Overview

Future

Microsoft is a technology company whose mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. The company strive to create local opportunity, growth, and impact in every country around the world. The company's platforms and tools help drive small business productivity, large business competitiveness, and public-sector efficiency. They also support new startups, improve educational and health outcomes, and empower human ingenuity.

The company continue to transform its business to lead in the new era of the intelligent cloud and intelligent edge. The company bring technology and products together into experiences and solutions that unlock value for its customers. In this next phase of innovation, computing is more powerful and ubiquitous from the cloud to the edge. Artificial intelligence (“AI”) capabilities are rapidly advancing, fueled by data and knowledge of the world. Physical and virtual worlds are coming together to create richer experiences that understand the context surrounding people, the things they use, the places they go, and their activities and relationships. A person’s experience with technology spans a multitude of devices and has become increasingly more natural and multi-sensory with voice, ink, and gaze interactions.

What The company Offer

Founded in 1975, the company develop and support software, services, devices, and solutions that deliver new value for customers and help people and businesses realize their full potential.

The company's products include operating systems; cross-device productivity applications; server applications; business solution applications; desktop and server management tools; software development tools; and video games. The company also design, manufacture, and sell devices, including PCs, tablets, gaming and entertainment consoles, other intelligent devices, and related accessories.

The company offer an array of services, including cloud-based solutions that provide customers with software, services, platforms, and content, and the company provide solution support and consulting services. The company also deliver relevant online advertising to a global audience.

The Ambitions That Drive the company

To achieve its vision, its research and development efforts focus on three interconnected ambitions:

• Reinvent productivity and business processes.
• Build the intelligent cloud platform.
• Create more personal computing.

Reinvent Productivity and Business Processes

Microsoft Corp is in a unique position to empower people and organizations to succeed in a rapidly evolving workplace. Computing experiences are evolving, no longer bound to one device at a time. Instead, experiences are expanding to many devices as people move from home to work to on the go. These modern needs, habits, and expectations of its customers are motivating it to bring Microsoft Office 365, Windows platform, devices, including Microsoft Surface, and third-party applications into a more cohesive Microsoft 365 experience.

The company's growth depends on securely delivering continuous innovation and advancing its leading productivity and collaboration tools and services, including Office, Microsoft Dynamics, and LinkedIn. Microsoft 365 brings together Office 365, Windows 10, and Enterprise Mobility + Security to help organizations empower their employees with AI-backed tools that unlock creativity, increase teamwork, and fuel innovation, all the while enabling compliance coverage and data protection. Microsoft Teams is core to its vision for the modern workplace as the digital hub that creates a single canvas for teamwork, conversations, meetings, and content. Microsoft Relationship Sales solution brings together LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Dynamics to transform business to business sales through social selling. Dynamics 365 for Talent with LinkedIn Recruiter and Learning gives human resource professionals a complete solution to compete for talent.

These scenarios represent a move to unlock creativity and inspire teamwork, while simplifying security and management. Organizations of all sizes can now digitize business-critical functions, redefining what customers can expect from their business applications. This creates an opportunity for it to reach new customers and increase usage and engagement with existing customers.

Build the Intelligent Cloud Platform

Companies are looking to use digital technology to fundamentally reimagine how they empower their employees, engage customers, optimize their operations, and change the very core of their products and services. Partnering with organizations on their digital transformation is one of its largest opportunities and Microsoft Corp is uniquely positioned to become the strategic digital transformation platform and partner of choice.

The company's strategy requires continued investment in datacenters and other infrastructure to support its services. Microsoft Azure is a trusted cloud with comprehensive compliance coverage and AI-based security built in.

The company's cloud business benefits from three economies of scale: datacenters that deploy computational resources at significantly lower cost per unit than smaller ones; datacenters that coordinate and aggregate diverse customer, geographic, and application demand patterns, improving the utilization of computing, storage, and network resources; and multi-tenancy locations that lower application maintenance labor costs.

As one of the two largest providers of cloud computing at scale, the company believe the company work from a position of strength. Being a global, hyper-scale cloud, Azure uniquely offers hybrid consistency, developer productivity, AI capabilities, and trusted security and compliance. Moreover, with Azure Stack, organizations can extend Azure into their own datacenters to create a consistent stack across the public cloud and the intelligent edge. The company's hybrid infrastructure consistency spans identity, data, compute, management, and security, helping to support the real-world needs and evolving regulatory requirements of commercial customers and enterprises.

