microsoft

microsoft

Following the launch of the Altair 8800, Bill Gates called the creators of the new microcomputer, Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), offering to demonstrate an implementation of the BASIC programming language for the system. After the demonstration, MITS agreed to distribute Altair BASIC.[18] Gates left Harvard University, moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico where MITS was located, and founded Microsoft there. The company's first international office was founded on November 1, 1978, in Japan, entitled "ASCII Microsoft" (now called "Microsoft Japan").[18] On January 1, 1979, the company moved from Albuquerque to a new home in Bellevue, Washington.[18] Steve Ballmer joined the company on June 11, 1980, and later succeeded Bill Gates as CEO.[18]
The sign at a main entrance to the Microsoft corporate campus. The Redmond Microsoft campus today includes more than 8 million square feet (approx. 750,000 m²) and over 30,000 employees.[22]
DOS (Disk Operating System) was the operating system that brought the company its real success. On August 12, 1981, after negotiations with Digital Research failed, IBM awarded a contract to Microsoft to provide a version of the CP/M operating system, which was set to be used in the upcoming IBM Personal Computer (PC). For this deal, Microsoft purchased a CP/M clone called 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products, which IBM renamed to PC-DOS. Later, the market saw a flood of IBM PC clones after Columbia Data Products successfully cloned the IBM BIOS, and by aggressively marketing MS-DOS to manufacturers of IBM-PC clones, Microsoft rose from a small player to one of the major software vendors in the home computer industry.[19] The company expanded into new markets with the release of the Microsoft Mouse in 1983, as well as a publishing division named Microsoft Press.[18]

1985–1995: OS/2 and Windows
In August 1985, Microsoft and IBM partnered in the development of a different operating system called OS/2.[20] On November 20, 1985, Microsoft released its first retail version of Microsoft Windows, originally a graphical extension for its MS-DOS operating system.[18] On March 13, 1986 the company went public with an IPO, priced at US $28.00 by the end of the trading day. In 1987, Microsoft eventually released their first version of OS/2 to OEMs.[21]

The sign at a main entrance to the Microsoft corporate campus. The Redmond Microsoft campus today includes more than 8 million square feet (approx. 750,000 m²) and over 30,000 employees.[22]
In 1989, Microsoft introduced its most successful office product, Microsoft Office. This was a bundle of separate office productivity applications, such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel.[18] On May 22, 1990 Microsoft launched Windows 3.0.[23] The new version of Microsoft's operating system boasted such new features as streamlined user interface graphics and improved protected mode capability for the Intel 386 processor; it sold over 100,000 copies in two weeks.[24] Windows at the time generated more revenue for Microsoft than OS/2, and the company decided to move more resources from OS/2 to Windows.[25] In the ensuing years, the popularity of OS/2 declined, and Windows quickly became the favored PC platform.
During the transition from MS-DOS to Windows, the success of Microsoft's product Microsoft Office allowed the company to gain ground on application-software competitors, such as WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3.[26][27] According to The Register, Novell, an owner of WordPerfect for a time, alleged that Microsoft used its inside knowledge of the DOS and Windows kernels and of undocumented Application Programming Interface features to make Office perform better than its competitors.[28] Eventually, Microsoft Office became the dominant business suite, with a market share far exceeding that of its competitors.[29]
In 1993, Microsoft released Windows NT 3.1, a server-based operating system with a similar user interface to consumer versions of the operating system, but with an entirely different kernel.[26] In 1995, Microsoft released Windows 95, a new version of the company's flagship operating system which featured a completely new user interface, including a novel start button; more than a million copies of Microsoft Windows 95 were sold in the first four days after its release.[26] The company later released its web browser, Internet Explorer, with the Windows 95 Plus! Pack in August 1995 and subsequent Windows versions.[30]

