has sent ripples across the company, and Outlook represents one of the first programs to integrate with the social network. Sareen says email is simultaneously the largest closed and open ecosystem. As long as you know someone\u2019s email, you can reach out to them. But if you don\u2019t, it\u2019s tough to find people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n LinkedIn is the opposite; it\u2019s wide open in terms of finding people, but users need approval to connect. By associating LinkedIn profiles with profiles in Office 365 \u2014\u00a0an integration Microsoft unveiled in September 2017<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 Microsoft wants to make it easier to find people and learn more about them quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sareen says he and LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner conduct periodic reviews of efforts to integrate the business social network with Outlook. Down the line, the company wants to make LinkedIn into a \u201cdirectory for the world,\u201d allowing users to more easily find contact information for people in their network, even if they don\u2019t have the exact email address.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The acquisition of LinkedIn was the single biggest in Microsoft\u2019s history, and it will play a major role in Nadella\u2019s legacy as chief executive. Along the way, Nadella has made believers out of skeptics, both internally and externally, and led Microsoft on a resurgence that has made it the most valuable company in the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sareen had doubts of his own when Nadella came in to run Bing in 2007. But one simple thing stood out about the new boss right off the bat: he listened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHe was very clear that he started with learning and then making a decision, rather than just saying \u2018I am the leader, and here are the things we need to do,\u2019 \u201d Sareen said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The two men both grew up in India, about 1,200 miles apart, and quickly connected because of their shared emphasis on putting culture first and implementing the right tools and systems to help people do their best work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sareen also admires Nadella\u2019s penchant for structure. Nadella instituted regular meetings and check-ins on a variety of metrics that Sareen says forced the team to be more disciplined in their approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Nadella) had an opinion, but when I made my point he very quickly said, \u2018Yes, I think that makes sense\u2019 and moved on. This kind of learning approach has helped him both succeed personally and in some sense turn the company\u2019s culture around.<\/strong> <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Mail-e1543964349946-630x710.png?w=610&ssl=1\")
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