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Microsoft Corporation Case Analysis

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Microsoft Corporation is a worldwide company that creates and supplies several different software packages, maintains a number of Internet sites, and develops computer hardware. Microsoft is the largest supplier of computer software in the world, known by software bundles including the infamous operating system Windows XP (Pro and Home editions), Microsoft Office (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, etc.) and Microsoft Visual Studio .NET (for programmers). The company has thrived on its ability to develop innovative software, and has become known for stable and reliable operating systems for use with a personal computer. Microsoft has also developed server-side software, called Windows Server 2003, to serve corporations and governmental …show more content…

Among them are the US Patriot Act, which dictates that companies providing financial services must have the ability to detect the occurrence of money laundering; the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which mandates that companies provide "real-time disclosure of events that might affect their financial performance and deep records of e-mail and instant messages exchanged between employees" (Yahoo!Finance, 2006). Finally, antitrust laws have been an ongoing threat to the industry. Microsoft has finally reached a settlement after an ongoing antitrust investigation, and agreed to allow manufacturers to include competing software with Windows and uniformly license its operating systems (Antitrust Case Filings, 2006).

New technological developments are revitalizing the software industry. The most recent and significant development includes a new set of web-friendly applications that, as of yet, has no official name. These web services can be assembled from standardized building blocks, meaning that any number of applications may be assembled in a variety of ways. Because of this, companies are able to develop enterprise applications to run on a wide range of software and hardware infrastructures and cater to the specific demands of their respective market segments. The companies that will maintain market share in the

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