Question

Company chosen: Microsoft Corporation   

• What the company is doing in that area
• How and why the technology is disruptive
• What technologies did it replace or improve upon
• What were the drivers that made it possible for this technology
• What is the competition it faces (company/technology)
• What are the challenges the company has in remaining a leader in this space
• What are the future and the reach of this technology
• Are there ethical, social or other concerns related to this technology that you would like to discuss

  

Answer 1

1. What the company is doing in that area?

Microsoft Corporation, leading developer of personal-computer software systems and applications. The company also publishes books and multimedia titles, produces its own line of hybrid tablet computers, offers e-mail services, and sells electronic game systems, computer peripherals (input/output devices), and portable media players. It has sales offices throughout the world. In addition to its main research and development centre at its corporate headquarters in Redmond, Washington, U.S., Microsoft operates research labs in Cambridge, England (1997); Beijing, China (1998); Sadashivnagar, Bangalore, India (2005); Santa Barbara, California (2005); Cambridge, Massachusetts (2008); New York, New York (2012); and Montreal, Canada (2015).

1975	Microsoft founded
Jan. 1, 1979	Microsoft moves from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Bellevue, Washington
June 25, 1981	Microsoft incorporates
Aug. 12, 1981	IBM introduces its personal computer with Microsoft’s 16-bit operating system, MS-DOS 1.0
Feb. 26, 1986	Microsoft moves to corporate campus in Redmond, Washington
March 13, 1986	Microsoft stock goes public
Aug. 1, 1989	Microsoft introduces earliest version of Office suite of productivity applications
May 22, 1990	Microsoft launches Windows 3.0
Aug. 24, 1995	Microsoft launches Windows 95
Dec. 7, 1995	Bill Gates outlines Microsoft’s commitment to supporting and enhancing the Internet
June 25, 1998	Microsoft launches Windows 98
Jan. 13, 2000	Steve Ballmer named president and chief executive officer for Microsoft
Feb. 17, 2000	Microsoft launches Windows 2000
June 22, 2000	Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer outline Microsoft’s .NET strategy for Web services
May 31, 2001	Microsoft launches Office XP
Oct. 25, 2001	Microsoft launches Windows XP
Nov. 15, 2001	Microsoft launches Xbox
Jan. 15, 2002	Bill Gates outlines Microsoft’s commitment to Trustworthy Computing
April 24, 2003	Microsoft launches Windows Server 2003
Oct. 21, 2003	Microsoft launches Microsoft Office System
July 20, 2004	Microsoft announces plans to return up to $75 billion to shareholders in dividends and stock buybacks
Nov. 22, 2005	Microsoft launches Xbox 360
July 20, 2006	Microsoft announces a new US$20 billion tender offer and authorizes an additional share-repurchase program of up to $20 billion over five years
Jan. 30, 2007	Microsoft launches Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office System to consumers worldwide
Feb. 27, 2008	Microsoft launches Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008
June 27, 2008	Bill Gates transitions from his day-to-day role at Microsoft to spend more time on his work at The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
June 3, 2009	Microsoft launches Bing decision engine
Oct. 22, 2009	Microsoft launches Windows 7; opens first physical store in Scottsdale, Arizona
June 15, 2010	Microsoft launches general availability of Office 2010
Nov. 10, 2010	Microsoft launches Windows Phone 7
Nov. 17, 2010	Microsoft announces availability of Microsoft Lync
June 28, 2011	Microsoft launches Office 365
Oct. 13, 2011	Microsoft closes its acquisition of Skype
June 25, 2012	Microsoft acquires Yammer
Sept. 4, 2012	Microsoft launches Windows Server 2012
Sept. 12, 2012	Microsoft launches Visual Studio 2012
Oct. 18, 2012	Microsoft employee giving tops US$1 billion
Oct. 23, 2012	Microsoft introduces new entertainment experience from Xbox
Oct. 26, 2012	Microsoft launches Windows 8 and Microsoft Surface