1995–2005: Internet and legal issues
In the mid-90s, Microsoft began to expand its product line into computer networking and the World Wide Web. On August 24, 1995, it launched a major online service, MSN (Microsoft Network), as a direct competitor to AOL. MSN became an umbrella service for Microsoft's online services.[18][26][31] The company continued to branch out into new markets in 1996, starting with a joint venture with NBC to create a new 24/7 cable news station, MSNBC.[26][32] Microsoft entered the personal digital assistant (PDA) market in November with Windows CE 1.0, a new built-from-scratch version of their flagship operating system, specifically designed to run on low-memory, low-performance machines, such as handhelds and other small computers.[33] Later in 1997, Internet Explorer 4.0 was released for both Mac OS and Windows, marking the beginning of the takeover of the browser market from rival Netscape. In October, the Justice Department filed a motion in the Federal District Court in which they stated that Microsoft had violated an agreement signed in 1994, and asked the court to stop the bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows.[18]

Windows XP introduced a new interface, along with other new features. This screenshot shows Windows XP Professional.
The year 1998 was significant in Microsoft's history, with Bill Gates appointing Steve Ballmer as president of Microsoft but remaining as Chair and CEO himself.[18] The company released Windows 98, an update to Windows 95 that incorporated a number of Internet-focused features and support for new types of devices.[18] On April 3, 2000, a judgment was handed down in the case of United States v. Microsoft,[15] calling the company an "abusive monopoly"[6] and forcing the company to split into two separate units. Part of this ruling was later overturned by a federal appeals court, and eventually settled with the U.S. Department of Justice in 2001.
In 2001, Microsoft released Windows XP, the first version that encompassed the features of both its business and home product lines. XP introduced a new graphical user interface, the first such change since Windows 95.[18][34] Later, with the release of the Xbox Microsoft entered the multi-billion-dollar game console market dominated by Sony and Nintendo.[18] Microsoft encountered more turmoil in March 2004 when antitrust legal action was brought against it by the European Union for allegedly abusing its market dominance (see European Union Microsoft antitrust case), eventually resulting in a judgement to produce a new version of its Windows XP platform—called Windows XP Home Edition N—that did not include its Windows Media Player.[35][36]

2005–Present: Vista and other transitions
In 2006, Bill Gates announced a two year transition period from his role as Chief Software Architect, which would be taken by Ray Ozzie, and planned to remain the company's chairman, head of the Board of Directors and act as an adviser on key projects.[37] As of July 2007, Windows Vista is Microsoft's latest operating system, released in January 2007. Microsoft Office 2007 was released at the same time; its "Ribbon" user interface is a significant departure from its predecessors.

Entertainment and Devices

Entertainment and Devices

The Xbox 360, Microsoft's second system in the gaming console market.
Microsoft has attempted to expand the Windows brand into many other markets, with products such as Windows CE for PDAs and its "Windows-powered" Smartphone products. Microsoft initially entered the mobile market through Windows CE for handheld devices, which today has developed into Windows Mobile 6. The focus of the operating system is on devices where the OS may not directly be visible to the end user, in particular, appliances and cars. The company produces MSN TV, formerly WebTV, a television-based Internet appliance. Microsoft used to sell a set-top Digital Video Recorder (DVR) called the UltimateTV, which allowed users to record up to 35 hours of television programming from a direct-to-home satellite television provider DirecTV. This was the main competition in the UK for British Sky Broadcasting's (BSkyB) SKY + service, owned by Rupert Murdoch. UltimateTV has since been discontinued, with DirecTV instead opting to market DVRs from TiVo Inc. before later switching to their own DVR brand.
Microsoft sells computer games that run on Windows PCs, including titles such as Age of Empires, Halo and the Microsoft Flight Simulator series. It produces a line of reference works that include encyclopedias and atlases, under the name Encarta. Microsoft Zone hosts free premium and retail games where players can compete against each other and in tournaments. Microsoft entered the multi-billion-dollar game console market dominated by Sony and Nintendo in late 2001,[40] with the release of the Xbox. The company develops and publishes its own video games for this console, with the help of its Microsoft Game Studios subsidiary, in addition to third-party Xbox video game publishers such as Electronic Arts and Activision, who pay a license fee to publish games for the system. The Xbox also has a successor in the Xbox 360, released on 2005-11-22 in North America and other countries.[41][42] With the Xbox 360, Microsoft hopes to compensate for the losses incurred with the original Xbox. However, Microsoft made some decisions considered controversial in the video gaming community, such as selling two different versions of the system, as well as providing backward compatibility with only particular Xbox titles.[43][44] In addition to the Xbox line of products, Microsoft also markets a number of other computing-related hardware products as well, including mice, keyboards, joysticks, and gamepads, along with other game controllers, the production of which is outsourced in most cases.

