But 's new , in his first public appearance since taking the top spot, said cloud computing is another opportunity Microsoft can exploit just as it did with the birth of the PC.

"If you look at our history, it's always been about taking an inflection point and being the democratizing force behind," said Satya Nadella, who as the Server & Tools chief in February this year.

"At a philosophical level, if you say there is a fundamental change in architecture, we have to embrace it and ride it," Nadella continued, during a 20-minute on-stage discussion Wednesday with Eric Savitz of Forbes at the GigaOM Structure Conference.

Microsoft has always been about "low price and high volume," Nadella also said, making the case that the consumption-based economics of cloud computing fits into Microsoft's sweet spot.