Microsoft chairman and CEO Satya Nadella described his company's role in a new economy and society transformed by the pandemic in a keynote address on Tuesday kicking off Microsoft's virtual 2021 Ignite developer conference. Nadella laid out a vision where Microsoft's new offerings in AI, cloud, security and its productivity apps make it possible to edit encrypted documents simultaneously even among people who work at different companies; to build specialized applications and harness AI models even if people aren't coders; and to create virtual environments and avatars that aim to restore pre-pandemic sense of human connection, even as employees continue to work remotely. "Going forward, every business process will be collaborative, powered by data and AI, and will bridge the digital and physical worlds," Nadella said in a pre-recorded video. When Nadella first became Microsoft's CEO in 2014, he talked relentlessly about transforming Microsoft into a "mobile first, cloud first" company. But in a signal of how much the business landscape has been changed, first by widespread adoption of cloud technology as well as smartphones and mobile devices, and then by COVID, Nadella articulated a new vision Tuesday.