Business culture

Business culture

Photo of Microsoft's RedWest campus.

Landscaping at Microsoft's RedWest campus
Microsoft has often been described as having a developer-centric business culture. A great deal of time and money is spent each year on recruiting young university-trained software developers and on keeping them in the company. For example, while many software companies often place an entry-level software developer in a cubicle desk within a large office space filled with other cubicles, Microsoft assigns a private or semiprivate closed office to every developer or pair of developers. In addition, key decision makers at every level are either developers or former developers. In a sense, the software developers at Microsoft are considered the "stars" of the company in the same way that the sales staff at IBM are considered the "stars" of their company.[17]
Within Microsoft the expression "eating our own dog food" is used to describe the policy of using the latest Microsoft products inside the company in an effort to test them in "real-world" situations. Only prerelease and beta versions of products are considered dog food.[45] This is usually shortened to just "dog food" and is used as noun, verb, and adjective. The company is also known for their hiring process, dubbed the "Microsoft interview", which is notorious for off-the-wall questions such as "Why is a manhole cover round?" and is a process often mimicked in other organizations, although these types of questions are rarer now than they were in the past.[46] For fun, Microsoft also hosts the Microsoft Puzzle Hunt, an annual puzzle hunt (a live puzzle game where teams compete to solve a series of puzzles) held at the Redmond campus.
As of 2006, Microsoft employees, not including Bill Gates, have given over $2.5bn dollars to non-profit organizations worldwide, making Microsoft the worldwide top company in per-employee donations.[47] Starting around 2005, a blogger claiming to be an employee of Microsoft, dubbing itself Mini-Microsoft, claims that the company has become a "passionless, process-ridden, lumbering idiot," due in part to ineffective management, and calls for the company to be downsized.[48][49] In January 2007, the Harris Interactive/The Wall Street Journal Reputation Quotient survey came to the conclusion that Microsoft had the world's best corporate reputation, citing strong financial performance, vision & leadership, workplace environment rankings, and the charitable deeds of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.[50]