Jan. 29, 2013	Microsoft launches Office 2013, expands Office 365
Feb. 18, 2013	Microsoft launches Outlook.com
May 21, 2013	Microsoft unveils Xbox One
July 11, 2013	“Microsoft One” reorganization realigns company to enable innovation at great speed, efficiency
Sept. 3, 2013	Microsoft announces decision to acquire Nokia’s devices and services business, license Nokia’s patents and mapping services
Oct. 17, 2013	Microsoft launches Windows 8.1
Oct. 22, 2013	Microsoft launches Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2
Nov. 22, 2013	Microsoft launches Xbox One
Feb. 4, 2014	Satya Nadella named chief executive officer for Microsoft
March 27, 2014	Microsoft launches Office for iPad
April 25, 2014	Microsoft completes acquisition of Nokia Devices and Services business
June 20, 2014	Microsoft launches Surface Pro 3
Sept. 15, 2014	Minecraft to join Microsoft announcement
Nov. 6, 2014	Microsoft announces Office apps for Android tablets
May 5, 2015	Microsoft releases Surface 3
July 29, 2015	Microsoft launches Windows 10
Sept. 22, 2015	Microsoft launches Office 2016
Oct. 6, 2015	Microsoft announces Surface Book, Surface Pro 4, Microsoft Band 2, Lumia 950 and Lumia 95 XL
Oct. 26, 2015	Microsoft opens flagship store in New York City
Nov. 12, 2015	Microsoft opens flagship store in Sydney, Australia
Jan. 19, 2016	Microsoft Philanthropies announces $1B in donations putting Microsoft Cloud to work for the public good
June 1, 2016	Microsoft launches SQL Server 2016
July 6, 2016	Microsoft introduces Microsoft Dynamics 365
Sept. 29, 2016	Microsoft announces formation of new AI and Research Group
Oct. 18, 2016	Microsoft researchers achieve human parity in conversational speech recognition
Oct. 26, 2016	Microsoft introduces Surface Studio, Surface Dial, new Surface Book and Windows 10 Creators Update
Dec. 8, 2016	Microsoft completes acquisition of LinkedIn
March 7, 2017	Microsoft releases Visual Studio 2017
March 17, 2017	Microsoft Teams rolls out to Office 365 customers worldwide
May 2, 2017	Microsoft introduces new technology for education, including Windows 10 S, new Surface Laptop and Microsoft Teams for classrooms
May 23, 2017	Microsoft announces Windows 10 China Government Edition and the new Surface Pro
June 14, 2017	Surface Laptop and new Surface Pro available in 25 markets worldwide
Sept. 21, 2017	Microsoft, Facebook and Telxius complete “Marea,” the highest-capacity subsea cable to cross the Atlantic Ocean
Oct. 17, 2017	Windows 10 Fall Creators Update and Mixed Reality Headsets become available; Surface Book 2 announced
Nov. 6, 2017	Microsoft launches Xbox One X
Nov. 28, 2017	Microsoft announces major Redmond campus renovation
Dec. 5, 2017	Microsoft breaks ground on new sustainable Silicon Valley campus
Feb. 22, 2018	Microsoft opens new campus in Dublin, Ireland
May 15, 2018	Microsoft announces Surface Hub 2
May 16, 2018	Microsoft unveils Xbox Adaptive Controller
Aug. 2, 2018	Surface Go becomes available
Oct. 26, 2018	Microsoft completes GitHub acquisition
Jan. 16, 2019	Microsoft announces $500 million commitment to advance affordable housing in Puget Sound region
Feb. 24, 2019	Microsoft introduces HoloLens 2
July 11, 2019	Microsoft opens flagship store in London
Oct. 2, 2019	Microsoft announces five Surface products for late 2019, plus two new dual-screen devices, Surface Neo and Surface Duo, coming in late 2020
Dec. 12, 2019	Microsoft announces Xbox Series X, coming in late 2020

This is the list of important things done by microsoft.

2. How and why the technology is disruptive?

What Is Disruptive Technology?

Disruptive technology is an innovation that significantly alters the way that consumers, industries, or businesses operate. A disruptive technology sweeps away the systems or habits it replaces because it has attributes that are recognizably superior.

Recent disruptive technology examples include e-commerce, online news sites, ride-sharing apps, and GPS systems.

In their own times, the automobile, electricity service, and television were disruptive technologies.