The ability to convert data into AI drives its competitive advantage. Azure SQL Database makes it possible for customers to take Microsoft SQL Server from their on-premises datacenter to a fully managed instance in the cloud to utilize built-in AI. Microsoft Corp is accelerating adoption of AI innovations from research to products. The company's innovation helps every developer be an AI developer, with approachable new tools from Azure Machine Learning Studio for creating simple machine learning models, to the powerful Azure Machine Learning Workbench for the most advanced AI modeling and data science.

On June 4, 2018, Microsoft announced plans to acquire GitHub, Inc., a service that millions of developers around the world rely on to write code together. The acquisition is expected to close by the end of the calendar year.

Create More Personal Computing

The company strive to make computing more personal by putting users at the core of the experience, enabling them to interact with technology in more intuitive, engaging, and dynamic ways. Windows 10 is the cornerstone of its ambition, providing a foundation for the secure, modern workplace, and designed to foster innovation through rich and consistent experiences across the range of existing devices and entirely new device categories. Windows 10 empowers people with AI-first interfaces ranging from voice-activated commands through Cortana, inking, immersive 3D content storytelling, and mixed reality experiences. Cloud sharing and co-authoring experiences are now natively enabled with OneDrive files on demand. Windows 10 is more accessible for everyone with new features like Eye Control, which gives people the ability to operate a PC using just their eyes.

The company's ambition for Windows 10 is to broaden its economic opportunity through three key levers: an original equipment manufacturer (“OEM”) ecosystem that creates exciting new hardware designs for Windows 10; its commitment to its first-party premium device portfolio; and monetization opportunities such as gaming, services, subscriptions, and search advertising.

Microsoft Corp is working to create a broad developer opportunity by unifying the Windows installed base on Windows 10 and enabling universal Windows applications to run across devices so developers and OEMs can contribute to a thriving Windows ecosystem. Additionally, Microsoft Corp is committed to designing and marketing first-party devices, such as the Surface Laptop, Surface Book 2, and Surface Pro to help drive innovation, create new device categories, and stimulate demand in the Windows ecosystem.

Microsoft Corp is mobilizing to pursue its expansive opportunity in the gaming industry, broadening its approach to how the company think about gaming end-to-end, from the way games are created and distributed to how they are played and viewed. Microsoft Corp has a strong position with its Xbox One console, its large and growing highly engaged community of gamers on Xbox Live, and with Windows 10, the most popular operating system for PC gamers. And the company will continue to connect its gaming assets across PC, console, and mobile, and work to grow and engage the Xbox Live member network more deeply and frequently with new services like Mixer and Xbox Game Pass. The company's approach is to enable gamers to play the games they want, with the people they want, on the devices they want.

Future Opportunity

Customers are looking to it to accelerate their own digital transformations and to unlock new opportunity in this era of intelligent cloud and intelligent edge. The company continue to develop complete, intelligent solutions for its customers that empower users to be creative and work together while safeguarding businesses and simplifying IT management. The company's goal is to lead the industry in several distinct areas of technology over the long-term, which the company expect will translate to sustained growth. Microsoft Corp is investing significant resources in:

• Transforming the workplace to deliver new modern, modular business applications to improve how people communicate, collaborate, learn, work, play, and interact with one another.
• Building and running cloud-based services in ways that unleash new experiences and opportunities for businesses and individuals.
• Applying AI to drive insights and act on its customer’s behalf by understanding and interpreting their needs using natural methods of communication.
• Using Windows to develop new categories of devices – both its own and third-party – as a person’s experience with technology becomes more natural, personal, and predictive with multi-sensory breakthroughs in voice, ink, gaze interactions, and augmented reality holograms.
• Inventing new gaming experiences that bring people together around their shared love for games on any devices and pushing the boundaries of innovation with console and PC gaming by creating the next wave of entertainment.

The company's future growth depends on its ability to transcend current product category definitions, business models, and sales motions. Microsoft Corp has the opportunity to redefine what customers and partners can expect and are working to deliver new solutions that reflect the best of Microsoft.

