Microsoft
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Microsoft Corporation

http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicrosoftMicrosoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT, HKEX: 4338) is a multinational computer technology corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of software products for computing devices.[9] Headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA, its most profitable products are the Microsoft Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office suite of productivity software. As of the third quarter of 2009, Microsoft was ranked as the third largest company in the world, following PetroChina and ExxonMobil. It is also one of the largest technological corporations in the world.
The company was founded on April 4, 1975, 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. Many of its products have 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."[10] Microsoft possesses footholds in other markets, with assets such as the MSNBC cable television network and the MSN Internet portal. The company also markets both computer hardware products such as the Microsoft mouse and the Microsoft Natural keyboard, as well as home entertainment products such as the Xbox, Xbox 360, Zune and MSN TV.[9] 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.[11][12][13]
Throughout its history the company has been the target of criticism, including monopolistic business practices and anti-competitive strategies including refusal to deal and tying. The U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission, among others, have ruled against Microsoft for antitrust violations.[14][15] (See also United States v. Microsoft, European Union Microsoft competition case.)

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Poker equipments are software programs that compute, learn, traverse, modify and store data far more better than human brains can do. The information stacked away is quicker and more exact than your own brains. For this you will require both tracking software and pot odds calculators. A software tracker is one which tracks your play with that of your opponents and allows you to improve on your game. Pot odds calculators are ones which calculates your mathematical statistics with regard to your game and earnings from it. This helps you from utilizing your time for calculation of your game time.

Microsoft turns to telephony

The software maker last year set out its ambition to become a serious player in the telephony market, announcing plans to turn its corporate instant-messaging software into a program that can also manage telephone functions.

Jeff Raikes, the veteran Microsoft executive who helped establish Office as one of the company's most profitable products, recently stepped in to take over leadership of the telephony business. Raikes says his unit's investment in telephony research and development is second only to the R&D investment in Office itself.

Raikes on Wednesday will lay out Microsoft's telephony plan at VoiceCon, an industry conference in Orlando, Fla. He spoke to CNET News.com by phone ahead of his speech.

Q: What are some of the key points you are making in your speech?
Raikes: We'll point out that within the next three years that we believe there will be as many as 100 million people or more enabled for making voice calls from Outlook, SharePoint and other Microsoft system applications. And if you think about where we are today, that's probably twice the number of people that have voice over IP (Internet Protocol) lines. In addition, we predict a voice over IP network will cost probably half of what it does today. We'll be announcing the betas for Office Communications Server and Office Communicator, which is the client-side application.

Jeff, you talked about this vision some months ago. How much tangible progress have you made? Where are things right at this moment?
Raikes: We had a technology-adoption program summit in December, and there were 250 representatives from nearly 100 enterprises that participated in that weeklong event. Their IT departments served more than 7 million people doing information work. We already have these customers working with the early adoption of our technology. The betas are coming out now. So we're well along on our road map that leads to that point that I'll make, which is that within three years there will be 100 million or more people able to make phone calls from Outlook, SharePoint, and other Microsoft Office System applications.

Similarly, you know, we've heard others in the industry talk about having specifications for interoperability. We're actually publishing them. And that will be available and we'll talk about that (at VoiceCon).

It's the biggest opportunity for growth that we have, and we think it's the biggest opportunity for our customers.

I mean, just think about the pace of innovation in the last 20 years. You had digital technology in telephony in the 1984 time frame. How much has your desktop phone changed in the last 10, 12, 15 years? Very little. Yet how much has your experience changed for mobile computing, for e-mail, for instant messaging? The real challenge that's held back this part of the industry is that they don't have a broadly accepted software platform that enables the pace of innovation. So what I'll be emphasizing next week is, we, in conjunction with our partners, are putting in place the software platform that will enable this pace of innovation.

Even with all those changes, given that companies have a lot of existing equipment and expertise in traditional phone systems, won't this change really still take awhile?
Raikes: That's the beauty of the approach that we take, is that we make it possible for customers to actually use these capabilities in conjunction with their existing PBX (private branch exchange) system. It's not a rip-and-replace approach. So that means customers are actually able to more quickly get to the value without having to have the expensive rip-and-replace approach that some of the other industry participants would recommend.

Microsoft's VoIP party
Office finds its voice

The software giant rolls out its unified communications system for business customers, featuring voice over Internet Protocol software designed to compete with rivals like Cisco and Avaya.

What does it look like when you use the PBX phone?
Raikes: A good example is SimulRing, the idea that a phone call is coming in and you can either pick it up on your desktop phone, or maybe you're actually not at your desktop, so you also get an instant-messaging alert saying that you have a phone call coming in, and do you want to take it on a voice over IP call using Office Communications Server, or do you want to forward it to your mobile phone.

