MICROSOFT

1.0.        Introduction

1.1.         Company Background and Business Core

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.

1.2.         Company Profile

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.

1.3.         Organizational Structure

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.