OPERATING SEGMENTS

The company operate its business and report its financial performance using three segments: Productivity and Business Processes, Intelligent Cloud, and More Personal Computing. The company's segments provide management with a comprehensive financial view of its key businesses. The segments enable the alignment of strategies and objectives across the development, sales, marketing, and services organizations, and they provide a framework for timely and rational allocation of resources within businesses.

The company's reportable segments are described below.

Productivity and Business Processes

The company's Productivity and Business Processes segment consists of products and services in its portfolio of productivity, communication, and information services, spanning a variety of devices and platforms. This segment primarily comprises:

• Office Commercial, including Office 365 subscriptions and Office licensed on-premises, comprising Office, Exchange, SharePoint, Skype for Business, and Microsoft Teams, and related Client Access Licenses (“CALs”).
• Office Consumer, including Office 365 subscriptions and Office licensed on-premises, and Office Consumer Services, including Skype, Outlook.com, and OneDrive.
• LinkedIn, including Talent Solutions, Marketing Solutions, and Premium Subscriptions.
• Dynamics business solutions, including Dynamics ERP on-premises, Dynamics CRM on-premises, and Dynamics 365, a set of cloud-based applications across ERP and CRM.

Office Commercial

Office Commercial is designed to increase personal, team, and organizational productivity through a range of products and services. Growth depends on its ability to reach new users in new markets such as first-line workers, small and medium businesses, and growth markets, as well as add value to its core product and service offerings to span productivity categories such as communication, collaboration, analytics, and security. Office Commercial revenue is mainly affected by a combination of continued installed base growth and average revenue per user expansion, as well as the continued shift from Office licensed on-premises to Office 365. CALs provide certain Office Commercial products and services with access rights to its server products and CAL revenue is reported with the associated Office products and services.

Office Consumer

Office Consumer is designed to increase personal productivity through a range of products and services. Growth depends on its ability to reach new users, add value to its core product set, and continue to expand its product and service offerings into new markets. Office Consumer revenue is mainly affected by the percentage of customers that buy Office with their new devices and the continued shift from Office licensed on-premises to Office 365. Office Consumer Services revenue is mainly affected by the demand for communication and storage through Skype, Outlook.com, and OneDrive, which is largely driven by subscriptions, advertising, and the sale of minutes.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn connects the world's professionals to make them more productive and successful, and is the world's largest professional network on the Internet. LinkedIn offers services that can be used by customers to transform the way they hire, market, sell, and learn. In addition to LinkedIn’s free services, LinkedIn offers three categories of monetized solutions: Talent Solutions, Marketing Solutions, and Premium Subscriptions, which includes Sales Solutions. Talent Solutions is comprised of two elements: Hiring, and Learning and Development. Hiring provides services to recruiters that enable them to attract, recruit, and hire talent. Learning and Development provides subscriptions to enterprises and individuals to access online learning content. Marketing Solutions enables companies to advertise to LinkedIn’s member base. Premium Subscriptions enables professionals to manage their professional identity, grow their network, and connect with talent through additional services like premium search. Premium Subscriptions also includes Sales Solutions, which helps sales professionals find, qualify, and create sales opportunities and accelerate social selling capabilities. Growth will depend on its ability to increase the number of LinkedIn members and its ability to continue offering services that provide value for its members and increase their engagement. LinkedIn revenue is mainly affected by demand from enterprises and professional organizations for subscriptions to Talent Solutions and Premium Subscriptions offerings, as well as member engagement and the quality of the sponsored content delivered to those members to drive Marketing Solutions.

Dynamics

Dynamics provides on-premises and cloud-based business solutions for financial management, enterprise resource planning (“ERP”), customer relationship management (“CRM”), supply chain management, and analytics applications for small and medium businesses, large organizations, and divisions of global enterprises. Dynamics revenue is largely driven by the number of users licensed and the continued shift to Dynamics 365, a unified set of cloud-based intelligent business applications.

Competition

Competitors to Office include software and global application vendors, such as Apple, Cisco Systems, Facebook, Google, IBM, and Slack, and numerous web-based and mobile application competitors as well as local application developers. Apple distributes versions of its pre-installed application software, such as email and calendar products, through its PCs, tablets, and phones. Cisco Systems is using its position in enterprise communications equipment to grow its unified communications business. Google provides a hosted messaging and productivity suite. Skype for Business and Skype also compete with a variety of instant messaging, voice, and video communication providers, ranging from start-ups to established enterprises. Web-based offerings competing with individual applications have also positioned themselves as alternatives to its products and services. The company compete by providing powerful, flexible, secure, and easy-to-use productivity and collaboration tools and services that create comprehensive solutions and work well with technologies its customers already have both on-premises or in the cloud.

