Microsoft Case Heidi Wadovick, Ahmed Ahmed, Davis Lang, Israel Gomez, Keshana Omune, Lifan Chen 5 May 2021 Intro: Heidi • Identify the key problems and issues in the case study

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Microsoft Case Heidi Wadovick, Ahmed Ahmed, Davis Lang, Israel Gomez, Keshana Omune, Lifan Chen 5 May 2021 Intro: Heidi • Identify the key problems and issues in the case study. Thesis: Formulate and include a thesis statement, summarizing the outcome of your analysis in 1-2 sentences. In the case of Microsoft there are many problems that were made evident. But, each problem we see in the case ultimately leads back to the poor management which is the overarching issue for Microsoft. In this case we see that Microsoft goes through many different CEO’s. This is not to say that a change in management is a bad thing, but for this company they cannot seem to get it right. In the early years of Microsoft when Bill Gates was in charge things were grim in the management department. He only wanted people working for him that were just like him; strong willed and insanely smart. If Gates did not think you were strong or smart enough you were belittled and eventually out of the company. Gates’ management style led to low employee retention and hurt the company. This alone shows poor management but Gates went on to break employees into two groups; “outstanding performers” and “poor performers”. Outstanding performers were employees that performed on the scale and timeline of Gates’ liking. Poor Performers were employees that were just as skilled but maybe needed a little more time to adjust to be able to blossom at Microsoft. This categorization does nothing but breed a competitive environment and ultimately shows poorly for management. These extremely high standards to perform create fear in employees, an individualistic culture, and a toxic work environment. In doing this management in Microsoft pitted departments and workers against each other instead of having them work together. While Gates made it extremely hard for employees at the company he also at times did not even know how many people worked for Microsoft. This truly shows the absence of structure Microsoft had in the management department. This structural issue continues in other top management positions. We saw that there were far too many positions of power which made decision making difficult. Instead of a clear line of power it was confusing and created major efficiency problems. We also saw these management issues with Ballmer, not just Gates. As CEO, Ballmer, showed a major lack of communication, especially in the R&D department with escalated commitment. We saw this escalated development with Microsoft's gaming console Xbox. Microsoft was intent on having a “computer in the living room” and believed that Xbox would fill this gap in their portfolio of products. While it was able to break into that market there was a series of problems that came along with it. First being that Microsoft took too long in the developmental stages and Sony’s Playstation led the market. Instead of taking the loss and focusing resources on other endeavors Microsoft continued to pour money and time into the gaming console, to the point that they began to lose about $100 on every one sold. Instead of using scenario based planning for foreseeable offerings from other companies like Google, Apple, and Amazon; Microsoft continued with products that first started their competitive advantage even when they were no longer leaders in those categories of products. We saw this with the search engine Bing, the Surface tablet, and other innovations from Microsoft. These issues of escalated commitment led to the company being blindsided and ultimately losing their market share lead. It is evident that the problems in management inevitably trickled down and created problems in every department of the company and without solid management there will always be these issues. In 2014 we all knew Microsoft to be a multi billion dollar powerhouse of a company with Bill Gates having the top spot on the list of the world’s richest people with a net worth of $76 billion dollars at 58 years old (Estevez, 2014). Astonishingly, Microsoft has had its share of major hiccups along the way just like many other companies and to understand how their success was made possible, we will take a deeper look into the history of Microsoft. It was 1975, Bill Gates was 19 years old, he was a recent drop out of the prestigious Harvard University after his 22 year old friend who attended Washington State University, named Paul Allen convinced his former high school classmate to focus on working with him. They had this amazing passion for computers which brought them tightly together as a team. Together they worked tirelessly to create a unique version of BASIC (a series of codes) to run on “the world’s first commercially available Personal Computer (PC) , the MITS Altair 8800, which used an Intel 8080 microprocessor” (cengage, year). With great excitement the two of them built up the courage to take their project to MITS, demonstrate it with pure flawlessness and gain their attention. Sold! Microsoft, the first company to sell software to run on a PC was born. These two College Dropouts shook up the software industry with a bang. Throughout the early years of Microsoft the focus was to make their product reach more consumers, so they duplicated the system for the existing PC, the Apple II which became a widely sold product in 1979. The following year in 1980 two important changes occurred for Microsoft: Steve Ballmer, the only Harvard student to do better than Bill Gates on mathematics and economics exams joined the team as employee #30 and Bill Gates made a genius move by advising IBM to adopt a 16-bit intel processor and an open architecture which would both benefit IBM “from software and peripherals'' from the inevitable emerging threats. IBM accepted Gates’s advise and went with the 16-bit intel processor. This was now an issue for IBM as they were originally going to license a CP/M 8-bit operating system that is not compatible with the newly acquired 16-bit intel processor. What to do? Gates acted quickly in buying a local computer company, Seattle Computer, for a small fee of $50,000. Seattle