Market Disruption Definition

Disruptive Technology Explained

Clayton Christensen popularized the idea of disruptive technologies in The Innovator's Dilemma, published in 1997. It has since become a buzzword in startup businesses that seek to create a product with mass appeal.

Even a startup with limited resources can aim at technology disruption by inventing an entirely new way of getting something done. Established companies tend to focus on what they do best and pursue incremental improvements rather than revolutionary changes. They cater to their largest and most demanding customers.

This provides an opening for disruptive businesses to target overlooked customer segments and gain an industry presence. Established companies often lack the flexibility to adapt quickly to new threats. That allows disruptors to move upstream over time and cannibalize more customer segments.

Disruptive technologies are difficult to prepare for because they can appear suddenly.

The Potential of Disruptive Technology

Risk-taking companies may recognize the potential of disruptive technology in their own operations and target new markets that can incorporate it into their business processes. These are the "innovators" of the technology adoption lifecycle. Other companies may take a more risk-averse position and adopt an innovation only after seeing how it performs for others.

Companies that fail to account for the effects of disruptive technology may find themselves losing market share to competitors that have discovered ways to integrate the technology.

Blockchain as an Example of Disruptive Technology

Blockchain, the technology behind Bitcoin, is a decentralized distributed ledger that records transactions between two parties. It moves transactions from a centralized server-based system to a transparent cryptographic network. The technology uses peer-to-peer consensus to record and verify transactions, removing the need for manual verification.

The automobile, electricity service, and television all were disruptive technologies in their own times.

Blockchain technology has enormous implications for financial institutions such as banks and stock brokerages. For example, a brokerage firm could execute peer-to-peer trade confirmations on the blockchain, removing the need for custodians and clearinghouses, which will reduce financial intermediary costs and dramatically expedite transaction times.

Investing in Disruptive Technology

Investing in companies that create or adopt disruptive technologies carries significant risk. Many products considered disruptive take years to be adopted by consumers or businesses, or are not adopted at all. The Segway electric vehicle was once touted as a disruptive technology until it wasn't.

Investors can gain exposure to disruptive technology by investing in exchange-traded funds (ETFs) such as the ALPS Disruptive Technologies ETF (DTEC). This fund invests in a variety of innovative areas such as the internet of things, cloud computing, fintech, robotics, and artificial intelligence.