LinkedIn faces competition from online recruiting companies, talent management companies, and larger companies that are focusing on talent management and human resource services; job boards; traditional recruiting firms; and companies that provide learning and development products and services. Marketing Solutions competes with online and offline outlets that generate revenue from advertisers and marketers.

Dynamics competes with vendors such as Infor, Oracle, NetSuite. Salesforce.com, SAP, and The Sage Group to provide on-premise and cloud-based business solutions for small, medium, and large organizations.

Intelligent Cloud

The company's Intelligent Cloud segment consists of its public, private, and hybrid server products and cloud services that can power modern business. This segment primarily comprises:

• Server products and cloud services, including SQL Server, Windows Server, Visual Studio, System Center, and related CALs, and Azure.
• Enterprise Services, including Premier Support Services and Microsoft Consulting Services.

Server Products and Cloud Services

The company's server products are designed to make IT professionals, developers, and their systems more productive and efficient. Server software is integrated server infrastructure and middleware designed to support software applications built on the Windows Server operating system. This includes the server platform, database, business intelligence, storage, management and operations, virtualization, service-oriented architecture platform, security, and identity software. The company also license standalone and software development lifecycle tools for software architects, developers, testers, and project managers. Server products revenue is mainly affected by purchases through volume licensing programs, licenses sold to OEMs, and retail packaged products. CALs provide access rights to certain server products, including SQL Server and Windows Server, and revenue is reported along with the associated server product.

Azure is a comprehensive set of cloud services that offer developers, IT professionals, and enterprises freedom to build, deploy, and manage applications on any platform or device. Customers can use Azure through its global network of datacenters for basic computing, networking, storage, mobile and web app services, AI, Internet of Things (“IoT”), cognitive services, and machine learning. Azure enables customers to devote more resources to development and use of applications that benefit their organizations, rather than managing on-premises hardware and software. Azure revenue is mainly affected by infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service consumption-based services, and per user-based services such as Enterprise Mobility + Security.

Enterprise Services

Enterprise Services, including Premier Support Services and Microsoft Consulting Services, assist customers in developing, deploying, and managing Microsoft server and desktop solutions and provide training and certification to developers and IT professionals on various Microsoft products.

Competition

The company's server products face competition from a wide variety of server operating systems and applications offered by companies with a range of market approaches. Vertically integrated computer manufacturers such as Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Oracle offer their own versions of the Unix operating system preinstalled on server hardware. Nearly all computer manufacturers offer server hardware for the Linux operating system and many contribute to Linux operating system development. The competitive position of Linux has also benefited from the large number of compatible applications now produced by many commercial and non-commercial software developers. A number of companies, such as Red Hat, supply versions of Linux.

The company compete to provide enterprise-wide computing solutions and point solutions with numerous commercial software vendors that offer solutions and middleware technology platforms, software applications for connectivity (both Internet and intranet), security, hosting, database, and e-business servers. IBM and Oracle lead a group of companies focused on the Java Platform Enterprise Edition that competes with its enterprise-wide computing solutions. Commercial competitors for its server applications for PC-based distributed client-server environments include CA Technologies, IBM, and Oracle. The company's web application platform software competes with open source software such as Apache, Linux, MySQL, and PHP. In middleware, the company compete against Java vendors.

The company's database, business intelligence, and data warehousing solutions offerings compete with products from IBM, Oracle, SAP, and other companies. The company's system management solutions compete with server management and server virtualization platform providers, such as BMC, CA Technologies, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and VMware. The company's products for software developers compete against offerings from Adobe, IBM, Oracle, and other companies, and also against open-source projects, including Eclipse (sponsored by CA Technologies, IBM, Oracle, and SAP), PHP, and Ruby on Rails.

The company believe its server products provide customers with advantages in performance, total costs of ownership, and productivity by delivering superior applications, development tools, compatibility with a broad base of hardware and software applications, security, and manageability.

