It's hard to imagine a world without Microsoft managing and controlling our computers. And yet, it's only been 40 years since the company came into being.

But what does the current Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, want to do with the software giant in the near future? Nadella told The Australian Financial Review all about his plans for the company.

"As Microsoft celebrates its 40th birthday on April 4, its executives and shareholders will be looking back wistfully to their company's lost youth. Born in the year that Captain & Tennille topped the American charts with 'Love Will Keep Us Together', by its 20s it had leapt ahead of the stumbling behemoth of information technology, IBM, only to slow in its 30s and be overtaken by its eternal arch-rival, Apple, a company barely a year younger than itself," AFR reported. 

But Microsoft isn't going to let that history limit the company's potential.

Nadella plans on having the company "move as quickly and as far as possible away from being a Windows-only company to be a global network of giant data centres that provide a broad range of online services for companies and individuals," according to AFR.

Nadella, who had managed Microsoft's Azure cloud computing program beforehand, sees a lot of potential in cloud data for the company. 

"Mr. Nadella's biggest achievement so far is that he has given Microsoft a coherent purpose in life, as it enters its fifth decade. He sums it up in two mottos. One is "mobile first, cloud first"....the other is "platforms and productivity" AFR reported.

The CEO wants to focus on the development of mobile and cloud-based products, as well as products that provide a platform for further development and third-party app creation. If this is Microsoft's future focus, then It's unclear what the company will do with its other products, such as Bing, Xbox or Nokia, though analysts told Microsoft (and AFR) that they'd be better off breaking them into smaller companies that have shares in Microsoft.