Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks during the March 30 keynote session at the Microsoft Developers Build Conference in San Francisco.

In February, Microsoft Corp. Vice President Derrick Connell visited the Bing search team in Hyderabad, India, to oversee a Monday morning hackathon. The goal was to build bots--artificial intelligence programs that chat with users to automate things like shopping and customer service. Connell's boss, Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella, thinks they're the next big thing, a successor to apps. The Bing team was so excited they showed up Sunday night to throw a party and brought their spouses and kids. There was even the Indian version of a piñata.