MICROSOFT

When making informed decisions about how to best meet their business needs, customers frequently ask Microsoft to provide evidence of how the Microsoft Windows Server operating system delivers unique value when compared with Linux. Microsoft believes that the answer to that question lies in the ability to understand and address customer needs. We have invested significantly in understanding the issues that our customers face with respect to IT and have empowered IT Professionals and developers at every stage in the IT Lifecycle – from design to build, deploy, operate and maintain.Based on research from several sources and conversations with technology decision-makers and IT professionals, the four characteristics that customers consider to be essential attributes of any IT platform include:Click for a Larger ViewTotal cost of ownership (TCO)Total cost of ownership—defined in the context of IT as the total price in money, time, and resources for owning and using hardware and software—is considered to be an essential part of the IT decision-making process and a useful metric for assessing the overall cost impact of an IT investment.Click for a Larger ViewSecurityThe security of our customers' computers and networks is a top priority, and Microsoft is committed to building software and services to better help protect our customers and the industry. Our approach to security includes both technological and social aspects.Click for a Larger ViewReliabilityReliability means more to Microsoft than just making dependable software and providing support. It also means continued investments in processes and technology to improve reliability, active partnership with a wide variety of software and hardware companies, and a continuing focus on every customer’s experience.Click for a Larger ViewInteroperabilityWe make sure to enable Microsoft technology to work well with Windows and non-Windows applications and develop applications based on industry standardsTests Show Windows Server Environment More Reliable and Easier to ManageVeriTest (April 2005): "Microsoft Windows Server 2003 vs. Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 3.0: IT Professionals Running a Production Environment." This Microsoft-sponsored study found that the Windows Server environment was more reliable and easier to manage, achieving higher levels of end-user service.Evalueserve Chooses Microsoft Exchange Over Competition - Creates Secure & Reliable Messaging Infrastructure in One WeekThe company decided to implement a messaging infrastructure to meet its aggressive growth plans. It evaluated several solutions such as Lotus Notes and Linux based mail solutions. But the company finally decided to deploy Microsoft Exchange Server 2003.GPLv3 the impetus for Microsoft’s latest Linux attack campaignWith one stroke, Microsoft has ended any illusion that it planned to try to build bridges with the open-source community. And it appears the primary reason for Microsoft's decision to go back on the public attack against Linux and other open-source software is the looming Version 3 of the Free Software Foundation's General Public License (GPL).In a newly published interview with Fortune magazine, Microsoft licensing officials go on the record claiming that the company believes free and open-source software infringes on 235 of Microsoft's patents. At the same time, Bill Hilf, Microsoft director of platform strategy — and the company's main liaision to the open-source community — was quoted on a tour in Southeast Asia as saying that "the Free Software movement is dead," and "Linux doesn't exist in 2007."What's changed Microsoft's tune? Here is the explanation for Microsoft's actions that the company's public relations agency began circulating among the press on May 14:"In a just-published article, Microsoft has publicly acknowledged that is has 235 patents that read on open source technology. As you know, Microsoft has had a long, public discussion about intellectual property issues. The company’s longstanding preference is to license rather than litigate and Microsoft’s work over the past three years to build a bridge with open source is a result of that commitment. The November agreement with Novell addresses the IP issues in open source while meeting both the distributor’s needs and, more importantly, the needs of the customer."Customers have asked industry leaders in both proprietary and open source to address these issues and over 90% of customers support the Novell agreement as addressing this need for vendor interoperability and cooperation ( http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/dec06/12-11SurveyResultsPR.mspx )."Microsoft has made other efforts, as well, to advance open source interoperability and encourage pragmatic open source development with our intellectual property . These include the Covenant not to Sue open source hobbyist developers as part of the Novell agreement ( http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/nov06/11-02MSNovellPR.mspx ) and the Open Specification Promise ( http://www.microsoft.com/interop/osp/default.mspx )."The patent issue with open source has been in discussion for some time, first raised by various leaders in the free and open source community. According to its August 2004 announcement, the Open Source Risk Management group stated that Linux could be in violation of 283 patents and, as such, could expose customers to undetermined licensing costs ( http://www.osriskmanagement.com/press_releases/press_release_080204.pdf ). Richard Stallman further validated this in late November where he noted that “a thorough study found that the kernel Linux infringed 283 different software patents, and that's just in the US. Of course, by now the number is probably different and might be higher.” ( http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/gplv3/tokyo-rms-transcript.en.html#patents )"The latest draft of the GPLv3 attempts to tear down the bridge between proprietary and open source technology that Microsoft has worked to build with the industry and customers. Customers in multiple industries have already called for and endorsed the bridge as a positive move in their favor. AIG, Credit Suisse, Dell, HSBC, Nationwide, and Wal-Mart are just a few of the customers who have already signed on and Microsoft has announced Samsung and Fuji-Xerox as the second and third distributors of Linux who are providing their customers with IP rights."Microsoft is discussing the patent issue even more directly now, with specifics about patent numbers and areas of infringement, in response to continued industry question and concern over the GPLv3’s adoption. Unfortunately, for customers, the Free Software Foundation’s efforts with GPLv3 while not harming existing contracts can harm the desired interoperability and open exchange that we have increasingly seen between proprietary and open source over the past several years."For those who prefer the short version of the statement, Microsoft suggests the press use this quote, attributable to Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft Vice President of Intellectual Property and Licensing:“Even the founder of the Free Software Foundation, Richard Stallman, noted last year that Linux infringes well over 200 patents from multiple companies. The real question is not whether there exist substantial patent infringement issues, but what to do about them. Microsoft and Novell already developed a solution that meets the needs of customers, furthers interoperability, and advances the interests of the industry as a whole. Any customer that is concerned about Linux IP issues needs only to obtain their open source subscriptions from Novell.”What's got Microsoft so spoooked? As the Fortune article noted, the GPL v3's provisions regarding the Microsoft-Novell deal suggest that Microsoft itself could be considered a "Linux distributor," and thus beholden to the GPL v3 terms. And even if that doesn't happen, under the GPL v3, other Linux distributors would be barred from doing deals like the one struck by Novell and Microsoft.For the past few months, Microsoft publicly has pooh-poohed these arguments. But the company's latest decision to go public with claimed patent infringement numbers and other inflammatory statements, to me, shows Microsoft must think the GPL v3 has teeth