Microsoft
Corporation is an American multinational technology company headquartered in
Redmond, Washington, that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports and sells
computer software, customer electronics and personal computers and services.
Its best known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating
systems, Microsoft Office suite, and Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers.
Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox game consoles and the Microsoft
Surface tablet line up. It is the world's largest software maker by revenue,
and one of the world's most valuable companies.
Microsoft
was founded by Paul Allen and Bill Gates on 4 April 1975, to develop and sell
BASIC interpreters for Altair 8800. It rose to dominate the personal computer
operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Microsoft
Windows. The company's 1986 initial public offering, and subsequent rise in its
share price, created three billionaires and an estimated 12,000 millionaires
among Microsoft employees. Since the 1990s, it has increasingly diversified
from the operating system market and has made a number of corporate
acquisitions. In May 2011, Microsoft acquired Skype Technologies for $8.5 billion
in its largest acquisition to date.
As
of 2015, Microsoft is market dominant in both the IBM PC-compatible operating
system (while it lost the majority of the overall operating system market to Android)
and office software suite markets (the latter with Microsoft Office). The
company also produces a wide range of other software for desktops and servers,
and is active in areas including Internet search (with Bing), the video game
industry (with the Xbox, Xbox 360 and Xbox One consoles), the digital services
market (through MSN), and mobile phones (via the operating systems of Nokia's
former phones and Windows Phone OS). In June 2012, Microsoft entered the
personal computer production market for the first time, with the launch of the
Microsoft Surface, a line of tablet computers.
With
annual revenues of more than $32 billion, Microsoft Corporation is more than
the largest software company in the world: it is a cultural phenomenon. The
company's core business is based on developing, manufacturing, and licensing
software products, including operating systems, server applications, business
and customer applications, and software development tools, as well as Internet
software, technologies, and services. Led by Bill Gates, the world's wealthiest
individual and most famous businessman, Microsoft has succeeded in placing at
least one of its products on virtually every personal computer in the world,
setting industry standards and defining markets in the process.
Microsoft
Corporation incorporated on September 22, 1993, is engaged in developing,
licensing and supporting a range of software products and services. The Company
also designs and sells hardware, and delivers online advertising to the customers.
The Company operates in five segments: Devices and Customer (“D&C”)
Licensing, D&C Hardware, D&C Other, Commercial Licensing, and
Commercial Other. The Company’s products include operating systems for
computing devices, servers, phones, and other intelligent devices; server
applications for distributed computing environments; productivity applications;
business solution applications; desktop and server management tools; software
development tools; video games; and online advertising.
It
also offers cloud-based solutions that provide customers with software,
services, and content over the Internet by way of shared computing resources
located in centralized data centers. It also designs and sells hardware,
including PCs, tablets, gaming and entertainment consoles, phones, other
intelligent devices, and related accessories. Cloud revenue is earned primarily
from usage fees and advertising. Its cloud-based computing services include
Bing, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, Microsoft Office 365, One
Drive, Skype, Xbox Live, and Yammer. In addition to selling individual products
and services, the Company offers suites of products and services. It provides
consulting and product and solution support services, and trains and certifies
computer system integrators and developers. The Company does business worldwide
and has offices in more than 100 countries.
Figure
3:
Microsoft products
Given its size, scale and degree of
success, it was surprising for a company like Microsoft to attract criticism.
2007 was not a good year with the US Justice Department and the European
Commission to take action against 'monopoly' business practices and media
giggled about the victims of music, Zune, and annoyances in Vista while at the
same time making noises ominous about an increase in disruptive competition
from Google.
Nonetheless,
Microsoft generates $51bn of revenue and continue to innovate, remain a top 10
investor in R & D worldwide. He has a track record of leading sector in
obtaining a patent, maintaining sustained organic growth, employing 79,000
people in 102 countries and now utilizes the expertise and changing through
acquisitions. If you look under the media noise, Microsoft remains one of the
most significant investor in innovation in the world; one of which has a team
of investigators to look out for longer than many peers and one that is very
successful in monetising
ideas. No surprise then that Microsoft's stock rose again by 20% in 2007. There
was a time when you could argue that very few innovations Originated in
Microsoft. The brilliance of the company is to roll them into the operating
system and encourage Reviews their popularity. Mouse, standard tool bar and
spreadsheets are all developed elsewhere first. They 'bundling' day, however,
does not stand the test of time. Changes in the way technology works means that
Microsoft start repairs fundamental business practices, to move the existing
computing platform, which currently Resides on desktop PCs and servers, to the
Internet.
