Microsoft was founded in 1975. It develops and markets software, services and solutions that deliver new opportunity, convenience, and value to people’s lives. The company’s product segments provide management with a financial view of its key businesses. The segments provide a framework for the alignment of strategies and objectives across the development, sales, marketing, and services organizations, and for the timely and rational allocation of development, sales, marketing, and services resources within businesses. The company’s seven product segments are: Client; Server and Tools; Information Worker; Microsoft Business Solutions; MSN; Mobile and Embedded Devices; and Home and Entertainment.

The company’s research and development facilities are located primarily in Redmond, Washington with smaller facilities located in Mountain View, California; Fargo, North Dakota; Beijing, China; Dublin etc. As of June 30, 2005, the Company employed approximately 61,000 people.

Like its size, Microsoft’s ambitions are anything but small. The world’s #1 software company provides a variety of products and services, including its Windows operating systems and Office software suite. The company has expanded into markets such as video game consoles, servers and storage software, and digital music players. Microsoft has reached settlements to end a slew of antitrust investigations and lawsuits, including agreeing to uniformly license its operating systems and allowing manufacturers to include competing software with Windows. In early 2008 the company made an unsolicited bid to acquire Yahoo! for about $44.6 billion.

Microsoft’s Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solution helps organizations overcome the challenges posed by unmanaged content. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is a central part of the Microsoft ECM solution, which extends content management to every employee in an organization through integration with familiar tools like the Microsoft Office system.

While not as technical sophisticated as competitors, Microsoft has made significant investments in its ECM solution to reach the high-end of the market. Microsoft has succeeded in generating significant revenues from the ECM market and has rapidly increased its market impact.

Microsoft Enterprise Content Management is reasonably prices and integrates easily with other Microsoft products, and sports a familiar Office interface.

Microsoft Key Strengths

• Web Content Management (WCM) from world-leading software giant Microsoft helps organizations overcome the challenges posed by unmanaged content. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is a central part of the Microsoft ECM solution, which extends content management to every employee in an organization through integration with familiar tools like the Microsoft Office system.
• With Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, businesses get an integrated suite of server capabilities that can help improve organizational effectiveness by providing comprehensive content management and enterprise search, accelerating shared business processes, and facilitating information development, sharing, and management across boundaries for better business insight.
• The Microsoft WCM solution lets you simplify compliance efforts and keep business information more secure through a comprehensive set of tools to manage and control electronic content. SharePoint Server 2007 lets you streamline the everyday business processes that are a drain on organizational productivity by using electronic forms and out-of-the-box workflow processes that users can initiate, track, and participate in through familiar Microsoft Office applications, e-mail, or Web browsers.
• Office SharePoint Server 2007 helps organizations manage the entire life cycle of content by providing distinct sets of features that enable organizations to manage diverse content, satisfy compliance and legal requirements, and efficiently and effectively manage and maintain organizational content over multiple Web sites.
• Office SharePoint Server 2007 supports all intranet, extranet, and Web applications across an enterprise within one integrated platform, instead of relying on separate fragmented systems. Additionally, this collaboration and content management server provides IT professionals and developers with the platform and tools they need for server administration, application extensibility, and interoperability.