Computer produced a compatible 16-bit operating system, after the purchase, Gates renamed the operating system MSDOS and offered to license this to IBM, they accepted the terms and conditions. Together, by 1982, IBM gained Market leadership in the pc market and gained an edge on the previous leader, the Apple II. The success of IBM lit a fire in developers across the nation and clone PC’s that were very very similar to IBM’s PC in that they all used the MS-DOS operating system and similar intel processors, the only difference was in the code which is why there was never any copyright issue. The terms accepted by IBM from Microsoft were non-exclusive terms which played into Microsoft’s favor as they were able to sell MS-DOS to all clone makers across the board, upsetting IBM with their decision. Microsoft in the early 1980s, began to expand their product offerings starting with one of their classic offerings, Word (1983), which ran on their MS-DOS operating system. They created a version of Word to run on the new Apple offering, the Macintosh in 1985 and they also came up with their first spreadsheet, Excel which immediately competed with Lotus 1-2-3 the market leader at the time. While working with Apple, because of another licence agreement, Gates was able to adopt Apple’s Mac’s GUI interface and named it Windows. Windows was the marker for when IBM and Microsoft departed from doing business together. Windows success ultimately made that a great thing for Microsoft as IBM’s market share grew smaller and smaller. After their quick growth as a company, Microsoft decided to go public in 1986, valued at $650 million. Gates, now on his own due to Paul Allen being diagnosed in 1982 and treated for his Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, adopted the “if you can’t beat them, buy them” mentality and purchased a start up company in 1987, which later became known as PowerPoint in 1990. Microsoft with the MSDOS, was now receiving a license fee from manufacturers per machine which allowed them to experience gross margins upwards to 90%, 50% more than the PC industry average. Microsoft was experiencing an apparent competitive advantage. In 1990, Windows 3.0 was introduced with noticeable improvements to their previous Windows offerings. Along with a better Windows, Microsoft also bettered their extremely well known applications, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Two years later in 1992, Microsoft decided to combine these three highly used applications into a bundle and called the bundle Office. Strategically, Microsoft priced Office slightly cheaper than all three applications separated, making this an incentive for consumers to purchase Office comfortably, knowing they are making a smart choice. Office was suited perfectly for information workers. Microsoft furthered their business towards enterprises as they focused development on “client-server systems,” with this Windows NT with 32-bit technology was created in 1993. Simultaneously, an Office application called Outlook was added; this was Microsoft’s client email offering targeted once again towards enterprise businesses across the globe. Never satisfied, Microsoft continued making new and improved versions of Windows coming out with Windows 95 in 1995 and Windows XP in 1998 making DOS a thing of the past. Furthermore, Windows 95 was bundled with Internet Explorer, Gates’s answer to the internet tidal wave that emerged from left field, together they gained massive success. Windows was basically an operating system on its own demolishing Apple and the Macintosh forcing Apple into bankruptcy just two years later in 1997. Microsoft had created two monopolies with the highly successful, unmatched, Windows and Office offerings. At its high point Windows operating system was used on 95% of every computer in the world and by 2012 Office had 90% of the Market Share. The sustained success that Microsoft was experiencing after the decade of Market leadership with Windows and Office would soon be met by a rude awakening for a newly appointed CEO. Gates handed the CEO role over to the very intelligent Steve Ballmer, his old buddy from Harvard who Gates respected very much. Going back in time, Gates offered stock option incentives to his key employees in the 80’s. Well Microsoft killed the 1980’s and the 1990’s and consequently, the stock options awarded to these employees created an estimated 10,000 millionaires within the walls at Microsoft. The most consequential part to this is the fact that by 2000 due to the financial stability of these employees, their competitive edge in terms of innovation was diminished tremendously. Microsoft was witnessing these new millionaires retire from working and investing in their own business ideas. Steve Ballmer was left with the rest of them, these brain power losses translated to the company and the public view which was represented in Microsoft’s then stagnating stock prices. Despite the stock prices plateauing the companies revenues and net profit blew up significantly, 280% and 215% respectively. Microsoft, saw an increase in outside threats and were forced to diversify and diversify quickly. Three major competitors appeared in Google, the once bankrupt Apple and Amazon. The name of the game had changed and Steve Ballmer was repeatedly blind sided by competitors' products. Microsoft was still more of an enterprise company and not so much a consumer company, what was once an advantage became a key problem for Microsoft. Gates had a longtime dream to have a system in every living room and so he decided to go the game console route attempting to compete in a red ocean with Sony’s Playstation, and Nintendo’s Wii, an interactive gaming system. Truthfully speaking this may have been a market that Microsoft was better off leaving alone as they lost about $100 dollars on every XBox sold. The only part in this attempt to diversify product offerings that did well was the subscription, Xbox Live which was the online subscription that was needed for the Xbox 360. Microsoft continued to go after red oceans following their competition in existing competitive markets, while simultaneously escalating commitment towards their matured products, Windows and Office. With the position that Microsoft had, they were not investing in products