Azure faces diverse competition from companies such as Amazon, Google, IBM, Oracle, Salesforce.com, VMware, and open source offerings. Azure’s competitive advantage includes enabling a hybrid cloud, allowing deployment of existing datacenters with its public cloud into a single, cohesive infrastructure, and the ability to run at a scale that meets the needs of businesses of all sizes and complexities.

The company's Enterprise Services business competes with a wide range of companies that provide strategy and business planning, application development, and infrastructure services, including multinational consulting firms and small niche businesses focused on specific technologies.

More Personal Computing

The company's More Personal Computing segment consists of products and services geared towards harmonizing the interests of end users, developers, and IT professionals across all devices. This segment primarily comprises:

• Windows, including Windows OEM licensing (“Windows OEM”) and other non-volume licensing of the Windows operating system; Windows Commercial, comprising volume licensing of the Windows operating system, Windows cloud services, and other Windows commercial offerings; patent licensing; Windows IoT; and MSN advertising.
• Devices, including Surface, PC accessories, and other intelligent devices.
• Gaming, including Xbox hardware and Xbox software and services, comprising Xbox Live transactions, subscriptions, and advertising (“Xbox Live”), video games, and third-party video game royalties.

Windows

The Windows operating system is designed to deliver a more personal computing experience for users by enabling consistency of experience, applications, and information across their devices. Windows OEM revenue is impacted significantly by the number of Windows operating system licenses purchased by OEMs, which they pre-install on the devices they sell. In addition to computing device market volume, Windows OEM revenue is impacted by:

• The mix of computing devices based on form factor and screen size.
• Differences in device market demand between developed markets and growth markets.
• Attachment of Windows to devices shipped.
• Customer mix between consumer, small and medium businesses, and large enterprises.
• Changes in inventory levels in the OEM channel.
• Pricing changes and promotions, pricing variation that occurs when the mix of devices manufactured shifts from local and regional system builders to large multinational OEMs, and different pricing of Windows versions licensed.

Piracy.

Windows Commercial revenue, which includes volume licensing of the Windows operating system and Windows cloud services such as Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection, is affected mainly by the demand from commercial customers for volume licensing and Software Assurance (“SA”), as well as advanced security offerings. Windows Commercial revenue often reflects the number of information workers in a licensed enterprise and is relatively independent of the number of PCs sold in a given year.

Patent licensing includes its programs to license patents the company own for use across a broad array of technology areas, including mobile devices and cloud offerings.

Windows IoT extends the power of Windows and the cloud to intelligent systems by delivering specialized operating systems, tools, and services for use in embedded devices.

MSN advertising includes both native and display ads.

Devices

The company design, manufacture, and sell devices, including Surface, PC accessories, and other intelligent devices, such as Surface Hub and HoloLens. The company's devices are designed to enable people and organizations to connect to the people and content that matter most using Windows and integrated Microsoft products and services. Surface is designed to help organizations, students, and consumers be more productive.

In May 2016, the company announced plans to streamline its smartphone hardware business. In November 2016, the company completed the sale of its feature Phone business.

Gaming

The company's gaming platform is designed to provide a unique variety of entertainment using its devices, peripherals, applications, online services, and content. The company released Xbox One S and Xbox One X in August 2016 and November 2017, respectively. With the launch of the Mixer service in May 2017, offering interactive live game streaming, and Xbox Game Pass in June 2017, providing unlimited access to over 100 Xbox titles, the company continue to open new opportunities for customers to engage both on- and off-console.

Xbox Live enables people to connect and share online gaming experiences and is accessible on Xbox consoles, Windows-enabled devices, and other devices. Xbox Live is designed to benefit users by providing access to a network of certified applications and services and to benefit its developer and partner ecosystems by providing access to a large customer base. Xbox Live revenue is mainly affected by subscriptions and sales of Xbox Live enabled content, as well as advertising. The company also continue to design and sell gaming content to showcase its unique platform capabilities for Xbox consoles, Windows-enabled devices, and other devices. Growth of its Gaming business is determined by the overall active user base through Xbox Live enabled content, availability of games, providing exclusive game content that gamers seek, the computational power and reliability of the devices used to access its content and services, and the ability to create new experiences via online services, downloadable content, and peripherals.

Search

The company's Search business, including Bing and Bing Ads, is designed to deliver relevant online advertising to a global audience. Microsoft Corp has several partnerships with other companies, including Oath (formerly Yahoo! and AOL) which is owned by Verizon, through which the company provide and monetize search queries. Growth depends on its ability to attract new users, understand intent, and match intent with relevant content and advertiser offerings.

