As Loretta Lynn once said, “We’ve come a long way, baby.”

When I think back to what it was like when I first entered the workforce compared to today, it is a different world. Believe it or not, my roots are in IT – I started out as a system administrator working on Sun OS and Solaris. I spent countless hours in a dark, cave-like cubicle doing classic system administration work for financial companies. Back then, Sun ruled the server world and we used to poke fun at Microsoft’s Windows Server, as it seemed like a “toy” compared to what we were using. Those were the days when “company memos” were circulated on paper as email was in its infancy.

Flash forward and the world is completely different on all counts – I now work in marketing at Microsoft, and the company’s servers are no longer “toys” – they power multi-billion dollar enterprises. With the rise of the cloud and the consumerization of IT, we are in the process of another major paradigm shift. “Going to work” is increasingly becoming just a state of mind as we longer depend on physical location for the tools and information we need to do our jobs.  More and more, knowledge workers can be completely productive wherever they are, from any device. Business productivity continues its march forward.

While we should always focus on the future, we can’t lose sight of where we came from and the progress we’ve already made. To that end, I wanted to share a short video with you, “A Look At Our Evolution,” which follows the progression of our productivity software from the perspective of IT worker Jeff Hay.  Please check it out. No doubt you’ll be entertained by Hay’s changing hairstyles over the 30-year period in which he moves from junior technician to CIO.