Microsoft Corporation Glance

Companies are the product of innovations that aim to provide products and services to satisfy the needs of customers. If it is in the food sector, electronics industry, or transportation industry, to name a few, they all work to fill a need and provide a service or good. Corporations are made up of individuals who look after the company's operations by supplying labor and expertise in this sector. With a focus on the technology sector, we examine Microsoft Corporation and do a short analysis of its organizational structure. Microsoft Corporation, the world's largest software company, had sales of $ 73 billion in the fiscal year that ended on June 30, 2012. (David, 2014). The company’s headquarters are in Redmond, Washington D.C. The main products the company deals in are the development of software and hardware products and services and include windows office, operating systems like the Windows 8 and Windows Phone 7 for PCs and phones respectively, Windows Server, Microsoft SQL, Visual Studio, Windows Azure, and Xbox. They are the owners of Windows Phone and a Windows tablet computer, Surface. The company also offers consultancy services, and these include cloud-based and training services and other online products like Bing, MSN, and adCenter.

History

The founding of the Business is in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. It was established as a company to develop and sell Interpreters for the Altair 8800. Later on in the mid-1980s, the company rose to dominance in the development of an operating system for PCs. The company went public in 1986.

In 2011 acquisition of Skype Technologies for $8.6 billion was the company’s largest ever acquisition. The years 2011-2012 marked the company’s rebranding of its products and services to adopt the guidelines and ideas of a different design language-Metro. Windows 8 was introduced early 2012 the followed by the Microsoft Surface in May the same year. The firm is expanding and opening its stores across the US. Founder Bill Gates and his wife Melinda are among the richest couples and philanthropically one of the most giving couples too through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Analysis of Microsoft Corporation

Looking at the strategy, mission and organizational structure of Microsoft Corporation, it is clear that the company is in the business of spreading its effect and creating economic opportunities through technology to the world and leave and impact in this regard. The company’s organization model is in regards to the product rather than business units, they focus on their products and hence have offices or management lines for their products that ultimately report to the CEO.

Microsoft Corporation cares about the well-being of the people in the world; their focus is on utilizing technology to promote business and empower people economically around the world. Although the organizational structure might not include many women but the fact that there are three women on this board is a great deal for gender equality and balance. Such kind of structure enables the company to enhance the innovation capacity of its products as the focus is on the product and the development of the product or innovation of new products (Lombardo, 2017).

About the near future and long-term future, the company aims are to expand and spread globally and also to diversify its products and increase the chain of goods it currently offers so as to have a competitive edge over its competitors. The company aims to look at providing variety and moving from its traditional Personal Computer Operating systems to other products like the Mobile industry and the tablet industry ( “Microsoft-Official Home Page,” 2017).

The company needs to put into considerations the differences in the market mainly regional market so as to put the needs of these different markets into considerations while producing their various products. They also need to add specifics to the organizational structure so that it is evident where the officers of the different products respond to, that is incorporate aspects of strategic business unit structure in their business too.

References

David, F. R., David, F. R. (01/2014). Strategic Management: A Competitive Advantage

Approach, Concepts & Cases, 15th Edition. [Bookshelf Online]. Retrieved

from https://online.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781323322406/

Lombardo, J. “Microsoft Corporation’s Organizational Structure & its Characteristics (An

Analysis)”.Panmore Institute (2017):1-2. Web. 14 Mar. 2017

“Microsoft-Official Home Page” .Microsoft.com. N.p., 2017. Web. 14 Mar.