Competition

Windows faces competition from various software products and from alternative platforms and devices, mainly from Apple and Google. The company believe Windows competes effectively by giving customers choice, value, flexibility, security, an easy-to-use interface, and compatibility with a broad range of hardware and software applications, including those that enable productivity.

Devices face competition from various computer, tablet, and hardware manufacturers who offer a unique combination of high-quality industrial design and innovative technologies across various price points. These manufacturers, many of which are also current or potential partners and customers, include Apple and its Windows OEMs.

The company's gaming platform competes with console platforms from Nintendo and Sony, both of which have a large, established base of customers. The lifecycle for gaming and entertainment consoles averages five to ten years. Nintendo released its latest generation console in March 2017 and Sony released its latest generation console in November 2013. The company also compete with other providers of entertainment services through online marketplaces. The company believe its gaming platform is effectively positioned against competitive products and services based on significant innovation in hardware architecture, user interface, developer tools, online gaming and entertainment services, and continued strong exclusive content from its own game franchises as well as other digital content offerings. The company's video games competitors include Electronic Arts and Activision Blizzard. Xbox Live faces competition from various online marketplaces, including those operated by Amazon, Apple, and Google.

The company's search business competes with Google and a wide array of websites, social platforms like Facebook, and portals that provide content and online offerings to end users.

OPERATIONS

Microsoft Corp has operations centers that support operations in their regions, including customer contract and order processing, credit and collections, information processing, and vendor management and logistics. The regional center in Ireland supports the European, Middle Eastern, and African region; the center in Singapore supports the Japan, India, Greater China, and Asia-Pacific region; and the centers in Fargo, North Dakota, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Puerto Rico, Redmond, Washington, and Reno, Nevada support Latin America and North America. In addition to the operations centers, the company also operate datacenters throughout the Americas, Australia, Europe, and Asia.

To serve the needs of customers around the world and to improve the quality and usability of products in international markets, the company localize many of its products to reflect local languages and conventions. Localizing a product may require modifying the user interface, altering dialog boxes, and translating text.

The company's devices are primarily manufactured by third-party contract manufacturers. The company generally have the ability to use other manufacturers if a current vendor becomes unavailable or unable to meet its requirements.

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

During fiscal years 2018, 2017, and 2016, research and development expense was $14.7 billion, $13.0 billion, and $12.0 billion, respectively. These amounts represented 13% of revenue in fiscal years 2018, 2017, and 2016. The company plan to continue to make significant investments in a broad range of research and development efforts.

Product and Service Development, and Intellectual Property

The company develop most of its products and services internally through the following engineering groups.

• Cloud and AI Platform, focuses on making IT professionals, developers, and their systems more productive and efficient through development of cloud infrastructure, server, database, CRM, ERP, management and development tools, AI cognitive services, and other business process applications and services for enterprises.
• Experiences and Devices, focuses on instilling a unifying product ethos across its end-user experiences and devices, including Office, Windows, Enterprise Mobility and Management, and devices.
• AI and Research, focuses on its AI innovations and other forward-looking research and development efforts spanning infrastructure, services, applications, and search.
• LinkedIn, focuses on its services that transform the way customers hire, market, sell, and learn.
• Gaming, focuses on connecting gaming assets across the range of devices to grow and engage the Xbox Live member network through game experiences, streaming content, and social interaction.

Internal development allows it to maintain competitive advantages that come from product differentiation and closer technical control over its products and services. It also gives it the freedom to decide which modifications and enhancements are most important and when they should be implemented. The company strive to obtain information as early as possible about changing usage patterns and hardware advances that may affect software and hardware design. Before releasing new software platforms, and as the company make significant modifications to existing platforms, the company provide application vendors with a range of resources and guidelines for development, training, and testing. Generally, the company also create product documentation internally.