Microsoft
reacted positively to the challenge. That said, like other big companies, he
has shaped the culture and entrenched interests, which means the spirit of Open
Innovation does not come naturally. There is a need to move from the era of
secrecy surrounding the software code for a word that is more open than
socialization and collaboration. The threat of continued litigation and the
obvious success of Google, IBM, and Sun Microsystems in encouraging others to
build software and services that match Reviews their own, provide a strong
incentive to do this. Microsoft's new Internet platform will rest on a mix of
hardware, to doubling the capacity of the data center in 2007, and software,
which means storing and processing services delivered via the Internet.
Meanwhile, customers will see the new service as it extends the computing
platform to the Internet through 'the net' the which would provide a way for customers
to connect all Reviews their computing devices via the Internet so that
personalized the data can be accessed from any of them.
From
a strategic perspective, Microsoft aims to lead and licensing solutions
roommates became the standard technology and sector partners. To help secure
the future that utilizes the company's research labs around the world to
connect to the emerging developments and the effect of rapid technological
transfer into the core business. The initial focus has been in the area many
Kingdoms established Microsoft with Vista and Office 2007. While this has met
with limited success, has recently Launched its new X-Box game Halo 3 has, on
the Contrary, lived up to expectations and, on its first day of sales, secured
$ 170m in the US alone. Hits and misses are a symptom of the size of
Microsoft's innovation engine. In other sectors misses the note but not here.
Considering this, it is an important achievement that Microsoft continues to
grow in a sustainable manner like - and this is because more and more of his
hit. Scale Microsoft has not prejudiced its ability to innovate. Innovation in
the arena of big companies, Microsoft is one of the few Organizations that has
been proven to provide successful despite its size and diversity.
Satya Narayana
Nadella was born August 19, 1967 is an Indian-American business executive. He
is the current chief executive officer (CEO) of Microsoft. He was appointed as
CEO on 4 February 2014, succeeding Steve Ballmer. Before becoming CEO of
Microsoft, he was Executive Vice President of Microsoft's Cloud and Enterprise
group, responsible for building and running the company's Computing Platforms,
Developer Tools and Cloud Computing Services.
Figure
4:
Microsoft Current CEO
Since
Satya Nadella took over Microsoft Company, on June 25, 2015 he has aligning new
organization structure and the changes to the Senior Leadership Team. He said that
Microsoft aspires to empower every person and every organization on the planet
to achieve more. To do this, building the best-in-class productivity services
and platforms for the mobile-first, cloud-first world is at the heart of our
strategy, with three interconnected and bold ambitions, which are reinvent
productivity and business processes, build the intelligent cloud platform and
create more personal computing.
To
better align Microsoft capabilities and, ultimately, deliver better products
and services their customers love at a more rapid pace, Satya Nadella have
decided to organize their engineering effort into three groups that work
together to deliver on their strategy and ambitions.
Terry
Myerson will lead a new team, Windows and Devices Group (WDG), enabling our
vision of a more personal computing experience powered by the Windows ecosystem.
We will combine the engineering efforts of our current Operating Systems Group
and Microsoft Devices Group (MDG) led by Stephen Elop. This new team brings
together all the engineering capability required to drive breakthrough
innovations that will propel the Windows ecosystem forward. WDG will drive
Windows as a service across devices of all types and build all of our Microsoft
devices including Surface, HoloLens, Lumia, Surface Hub, Band and Xbox. This
enables us to create new categories while generating enthusiasm and demand for
Windows broadly.
Scott
Guthrie will continue to lead the Cloud and Enterprise (C+E) team focused on
building the intelligent cloud platform that powers any application on any
device. The C+E team will also focus on building high-value infrastructure and
business services that are unique to enterprise customers, such as data and
analytics products, security and management offerings, and business processes.
Today, we are also moving the development teams who build our Dynamics products
to C+E, which will enable us to accelerate our ERP and CRM work even further
and mainstream them as part of our core engineering and innovation efforts. C+E
will work closely with ASG to ensure the end-to-end experience is cohesive
across communications, collaboration and business processes.
Qi
Lu will continue to lead the Applications and Services Group (ASG) that is
focused on reinventing productivity. This group is leading the charge in
building productivity services for digital work that span all devices and
appeal to the people who use technology at work and in their personal lives.
ASG has already made advancements in these areas, and the only change as part
of today’s announcement is that the engineering efforts to build solutions for
Education will move to ASG.
Changes
of this nature require us to look at our leadership structure overall, and as a
result a few Senior Leadership Team members will leave Microsoft at the
conclusion of a transition period.
Satya
Nadella counting on Microsoft Senior Leadership Team to inspire innovative
products and services and lead excellent execution. Microsoft competition and their
customers don’t care about their organization structure - they care about
innovation. While Microsoft are distinctly aligning their engineering structure
and core capabilities, their ambitions are interconnected.