3. What technologies did it replace or improve upon

1. Holoportation: A new type of 3D capture technology that allows high-quality 3D models of people to be reconstructed, compressed and transmitted anywhere in the world in real-time.
2. Microsoft Pix: An intelligent camera app that automatically adjusts settings and after-shot enhancements. It also lets users compare before and after shots, ensuring everyone looks their best.
3. Skype Translator: An online translator that breaks down language barriers by helping users communicate in 8 languages for voice calls, and in more than 50 languages while instant messaging.
4. Project Premonition: Turns mosquitoes into devices that sample pathogens in the environment. Collecting and computationally analysing these mosquitoes help to prevent outbreaks of diseases such as Zika, Ebola, Chikungunya and MERS.
5. HIV Vaccine Design: Attempt to create an AIDS vaccine by applying the machine learning behind spam filters. The many mutations of the HIV virus can be analyzed to pick out those that kill it.
6. DNA Storage: Synthesizes, manipulate and sequences DNA to enable molecular-level data storage. As a storage medium, DNA has a density of up to 1 exabyte per cubic millimetre, is durable and easy-to-manipulate.
7. Touchless Interaction in Medical Imaging: Uses camera-based gesture recognition technology to allow medical images to be viewed, controlled and manipulated without physically touching non-sterile surfaces. This prevents contamination and other operational inefficiencies that could lead to medical complications.
8. Hands-Free Keyboard: Enables people who are unable to speak or use a physical keyboard to communicate using only their eyes.
9. Lightwear: Clothing items like glasses and scarf are made with light-emitting materials and low-profile hardware, to help wearers combat depression associated with late autumn and winter.
10. Circuit Stickers: An accessible, rapid way to prototype electronic circuits by creating conductive traces on regular photo paper with an inkjet printer. A special type of double-sided tape is then used to stick down electronic sub-circuit elements.
11. TrueSkill Ranking System: A skill-based ranking system developed for Xbox Live that identifies and tracks the skills of gamers to match them. This optimizes matchmaking by minimizing the number of games necessary to find out a gamers’ skill.
12. Lattice-based Cryptography: Increases the resistance of cryptography to sub-exponential and quantum cyber-attacks by adopting a lattice-based scheme.
13. FarmBeats: IoT for Agriculture: Enables data-driven farming by harnessing sensors and cloud computing technologies. Coupled with farmers’ knowledge and intuition, this end-to-end approach can increase farm productivity and return of investment.
14. 99DOTS: Tuberculosis patients in India and Myanmar receive medication with phone numbers hidden behind them. They can only see the numbers after dispensing the drugs, and then make a free call to confirm that they have taken their medication.
15. UIs for Low-Literacy Users: Design principles combining voice, video and graphics are used to develop smartphone applications for non-literate persons. The apps help job-search in the informal labor market, health-information dissemination, and mobile phone-enabled banking and payments.
16. Microsoft Cognitive Services: Developers can add machine learning APIs to build intelligent features into their apps. Features include vision, voice and facial recognition, as well as language understanding.
17. Urban Air: Uses Big Data to infer fine-grained air quality throughout a city in real-time, as well as to predict air quality at future times. This helps to identify root causes of air pollution, such as vehicular emission, and offers insights on how to tackle them.
18. CityNoise: Uses crowdsensing and ubiquitous data to reveal the fine-grained noise situation throughout a city. Noise pollution can be diagnosed by analyzing noises from complaint data, road network data, points of interests and social media.
19. DiPsy: A digital psychologist presented as a personalized chatbot, who can evaluate, diagnose, treat and study users’ mental processes through natural conversations.
20. Food Recognition: Uses deep learning techniques to help the Bing search engine and Xiaoice chatbot to recognize thousands of Asian and Western dishes. A prototype is also being developed to calculate calories and conduct nutrition analysis for dishes.
21. Microsoft Flower Recognition: Take pictures of flowers on a mobile device, and the app can identify them quickly and accurately. It can also provide more information about the flowers, to help users learn more about them.
22. Chinese Culture Series: Learn Mandarin or about Chinese culture through applications based on machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies. Comprising Chinese couplets, character riddles and a poem generation system, the apps can help younger generations carry on their cultural legacy.
23. Microsoft Concept Graph: Enables machines to better understand human communication through the world’s biggest graph of concepts, which harnesses billions of web pages and years’ worth of search logs.
24. Sketch2Tag: A general sketch recognition system that can identify any semantically meaningful object recognizable to a child. Users can sketch on the query panel, which will then provide real-time recognition results.
25. Video to Language: Addresses the fundamental challenge of computer vision, by using Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) to get it to describe video content in complete and natural sentences.
    

    Software as a Service

    The name of Microsoft’s “Business Division” may sound unhelpfully generic, but it refers to the part of the operations that’s responsible for creating the stupendously profitable Office. The suite started as an adjunct, a method for showcasing Microsoft’s revolutionary operating system. But since Office’s 1990 debut, the applications that comprise it have become just about mandatory for anyone wanting to conduct business. Over a billion people now use Office, to the point where Word and Excel are practically synonymous with word processing and spreadsheets, respectively. Multiply that user base by $140 per license for the stripped-down Home & Student version of Office, a product whose marginal cost is close to zero, and it’s easy to see why Microsoft does everything in its power to maintain Office’s profitability (and why competitors from OpenOffice to Google Docs want nothing more than to chip away at Office’s 90% market share.)

    The Business Division’s only serious competitor for dominance at Microsoft is the company’s Windows Division, whose latest contribution to the marketplace is Windows 8. Coincidentally, Windows’ share of the worldwide operating system market is as large as Office’s share of productivity suites is – right around 90%. Almost half of those users use Windows 7, and about a third are one generation behind at Windows XP. Windows 8 retails for $120, with marginal costs comparable to if not considerably less than those for Office.

    The Bottom Line

    All-in-one entertainment systems (Xbox One) and free audio- and video-conferencing around the world (Skype) may be exciting, the kind of things that make life in the 21st century more enjoyable, but their impact on Microsoft’s income are minimal. Instead, the company’s secret to staggering riches lies in the daily business of allowing users to create and manipulate documents; and providing the software that performs a computer’s most important function – permitting data to make it from your computer’s hardware components to its display. It isn’t alluring, but it pays the bills ... to an extent few companies in history can match.