The company protect its intellectual property investments in a variety of ways. The company work actively in the U.S. and internationally to ensure the enforcement of copyright, trademark, trade secret, and other protections that apply to its software and hardware products, services, business plans, and branding. Microsoft Corp is a leader among technology companies in pursuing patents and currently have a portfolio of over 53,000 U.S. and international patents issued and over 29,000 pending. While the company employ much of its internally developed intellectual property exclusively in its products and services, the company also engage in outbound licensing of specific patented technologies that are incorporated into licensees’ products. From time to time, the company enter into broader cross-license agreements with other technology companies covering entire groups of patents. The company also purchase or license technology that the company incorporate into its products and services. At times, the company make select intellectual property broadly available at no or low cost to achieve a strategic objective, such as promoting industry standards, advancing interoperability, or attracting and enabling its external development community. The company's increasing engagement with open source software will also cause it to license its intellectual property rights broadly in certain situations.

While it may be necessary in the future to seek or renew licenses relating to various aspects of its products, services, and business methods, the company believe, based upon past experience and industry practice, such licenses generally can be obtained on commercially reasonable terms. The company believe its continuing research and product development are not materially dependent on any single license or other agreement with a third party relating to the development of its products.

Investing in the Future

The company's success is based on its ability to create new and compelling products, services, and experiences for its users, to initiate and embrace disruptive technology trends, to enter new geographic and product markets, and to drive broad adoption of its products and services. The company invest in a range of emerging technology trends and breakthroughs that the company believe offer significant opportunities to deliver value to its customers and growth for the company. Based on its assessment of key technology trends, the company maintain its long-term commitment to research and development across a wide spectrum of technologies, tools, and platforms spanning digital work and life experiences, cloud computing, AI, devices, and operating systems.

While its main research and development facilities are located in Redmond, Washington, the company also operate research and development facilities in other parts of the U.S. and around the world, including Canada, China, India, Ireland, Israel, and the United Kingdom. This global approach helps it remain competitive in local markets and enables it to continue to attract top talent from across the world. The company generally fund research at the corporate level to ensure that Microsoft Corp is looking beyond immediate product considerations to opportunities further in the future. The company also fund research and development activities at the operating segment level. Much of its segment level research and development is coordinated with other segments and leveraged across the company.

In addition to its main research and development operations, the company also operate Microsoft Research. Microsoft Research is one of the world’s largest corporate research organizations and works in close collaboration with top universities around the world to advance the state-of-the-art in computer science and a broad range of other disciplines, providing it a unique perspective on future trends and contributing to its innovation.

DISTRIBUTION, SALES, AND MARKETING

The company market and distribute its products and services through the following channels: OEMs, direct, and distributors and resellers. The company's sales force performs a variety of functions, including working directly with enterprises and public-sector organizations worldwide to identify and meet their technology requirements; managing OEM relationships; and supporting system integrators, independent software vendors, and other partners who engage directly with its customers to perform sales, consulting, and fulfillment functions for its products and services.

OEMs

The company distribute its products and services through OEMs that pre-install its software on new devices and servers they sell. The largest component of the OEM business is the Windows operating system pre-installed on devices. OEMs also sell devices pre-installed with other Microsoft products and services, including applications such as Office and the capability to subscribe to Office 365.

There are two broad categories of OEMs. The largest category of OEMs are direct OEMs as its relationship with them is managed through a direct agreement between Microsoft and the OEM. Microsoft Corp has distribution agreements covering one or more of its products with virtually all the multinational OEMs, including Acer, ASUS, Dell, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Samsung, Toshiba, and with many regional and local OEMs. The second broad category of OEMs are system builders consisting of lower-volume PC manufacturers, which source Microsoft software for pre-installation and local redistribution primarily through the Microsoft distributor channel rather than through a direct agreement or relationship with Microsoft.

Direct

Many organizations that license its products and services transact directly with it through Enterprise Agreements and Enterprise Services contracts, with sales support from system integrators, independent software vendors, web agencies, and partners that advise organizations on licensing its products and services (“Enterprise Agreement Software Advisors”, or “ESA”). Microsoft offers direct sales programs targeted to reach small, medium, and corporate customers, in addition to those offered through the reseller channel. A large network of partner advisors support many of these sales.

The company also sell commercial and consumer products and services directly to customers, such as cloud services, search, and gaming, through its digital marketplaces, online stores, and retail stores.

Distributors and Resellers

Organizations also license its products and services indirectly, primarily through licensing solution partners (“LSP”), distributors, value-added resellers (“VAR”), and retailers. Although each type of reselling partner may reach organizations of all sizes, LSPs are primarily engaged with large organizations, distributors resell primarily to VARs, and VARs typically reach small and medium organizations. ESAs are also typically authorized as LSPs and operate as resellers for its other volume licensing programs. Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider is its main partner program for reselling cloud services.