You mentioned that this is one of the biggest bets that Microsoft is making in the Office arena. What does that mean in terms of dollars for you guys?
Raikes: Well, basically, one way to quantify it is that the amount of R&D investment that we're putting in with unified communications and voice over IP is the largest R&D investment beyond what we do in the core of Office.

And is that why you've chosen now to run the business yourself?
Raikes: I've chosen to take on this role for the combination of, frankly, it's the biggest opportunity for growth that we have, and we think it's the biggest opportunity for our customers. So, yes, that is correct.

One of the things that Steve Ballmer mentioned when he spoke with financial analysts recently is this notion of taking Exchange and SharePoint and Live Communications Server, and running them as a hosted service. Is the first version of Office Communications Server that comes out going to be available both as a traditional server and as a hosted service?
Raikes: Yes. We're big believers in giving customers choice, and many customers are going to want to run these technologies on premise, as they do today, and many customers are going to be very interested in having Microsoft or another of our partners be a provider of a hosted service for them. And so it's absolutely our intention to deliver both. Now the actual timing will depend upon specifics that aren't really worth going into right now, but the idea is to basically give customers the choice.

Microsoft warms up its Voice

Microsoft has thrown its hat into the enterprise voice over IP (VoIP) ring as it predicts the number of users will more than double in three years.

Speaking at the VoiceCon Spring 2007 event earlier this week, Jeff Raikes, president of Microsoft’s business division, claimed VoIP costs will halve in three years as systems shift from hardware to software.

He also predicted around 100 million people – twice the number of existing business VoIP users – will be able to make phone calls using Microsoft Office applications within that timeframe.

“Software is set to transform business phone systems as profoundly as it has transformed virtually every other form of workplace communication,” Raikes said. “Over time, the software-based VoIP technology built into Microsoft Office Communications Server and Microsoft Office Communicator will offer so much value and cost savings that it will make the standard telephone look like that old typewriter that’s gathering dust in the stockroom.”

He added the software giant plans to ship the public beta-test version of Office Communications Server 2007 - its VoIP and unified communications server - and Office Communicator 2007 – its unified communications client – later this month.

In addition Microsoft has revealed that for the first time it is making the interoperability specifications for Office Communications Server 2007 and Office Communicator 2007 available to its partner network, saving end-user customers the cost of ripping and replacing their existing telephony systems.

“We’re embarking on a software transformation similar to what we saw from the mainframe to the PC,” added Raikes. “With a shift of this magnitude, there will be tremendous opportunities for our industry partners worldwide.”

Microsoft: Tellme something good

As rumored, Microsoft confirmed today that it's buying Tellme Networks, a privately held voice technology company. This being a private acquisition with no material effect on financial results, the parties were mum on the price, but the aforementioned rumors included figures in the neighborhood of $800 million, a neighborhood in which Microsoft hasn't gone shopping for five years. Tellme, whose technology is used by FedEx and AT&T, brings Microsoft expertise in voice recognition and particularly mobile search that could show up in a lot of places. "Speech is universal, simple and holds incredible promise as a key interface for computing," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in a press release. "Tellme brings to Microsoft the talent, technology and proven experience in speech that will enable us to deliver a new wave of products and revolutionize human-computer interaction." Redmond is betting big on software-based telephony and its integration into online and wireless services, and this buy fits the master plan. Said Jeff Raikes, president of Microsoft's business division, last week, "Software is set to transform business phone systems as profoundly as it has transformed virtually every other form of workplace communication. Over time, the software-based VoIP technology built into Microsoft Office Communications Server and Microsoft Office Communicator will offer so much value and cost savings that it will make the standard telephone look like that old typewriter that's gathering dust in the stockroom."

Windows Vista Launch Hurts Yahoo, But Not Google

 

The launch of Windows Vista has lifted Microsoft's Live Search share of the U.S. search market, but Microsoft's gain has come at the expense of Yahoo and Ask rather than Google.

"We saw a pretty substantial lift for the first time this year for Live Search," says Jeremy Crane, director of client services at Compete, an online market research firm. "And it happened to coincide with the consumer launch of Vista."

Live Search is the default search engine in Vista, a home-field advantage that Google has sought to counter with distribution deals for its search software.

In a blog post published today, Compete reported that Windows Live had received almost 590 million Web search queries in the United States in February, a 10% increase from 534 million in January.

During this period, Microsoft also saw a 10% increase in search query volume, which translates to a market share gain of 1 percentage point, moving Live Search from 8% to 9%.

Google also saw a market share gain of 1 percentage point during the same time frame as a result of a 3% gain in overall search volume, which reached almost 4 billion queries. Google's share of the U.S. search market in February rose to 63% from 62% the previous month.

