Global Leader Academy P R E S E N T E D B Y I D E A G E N I D E A G E N G L O B A L . C O M P R E S E N T E D G L O B A L L Y B Y M I C R O S O F T
MAKING TECHNOLOGY SCALABLE TILEMACHOS MORAITIS: GOVERNMENT AND CORPORATE AFFAIRS MANAGER AT MICROSOFT GREECE, CYPRUS, MALTA, BALTICS & UKRAINE If you ask the ministry of digital transformation in Ukraine, "What was the key point that turned the wave around in Ukraine and allowed them to confront attacks from Russia, not only the kinetic attacks but also the immense cyber attacks." That was the point that they understood, and they turned to big tech companies such as Microsoft and were able to deploy very modern tools to continue their operations. One month into the war, I was receiving emails because, in my role, I cover Ukraine. I was receiving emails asking me, "What is the status of the Ukrainian government? Are they operational?" And yes, they were. Until now, they have managed to be operational because they use the modern digital tools available to continue their work. Of course, they also used these tools to confront immense cyber attacks from Russia. These were unprecedented times in terms of cyber security. Now, I would like to turn this discussion to a more normal environment and context, because in Ukraine, there's a war, and it's a bit extreme. There's also the aspect of business and what businesses are doing in terms of confronting these challenges. And again, I would say that digital technology here offers the best solutions. And why is that? Because in a world that we live in where various resources are becoming more scarce, technology is the only solution that can scale up. You can work longer, and you can work harder, but there is a ceiling on that. Technology is the best scalable solution, and I would like to give you examples of what Microsoft is doing to confront the affirmation challenges. I would like to focus on what we're doing to prevent the climate crisis, the environmental crisis. We work on two levels in that front, first internally, where we announced very ambitious goals to become zero waste, carbon negative, and water positive by 2030. Even more by 2050, Microsoft is aiming to remove all historic emissions that have been produced since day one of our operations. CATALYZE MAGAZINE | 18