The company distribute its retail packaged products primarily through independent non-exclusive distributors, authorized replicators, resellers, and retail outlets. Individual consumers obtain these products primarily through retail outlets. The company distribute its devices through third-party retailers. Microsoft Corp has a network of field sales representatives and field support personnel that solicit orders from distributors and resellers, and provide product training and sales support.

The company's Dynamics business solutions are also licensed to enterprises through a global network of channel partners providing vertical solutions and specialized services.

LICENSING OPTIONS

The company offer options for organizations that want to purchase its cloud services, on-premises software, and Software Assurance. The company license software to organizations under volume licensing agreements to allow the customer to acquire multiple licenses of products and services instead of having to acquire separate licenses through retail channels. The company use different programs designed to provide flexibility for organizations of various sizes. While these programs may differ in various parts of the world, generally they include those discussed below.

SA conveys rights to new software and upgrades for perpetual licenses released over the contract period. It also provides support, tools, and training to help customers deploy and use software efficiently. SA is included with certain volume licensing agreements and is an optional purchase with others.

Volume Licensing Programs

Enterprise Agreement

Enterprise Agreements offer large organizations a manageable volume licensing program that gives them the flexibility to buy cloud services and software licenses under one agreement. Enterprise Agreements are designed for medium or large organizations that want to license cloud services and on-premises software organization-wide over a three-year period. Organizations can elect to purchase perpetual licenses or subscribe to licenses. SA is included.

Microsoft Product and Services Agreement

Microsoft Product and Services Agreements are designed for medium and large organizations that want to license cloud services and on-premises software as needed, with no organization-wide commitment, under a single, non-expiring agreement. Organizations purchase perpetual licenses or subscribe to licenses. SA is optional for customers that purchase perpetual licenses.

Open

Open agreements are a simple, cost-effective way to acquire the latest Microsoft technology. Open agreements are designed for small and medium organizations that want to license cloud services and on-premises software over a one- to three-year period. Under the Open agreements, organizations purchase perpetual licenses and SA is optional. Under Open Value agreements, organizations can elect to purchase perpetual licenses or subscribe to licenses and SA is included.

Select Plus

Select Plus agreements are designed for government and academic organizations to acquire on-premises licenses at any affiliate or department level, while realizing advantages as one organization. Organizations purchase perpetual licenses and SA is optional.

In July 2014, the company announced the retirement over a two-year period of Select Plus agreements for commercial organizations. Beginning July 2015, no new Select Plus agreements were signed with commercial organizations.

Microsoft Online Subscription Agreement

Microsoft Online Subscription Agreements are designed for small and medium organizations that want to subscribe to, activate, provision, and maintain cloud services seamlessly and directly via the web. The agreement allows customers to acquire monthly or annual subscriptions for cloud-based services.

Partner Programs

The Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider program offers customers an easy way to license the cloud services they need in combination with the value-added services offered by their systems integrator, hosting partner, or cloud reseller partner. Partners in this program can easily package their own products and services to directly provision, manage, and support their customer subscriptions.

The Microsoft Services Provider License Agreement allows service providers and independent software vendors who want to license eligible Microsoft software products to provide software services and hosted applications to their end customers. Partners license software over a three-year period and are billed monthly based on consumption.

The Independent Software Vendor Royalty program enables partners to integrate Microsoft products into other applications and then license the unified business solution to their end users.

CUSTOMERS

The company's customers include individual consumers, small and medium organizations, large global enterprises, public-sector institutions, internet service providers, application developers, and OEMs. No sales to an individual customer accounted for more than 10% of revenue in fiscal years 2018, 2017, or 2016. The company's practice is to ship its products promptly upon receipt of purchase orders from customers; consequently, backlog is not significant.

EMPLOYEES

As of June 30, 2018, the company employed approximately 131,000 people on a full-time basis, 78,000 in the U.S. and 53,000 internationally. Of the total employed people, 42,000 were in operations, including manufacturing, distribution, product support, and consulting services; 42,000 were in product research and development; 36,000 were in sales and marketing; and 11,000 were in general and administration. Certain of its employees are subject to collective bargaining agreements.