Yahoo and Ask lost market share during this period, dropping from 23% to 21% and from 4% to 3% respectively. Yahoo's market share loss of 2 percentage points was the result of a 7% drop in search volume. Ask's market share loss followed from a 5% decline in search volume.

Last month, comScore Networks reported that Google had captured 47.5% of the U.S. search market in January, a significantly lower percentage than Compete counted. comScore also noted that Yahoo's U.S. search share dropped to 28%, Microsoft's rose slightly to reach 10.6%, and Ask's declined to 5.2%.

Crane attributes the difference in statistics to different methodologies. comScore, he says, includes a variety of online properties such as video search in its search numbers, whereas Compete only counts Web search.

Microsofts new architect faces the future

As Microsoft prepares for a future without the leadership of Bill Gates, many people are wondering what lies ahead for the software behemoth. In an interview held this week at the Goldman Sachs Technology Investment Symposium in Las Vegas, Nevada, Microsoft's new chief software architect, Ray Ozzie, revealed some of his plans for the future.

Ozzie took over the role of Chief Software Architect from Bill Gates last June. The duties of this job are very broad, but essentially boil down to what Bill Gates used to love to do: looking at long-term trends in the computer industry and analyzing where Microsoft could best spend its massive resources in adapting to and profiting from these trends.

The most significant trend in the industry today is the transition from desktop to web-based software—this is no surprise to anyone, but it's nice to see the leadership at Microsoft actually acknowledge it. "Since I came to Microsoft, actually before I came to Microsoft, I began to have a fairly passionate reaction to the fact that there is kind of a sea change going on in the industry," Ozzie explained. "I've been fortunate that in my career, I've lived through a mainframe to mini transition that was driven by certain changes in technology, mini to PC, PC to kind of LAN-based PC, client-server, that world to the Web."

So we live in a Web-based world, but how does that affect Microsoft's future, considering that the company still makes most of its money from desktop applications? Ozzie feels that in this transitionary period, as was the case in the other transitions in the past, there is the opportunity to create new types of markets that haven't yet been imagined. Ozzie describes these new markets as falling under the umbrellas of "connected entertainment," "connected business," and "connected productivity." The idea is to figure out how people's existing needs and activities—gaming, communication, and data management—can be enhanced by adding Internet connectivity features, and connecting them across multiple devices. Ozzie sees this sort of software becoming more ubiquitous in the future, because of "the availability of a services platform that's enabled by cheap computation, storage, and communication." As devices such as mobile phones get faster, cheaper, and more powerful, it starts to make sense to want to allow access to the same information one has at a desktop computer available on these tiny devices.

Again, this isn't anything especially new or different. Google has been actively staking out territory on existing phones, and Apple hopes to try their hand at the smartphone market with the iPhone. Ozzie thinks that Microsoft's role in all this is to "use our breadth and our expertise at software design to bring some of these scenarios to the masses, to weave together software, services, and in some cases hardware to bring some of these connected entertainment visions out very, very, very broadly." He pointed to products such as the XBox, XBox Live, Microsoft CRM Live, Office Live, and Windows Live as examples of this sort of weaving. He described how CRM Live works through a browser, through Outlook, or through an internal server, giving employees the ability to access customer data no matter where they are.

Of course, any discussion of Microsoft moving to Internet-connected services has to acknowledge the presence of Google. Unlike Bill Gates, Ozzie considers Google to be a viable competitor, placing them in the same category as previous strong competitors to Microsoft. He gives Google credit for proving that an advertising-driven model for "free" software delivered over the web can be a bit hit with consumers. However, he feels that Microsoft has a chance to redefine the web services industry. He gave the examples of how strong competition from Sony's PlayStation 2 resulted in Microsoft changing the nature of the industry by creating XBox Live, and how the challenge of competing with Linux actually helped the Server and Tools division create new types of applications that expanded the market. With Google, Ozzie sees Microsoft doing the same thing, although he declined to give any details.

One especially salient question was asked near the end of the interview: why does Microsoft seem to take so long to respond to competitive challenges such as Netscape, Linux, Notes, and so on? The answer was honest: Ozzie said that the "company DNA" was simply not wired to answer every new product or market with a quick carbon copy, but to sit back and see where the market went before coming up with their own solution. While this behavior has seen competitors charge Microsoft with not being "innovative," obviously the strategy has worked well for the company in the long run. In the end, most successful products (including many produced by Microsoft's competitors) have not been the first or second to market, but came much later after a careful observation of how the pioneers fared with their efforts.

There is much more to the interview, but overall it was an illuminating look into the mind of Bill Gates' successor. It is clear why he was chosen for such a daunting task: he seems simultaneously capable of looking towards the future while still staying true to the essence of what made Microsoft what it is today.