MS Engineering Groups
Microsoft engineering groups are the operating divisions of Microsoft. Initially in April 2002, Microsoft organised itself into seven groups, each an independent financial entity. In September 2005, Microsoft announced a rationalisation of its seven groups into the three groups. In July 2013, Microsoft announced a sweeping reorganisation into five engineering groups and six corporate affairs groups. A year later, in June 2015, Microsoft announced a major reorganisation into three engineering groups, to drive engineering alignment against the company’s core ambitions: reinvent productivity and business processes, build the intelligent cloud platform, and create more personal computing.
Windows
This is Microsoft's flagship product. Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985, as a graphical operating system shell for MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces (GUIs). Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal computer market with over 90% market share as of 2015.
Windows is available in different families, catering to different kind of devices.
Windows NT: Windows 10 is latest OS in this family. It is designed for use in personal computers, 2-in-1 PCs and tablets. Almost all IBM compatible personal computers as well as 2-in-1 PCs designed for consumers come with Windows pre-installed. However, in tablets the market share of Windows is quite less.
Windows Phone: Windows 10 Mobile is latest OS in this family. It is designed for smartphones and small tablets. It includes all basic consumer features, including Continuum capability. The market share of Windows in smartphones is very less.
Windows Embedded: Windows 10 IoT Core is latest OS in this family. It is designed specifically for use in IoT scenarios such as on devices where the OS may not directly be visible to the end user, in particular, home appliances, home automation, auto-motives, industry devices etc.
Windows Mobile: It comprised of various mobile operating systems. This family has been discontinued.
Windows 9x: It comprised of Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows ME. This family has also been discontinued.
DOS-based: It comprised of Windows 1.0, Windows 2.0 and Windows 3.0. This family has also been discontinued.
Xbox One system software: It comprises different versions of Windows running on Xbox game consoles.
Devices
Microsoft Surface consists of below PC and laplet lines:
Microsoft Surface consists of below PC and laplet lines:
Surface line comprises budget 2-in-1 PCs. It was launched in 2012. The latest model is Surface 3.
Surface Pro line comprises premium 2-in-1 PCs. It was launched in 2013. The latest model is Surface Pro 4.
Surface Book is a 2-in-1 PC, marketed as a laptop. It was launched in 2015.
Surface Hub is an interactive whiteboard. It was launched in 2015.
Microsoft Mobile (formerly Nokia's mobile division), consists of below device lines.
Lumia is a line of smartphones. It was launched in 2011.
Nokia branded feature phones are featurephones.
Mobile accessories: Treasure Tag and Microsoft Portable Dual Charger.
Microsoft Band is a smart band that serves as a companion for the Microsoft HealthVault-based Microsoft Health service. It integrates with Windows Phone, iOS, and Android smartphones through a Bluetooth connection. It was launched in 2014.
Microsoft HoloLens are smartglasses. It was launched in 2016.
Xbox is a game console launched in 2001. Video games for the console, are developed by Microsoft Studios subsidiary, in addition to third-party video game publishers such as Electronic Arts and Activision. The Xbox was succeeded by the Xbox 360, released in 2005. The Xbox 360 was succeeded in 2013 by Xbox One.
Microsoft further sells accessories that consists of mice, keyboards, webcams, headsets, game controllers and wireless display adapters. The production of these accessories is outsourced in most cases.
MSN
MSN is a web portal and related collection of Internet services and apps for Windows and mobile devices, provided by Microsoft. It was launched on August 1995. The current website and suite of apps offered by MSN was first introduced by Microsoft in 2014 as part of a complete redesign and relaunch. The redesign of MSN proved positive and helped increase traffic with an additional 10 million daily visitors after two months. MSN is based in the United States and offers international versions of its portal for dozens of countries around the world.
Servers
Microsoft Servers (previously called Windows Server System) is a brand that encompasses Microsoft's server products. This includes the Windows Server editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system itself, as well as products targeted at the wider business market. Microsofts server products are further categorized into four groups namely, Operating systems, Productivity, Security and Microsoft System Center. A complete listing of product offerings can be found here.
Azure
Microsoft Azure is the company's cloud computing platform that hosts virtual machines, websites and more. It provides both platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) services and supports many different programming languages, tools and frameworks, including both Microsoft-specific and third-party software and systems. It was launched in 2010.
Visual Studio
Microsoft Visual Studio the set of programming tools and compilers. The software product is GUI-oriented and links easily with the Windows APIs, but must be specially configured if used with non-Microsoft libraries. Visual Studio supports development for both native Windows platform and .NET Framework. It was launched in 1995.
Dynamics
Microsoft Dynamics is a line of enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) software applications. Microsoft Dynamics was previously a separate engineering unit until it got reorganised into the Cloud & Enterprise Group in June 2015.
Office
Microsoft Office is a line of office software, provided by Microsoft. It is available in three versions, for desktop, for mobile devices and an online one.
Office for desktop includes Word (a word processor), Excel (a spreadsheet program), PowerPoint (a presentation software), Access (a personal relational database application), Outlook (an email program, frequently used with Exchange Server), OneNote (a notetaking program) and Publisher (desktop publishing software). It also encompasses other products (not bundled in Office suite) like Microsoft Project, Microsoft Visio, Microsoft SharePoint and Skype for Business.
Office Mobile consists of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, OneDrive available as standalone apps for mobile devices on their respective application stores, since 2015. Earlier these apps were part of Office Mobile, another app for mobile devices which is still present for older devices.
Office Online is combination of Microsoft Office Web Apps (an online version of Microsoft Office's core apps) and various formerly Windows Live branded web services, in general all these services are connected via Microsoft accounts. This includes free versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook.com (a free web-based email service, previously branded as Hotmail), OneNote, OneDrive (a free cloud storage and file hosting service, it was previously branded as SkyDrive), Sway (a presentation program that can pull content from various websites), Docs.com (a site where users can discover, upload and share Office documents on their profile page, the website originally started as a collaboration between Microsoft and the Facebook but was redesigned for Office Online), People (an online address book), Calendar and Tasks.
Skype
Skype is an application that specializes in providing video chat and voice call services. Users can exchange text and video messages, files and images, and create conference calls. Other applications developed alongside Skype are Skype Translator, Skype Qik and GroupMe. Originally launched in 2003, it was bought by Microsoft in 2011 for $8.5 billion.
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