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.Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT, HKEX: 4338) is an American-based multinational computer technology corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of software products for computing devices.Headquartered in Redmond,
Washington, USA, its most profitable products are the Microsoft Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office suite of productivity software.
Originally founded to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800, Microsoft rose to dominate the home computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by the Windows line of operating systems. Its products have all achieved near-ubiquity in the desktop computer market. One commentator notes that Microsoft's original mission was "a computer on every desk and in every home, running Microsoft software." Microsoft possesses footholds in other markets, with assets such as the MSNBC cable television network, the MSN Internet portal, and the Microsoft Encarta multimedia encyclopedia. The company also markets both computer hardware products such as the Microsoft mouse as well as home entertainment
products such as the Xbox, Xbox 360, Zune and MSN TV. The company's initial public stock offering (IPO) was in 1986; the ensuing rise of the company's stock price has made four billionaires and an estimated 12,000 millionaires from Microsoft employees.
Throughout its history the company has been the target of criticism, including monopolistic
business practices and anti-competitive business practices including refusal to deal and tying.
The U.S. Justice Department and the European Commission, among others, have ruled against
Microsoft for various antitrust violations.
Known for what is generally described as a developer-centric business culture, [dubious–discuss] Microsoft has historically given customer support over Usenet newsgroups and the WorldWide Web, and awards Microsoft MVP status to volunteers who are deemed helpful in assisting the company's customers.
1975–1984: Founding
Following the launch of the Altair 8800, William Henry Gates III, (known as 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. 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"). On January 1, 1979, the company moved from Albuquerque to a new home in Bellevue, Washington. Steve Ballmer joined the company on June 11, 1980, and later succeeded Bill Gates as CEO.
Among pre-IBM-PC products were the software package TASC (The AppleSoft Compiler), which compiled a BASIC program into Apple machine language, and the hardware Microsoft Softcard, an add-on Z80 processor card for the Apple II and compatible computers which allowed the use of the CP/M operating system instead of Applesoft and Apple DOS.
DOS (Disk Operating System) was the operating system that brought the company its first 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. The company expanded into new markets with the release of the Microsoft Mouse in 1983, as well as a publishing division named Microsoft Press.
1985–1994: IPO, OS/2 and Windows
In August 1985, Microsoft and IBM partnered in the development of a different operating system called OS/2. On November 20, 1985, Microsoft released its first retail version of Microsoft Windows, originally a graphical extension for its MS-DOS operating system. On March 13, 1986 the company went public with an initial public offering (IPO), with a starting initial offering price of $21.00 and ending at the first day of trading as at US $28.00. The ensuing rise of the stock price has made four billionaires and an estimated 12,000 millionaires from Microsoft employees. In 1987, Microsoft eventually released their first version of OS/2 to OEMs.
IPO
Microsoft's Initial Public Offering occurred on March 14, 1986. The stock closed at $27.75 per share after peaking at $29.25 shortly after the opening. Microsoft's two founders, Gates and Allen, were made instant millionaires. Gates owned 45% of the company's 24.7 million outstanding shares and Allen roughly 25%. Gates' stake was therefore $234 million and Microsoft's total-value $520million, at that time
Post-IPO
In 1989, Microsoft introduced its flagship office suite, Microsoft Office. The software bundled separate office productivity applications, such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel.On May 22, 1990 Microsoft launched Windows 3.0. 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. 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. 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. 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. Eventually, Microsoft Office became the dominant business suite, with a market share far exceeding that of its competitors.
In 1993, Microsoft released Windows NT 3.1, a business operating system with the Windows 3.1 user interface but an entirely different kernel.
Versions
Current versions
* Windows Server 2008 for servers.
* Windows Web Server 2008
* Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition
* Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition(Microsoft Windows NT 6.0.6001 Service Pack1)
* Windows Server 2008 Datacenter Edition
* Windows Storage Server 2008
* Windows Small Business Server 2008 (Codenamed "Cougar") for small businesses
* Windows Essential Business Server 2008 (Codenamed "Centro") for medium-sized businesses
* Windows Server 2008 for Itanium-based Systems
* Windows HPC Server 2008 for high Performance supercomputers
* Windows Mobile 6.1 for smartphones and PDAs
* Windows Home Server Announced at the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Windows Home Server is intended to be a solution for homes with multiple connected PCs to offer file sharing, automated backups, and remote access.
* Windows Vista, for home and business desktops and portable computers
.....Windows Vista Starter Much like Windows XP Starter Edition, this edition will be limited to emerging markets such as Colombia, India, Thailand, and Indonesia, mainly to offer a legal alternative to using unauthorized copies. It will not be available in the United States, Canada, Europe, or Australia.
.......Windows Vista Home Basic Similar to Windows XP Home Edition, Home Basic is intended for budget users not requiring advanced media support for home use. The Windows Aero theme with translucent effects will not be included with this edition.
......Windows Vista Home Premium Like Windows XP Media Center Edition, this edition will support more advanced multimedia and entertainment authoring, premium games, mobile and tablet PC support, Network Projector, Windows Aero, Touch Screen, and auxiliary display (via Windows Side Show) support.
...... Vista Business Comparable to Windows XP Professional and Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, Windows Vista Business Edition is aimed at the business market. Includes all the features of Home Premium with the exception of Windows Media Center and related technologies, Parental Controls, and Windows DVD and Movie Maker HD.
....... Vista Enterprise (Microsoft Windows NT 6.0.6000.0) This edition is aimed at the enterprise segment of the market, and is a superset of the Business edition. Additional features include multilingual user interface support, BitLocker Drive Encryption, and UNIX application support. This edition will not be available through retail or OEM channels
....... Vista Ultimate This edition combines all the features of the Home Premium and Enterprise editions, a game performance tweaker (WinSAT), and "Ultimate Extras". On January 7, 2007, at CES, Microsoft began to announce what some of these Ultimate Extras will be.
* Windows XP Embedded, for embedded systems requiring parts of the Windows XP infrastructure
* Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs, a low-end version of Windows XP that is intended to be a thin-client that works with older hardware.
* Windows Embedded CE 6.0, for embedded systems (not based on the Windows NT kernel)
Future versions
* Windows 7, slated to be Windows Vista's successor
* Windows Server 2008 R2, slated to be Windows Server 2008's successor
Cancelled versions
* 1999 December - Windows Neptune was sent out to beta testers but was never released. Would have been a consumer version (i.e. home edition) of Windows 2000.
* 1996 May 3 - Windows Nashville (Windows 96) (cancelled) (Became Windows 95B.)
* 1991-1998 - Cairo (a "true object-oriented OS") planned after Windows NT
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