4. What is the competition it faces (company/technology)

Microsoft's Competitors

Microsoft Corporation’s (MSFT) primary competitors include some of the most prominent technology companies in the industry. The list includes well-known brands such as Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG), SAP, IBM (IBM) and Oracle (ORCL), among others. Because Microsoft is a diversified corporation that offers many types of products and services, the company faces stiff competition in several key areas of the technology sector.1



Microsoft's Core Focus

Microsoft got its start by focusing on software, and although the company has branched out into other areas, it still has a strong emphasis in this field. Some of the most successful software corporations in the world, such as Oracle and the German firm SAP, compete directly with Microsoft for the lucrative business services market.23

The Windows operating system is perhaps the best-known Microsoft product. Though Windows dominates the OS field, the company competes with a number of smaller firms, such as Red Hat, that distribute open-sources operating systems such as Linux.145

Other Microsoft Products

Microsoft is also an important player in the hardware field. Its products includes tablets designed to compete with similar devices made by other companies, such as Apple. The company makes a variety of computer accessories as well, which brings it in direct competition with several firms that specialize in this area, such as Logitech.1

Microsoft is also a major force in online search with its Bing search engine. The main rival company here is Google, along with various other firms with smaller engines.6

Microsoft faces competitive pressures in all areas of its operations. The pressure comes from a diverse mix of technology companies, both large and small.

Microsoft's Comment on Competitors and Industry Peers

The Windows operating system faces competition from various software products and from alternative platforms and devices, mainly from Apple and Google. We believe Windows competes effectively by giving customers choice, value, flexibility, security, an easy-to-use interface, compatibility with a broad range of hardware and software applications, including those that enable productivity, and the largest support network for any operating system.

Competitors to the versions of Office included in D&C Licensing include global application vendors such as Apple and Google, numerous web-based competitors, and local application developers in Asia and Europe. Apple distributes versions of its pre-installed application software, such as email, note taking, and calendar products, through its PCs, tablets, and phones. Google provides a hosted messaging and productivity suite and distributes its productivity services through the Android and Chrome operating systems. Web-based offerings competing with individual applications can also position themselves as alternatives to our products. We believe our products compete effectively based on our strategy of providing powerful, flexible, secure, and easy to use solutions that work across a variety of devices.
Windows Phone operating system faces competition from iOS, Android, and Blackberry operating systems. Windows Phone competes based on differentiated user interface, personalized applications, compatibility with Windows PCs and tablets, and other unique capabilities.

Our Xbox Platform competes with console platforms from Sony and Nintendo, both of which have a large, established base of customers. The lifecycle for gaming and entertainment consoles averages five to ten years. Nintendo released their latest generation console in November 2012. Sony released their latest generation console in November 2013.
We believe the success of gaming and entertainment consoles is determined by the availability of games for the console, providing exclusive game content that gamers seek, the computational power and reliability of the console, and the ability to create new experiences via online services, downloadable content, and peripherals. In addition to Sony and Nintendo, we compete with other providers of entertainment services through online marketplaces. We believe the Xbox Platform is effectively positioned against competitive products and services based on significant innovation in hardware architecture, user interface, developer tools, online gaming and entertainment services, and continued strong exclusive content from our own game franchises as well as other digital content offerings.

Surface devices face competition from computer, tablet, and other hardware manufacturers, many of which are also current or potential partners and customers.

Our phones face competition primarily from Samsung and Apple, as well as many other mobile device manufacturers. We believe our phones will compete by being tailored for virtually every demographic and geography worldwide, offering unique industrial design and imaging technologies at high and low ranges of price points, and by incorporating Microsoft’s digital work and digital life experiences.

We face competition for our Resale products and services from various online marketplaces, including those operated by Amazon, Apple, and Google.
Our search and display advertising business competes with Google and a wide array of websites, social platforms like Facebook, and portals like Yahoo! that provide content and online offerings to end users. Our success depends on our ability to attract new users, understand intent, and match intent with relevant content and advertiser offerings. We believe we can attract new users by continuing to offer new and compelling products and services. We differentiate our offerings by providing a broad selection of content that helps users make faster, informed decisions, and take action more quickly by providing relevant search results, expanded search services, and deeply-integrated social recommendations.

