Microsoft and its story of unshakable success ! !

Microsoft is a multinational computer technology firm based in Redmond, Washington, that was founded on April 4, 1975. by Harvard College dropout Bill Gates and his childhood friend Paul Allen and has since grown to become the world’s largest software firm. It is also one among the world’s most valuable corporations.

Microsoft is involved in the development, licensing, and maintenance of a variety of software products and services to meet a variety of needs. Steve Ballmer was named the new CEO of Microsoft in the year 2000,before he left.Bill Gates met Steve Ballmer at Harvard University. Despite some reservations about Ballmer’s abilities, Microsoft maintained its dominance in the corporate and personal computer markets. The business side of Microsoft provided the company with its key strengths and the majority of its income. The corporation recognised that as technology progresses and that they will have a greater presence in consumer markets.

Bill Gates and Paul Allen built Microsoft after the successful Altair deal in January 1975. And in that year , they made $16,000 in revenue. In 1980, Microsoft had its major break when it struck a collaboration with IBM that resulted in Microsoft delivering a critical operating system, DOS, for IBM PCs. This meant that Microsoft received a royalty for every IBM computer sold. With the release of Windows 3.0 in 1990, Gates demonstrated Microsoft’s long-term strategy. At the time, 60 million copies of Windows had been sold, thus making Microsoft the sole guardian of the PC software standard.

Many of Microsoft’s prior operating systems were replaced beginning with Vista as part of Project Longhorn in 2001. Vista was the new operating system that was offered to the general public in 2007. There were numerous Vista variations available, including Home (Basic or Premium), Ultimate, Business, and many others. Windows XP was chosen by Microsoft’s key customers, the business market, since it was quick, dependable, and secure.

In 2009, Windows 7 was released to replace Vista, ensuring Microsoft’s dominance in the software business. Following that, in October 2012, Microsoft released Windows 8, which contained significant improvements to its operating system platform and user interface in order to improve the user experience on tablets. Since then, Windows 8.1 (launched in October 2013) has been introduced, which includes even more enhancements.

Microsoft also entered the gaming and mobile phone markets, where it was able to gain a significant market share. HTC, LG, Samsung, and LG are among the companies that employ the Windows Mobile OS. Microsoft launched the Xbox in 2001, followed by Xbox Live in 2002. Both titles were huge hits, putting Microsoft in second place in the video game market. The Xbox 360 was a powerful game machine when it was debuted in 2005, but it faced stiff competition. Due to competition, Microsoft had to lower the pricing of their game consoles in
order to win a larger market share. The Xbox 360 became the most popular game system in American homes as a result of this decision. Microsoft paid $8.5 billion for Skype in 2011, making it the company’s largest acquisition ever. Skype was purchased by Microsoft in order to compete with Apple’s Facetime and Google’s Voice..

But during 2011. Microsoft had struggled to synchronize its business with evolving shifts in software delivery, and had failed to recoup much of the dynamism it had built during its peak more than 20 years earlier. In the 2000s, the company’s frequent product failures did little more than confuse customers and cast some doubt on Steve Ballmer’s leadership. To make matters worse, the startup was up against not one, but many of Silicon Valley’s largest and most prosperous tech firms. Microsoft needs to reaffirm its dominance at the top of the chain. After
enduring several failed product launches, Microsoft realized that Google had made tremendous gains in the productivity software market. To add insult to injury, it had done so by making its suite of tools available to users completely free—a slap in the face for a company that had made its vast wealth by selling boxed software. To invigorate its ailing productivity division and attempt to halt Google’s seemingly unstoppable rise, Microsoft debuted Office 365 in 2011.Though G suite would go on to become one of the most successful Microsoft products , it was also a virtual certainty. Microsoft had made no secret of its desire to shift more systems to
the cloud, and its enterprise workhorse was a natural candidate. However, it was viewed as another defensive, reactionary move by a firm that had been driven into a position by the aggressive actions of Google and burgeoning efficiency startups throughout Silicon Valley.Microsoft made another blunder in 2012 when it paid $1.2 billion for Slack clone Yammer.

At first glance, the Yammer acquisition made sense. Microsoft has long been a heavyweight in the corporate world, and Yammer’s goal of socialising the office definitely coincided with Microsoft’s apparent ambition to monetise workplace communication. However, Microsoft’s acquisition of Yammer was a high-risk bet. When Microsoft purchased Yammer, the budding social business startup had approximately 4 million members, but just 20% of those individuals were paid subscribers. This meant that, without major development, Yammer would not be an income stream for Microsoft right away.

The corporation unveiled a new logo later that year. It was Microsoft’s first big rebranding in 25 years. The company’s new, basic identity was a much-needed breath of fresh air, but the greater shakeup came two years later, in 2014, when Microsoft selected Satya Nadella as its new CEO. The selection of Nadella as CEO may have salvaged Microsoft as a company.

Few businesses can afford to make as many mistakes as Microsoft has. Despite this, despite its flaws, it’s impossible to picture modern computing without the firm formed by Gates and Allen in 1975. Microsoft’s future may be brighter than it has ever been under new management, but the corporation must step cautiously if it is to be not just successful, but relevant, in today’s quickly changing technology scene. Microsoft has a well-deserved reputation for being resistant to change, but under Nadella’s watchful eye, the firm appears to move forward with a revitalised sense of purpose.