Competitors to Office 365 Consumer are the same as those discussed above for Office Consumer.

Competitors to Studios are the same as those discussed above for our Xbox gaming and entertainment business, as well as game studios like Electronic Arts and Activision Blizzard.

Our server operating system products face competition from a wide variety of server operating systems and applications offered by companies with a range of market approaches. Vertically integrated computer manufacturers such as Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Oracle offer their own versions of the Unix operating system preinstalled on server hardware. Nearly all computer manufacturers offer server hardware for the Linux operating system and many contribute to Linux operating system development. The competitive position of Linux has also benefited from the large number of compatible applications now produced by many commercial and non-commercial software developers. A number of companies, such as Red Hat, supply versions of Linux.

We compete to provide enterprise-wide computing solutions and point solutions with numerous commercial software vendors that offer solutions and middleware technology platforms, software applications for connectivity (both Internet and intranet), security, hosting, database, and e-business servers. IBM and Oracle lead a group of companies focused on the Java Platform Enterprise Edition that compete with our enterprise-wide computing solutions. Commercial competitors for our server applications for PC-based distributed client/server environments include CA Technologies, IBM, and Oracle. Our web application platform software competes with open source software such as Apache, Linux, MySQL, and PHP. In middleware, we compete against Java middleware such as Geronimo, Wildfly, and Spring Framework.

Our system management solutions compete with server management and server virtualization platform providers, such as BMC, CA Technologies, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and VMware. Our database, business intelligence, and data warehousing solutions offerings compete with products from IBM, Oracle, SAP, and other companies. Our products for software developers compete against offerings from Adobe, IBM, Oracle, other companies, and open-source projects, including Eclipse (sponsored by CA Technologies, IBM, Oracle, and SAP), PHP, and Ruby on Rails, among others.
Our embedded systems compete in a highly fragmented environment in which key competitors include IBM, Intel, and versions of embeddable Linux from commercial

Linux vendors such as Metrowerks and MontaVista Software.
We believe our server products provide customers with advantages in performance, total costs of ownership, and productivity by delivering superior applications, development tools, compatibility with a broad base of hardware and software applications, security, and manageability.
Competitors to Windows Commercial are the same as those discussed above for Windows in the D&C Licensing segment.

Office Commercial revenue growth depends on our ability to add value to the core product set and to continue to expand our product offerings in other areas such as content management, enterprise search, collaboration, unified communications, and business intelligence. Competitors to Office Commercial includes software application vendors such as Adobe Systems, Apple, Cisco Systems, Google, IBM, Oracle, SAP, and numerous web-based competitors as well as local application developers in Asia and Europe. Cisco Systems is using its position in enterprise communications equipment to grow its unified communications business. Google provides a hosted messaging and productivity suite. Web-based offerings competing with individual applications can also position themselves as alternatives to our products. We believe our products compete effectively based on our strategy of providing powerful, flexible, secure, easy to use solutions that work well with technologies our customers already have and are available on a device or via the cloud.

Skype competes with a variety of instant messaging, voice, and video communication providers, ranging from start-ups to established enterprises.
Our Microsoft Dynamics products compete with vendors such as Oracle and SAP in the market for large organizations and divisions of global enterprises. In the market focused on providing solutions for small and mid-sized businesses, our Microsoft Dynamics products compete with vendors such as Infor, The Sage Group, and NetSuite. Salesforce.com’s cloud CRM offerings compete directly with Microsoft Dynamics CRM on-premises offerings.

The Enterprise Services business competes with a wide range of companies that provide strategy and business planning, application development, and infrastructure services, including multinational consulting firms and small niche businesses focused on specific technologies.
Competitors to Office 365 Commercial are the same as those discussed above for Office Commercial.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM’s online offerings primarily compete with Salesforce.com’s on-demand CRM offerings.
Microsoft Azure faces diverse competition from companies such as Amazon, Google, IBM, Oracle, Salesforce.com, VMware, and other open source offerings.