for a good return on investment, another big reason their stock price had flattened and investors strayed away. Microsoft’s culture was now presenting issues while correlating to the lack of innovation that Microsoft once thrived off of. Microsoft was unable to catch a break as increasing threats forced action within. After the Xbox, came another struggle in trying to find the right fit for their internet search problem trying to compete with Google. Microsoft's search feature was initially called MSN, it was later switched to Windows Live Search with some new features, and it ended up becoming Bing which ended up having a 10-year partnership with Yahoo. The initial change to Bing cost Microsoft a fortune (-$100 million dollars) after the very confusing name changes that Microsoft’s consumers experienced. This was a big blow and a step in the wrong direction for the Ballmer years. At a point in time, 2007 Microsoft was leading in the smartphone market. 42% of all smartphones used the Windows Mobile operating system. The lead did not last. The first iPhone had captured consumers world wide, with their sleek design and ease of use. Another competitor in Google appeared in 2009 with the Android smartphone that went on to trump Apple, and Microsoft (in that order) in sales starting in 2011. A year earlier in 2010, Apple introduced the first iPad, followed by Androids tablet offering, and Microsoft late to the party, introduced a smartphone operating system, Windows Phone and duplicated Apple’s strategy in terms of having an app store. With the emergence of the smartphones, Microsoft and Nokia desperately entered into an alliance with one another. After this, around 2012 is when Microsoft offered a cross between a tablet and a laptop, the Surface to the tablet market. It wasn’t until 2014 with the Surface Pro 3.0 with $2 billion in sales, that Microsoft saw any sort of success in these two highly competitive markets. Ballmer experienced major heat for his highly anticipated Windows offering, Windows Vista. This may have been his biggest blunder as Windows Vista was extremely behind schedule by two years, released in 2007. It was also several billion dollars over budget, this was met with harsh reviews and negative feedback from those who purchased it. It required more than what the consumer was willing to pay, I mean this when talking about the amount of storage Vista needed on any given PC. Windows Vista simply failed miserably. In part, the structure of Microsoft did not help as Gates was hands on with the project while Ballmer was hands off because he feared going against Bill Gates. The non-flat structure that was Microsoft cohesively hurt the development process. Escalating commitment was once again hindering the success of Microsoft under Steve Ballmer. Windows XP (8-years-old) still experienced 63% of the market share after the brand new Windows Vista captured only 19%. Pressure for Ballmer continued to rise. The next big challenge for Microsoft involved cloud computing, the idea to have server farms instead of one server or PC within an enterprise. Microsoft ultimately had no choice but to commit to the Cloud as it was predicted to be a $150 billion industry in 2020. This switch was a huge change for Microsoft as they had to experience a smaller percentage of gross margins that they were used to. With the server farms they now had fixed costs of upwards to $2 billion, something foreign to Microsoft for quite some time. The cloud computing rival that Microsoft went up against was Amazon’s AWS which has been the market share leader for quite some time, Microsoft following there too. Now into the Mid 2010s, 2014 with Steve Ballmer ready to pass on the CEO baton Satya Nadella stepped up. Change was needed for Microsoft and Nadella was ready to lead the change and make it well perceived by both employees and those investing in Microsoft… Goodnight An underlying issue for the escalating commitment paired with lack of innovation, no retainment of employees, bad company culture, and market shares stagnating is Microsoft's management throughout their history. Bill Gates, a smart man, but a man who lacked a tremendous amount of emotional intelligence Alternatives: Davis • Outline possible alternatives (not necessarily all of them). - what exactly are these alternatives to? To our recommendation or to what Microsoft is currently doing? Ill ask tomorrow if no one can see this • Explain why alternatives were rejected. - can do broad reason stemming from mismanagement. (can use what I did for presentation and go into the history why we think buying Microsoft is a bad idea) • Constraints/reasons - would be individual to each alternative • Why are alternatives not possible at this time? - Alternatives to our recommendations: A first alternative to our recommendation would be to buy a significant minority stake in the company, with the current Microsoft leadership still owning a majority of the shares and retaining the loudest voice with the company. This would ensure that International Everything Inc. would have a financial stake in the company, however significant, and be receiving value from Microsoft’s business, but not with the complicated process of acquisition and having to potentially deal with the holdings if issues do come up. They still would be very concerned about the direction of the company and if they can make a profit of their investment, so this would be contingent on them trusting the current management to make the right decisions. It is conceivably too risky to acquire the whole company since it is most likely going to be very expensive, but Microsoft still does have a lot of value and potential to be a worthwhile acquisition and International Everything could bank on the share price increasing with the new developments and progress that Microsoft has made. There are a few holdings that Microsoft has that investors can bank on to grow revenue and make Microsoft more wealthy than it already is, specifically the Cloud computing initiative and the Surface tablet, whose sales have skyrocketed as of recently. However, this alternative would ultimately be rejected for a few reasons. Firstly, International Everything Inc. would have limited control over Microsoft and like we said previously, would be contingent on them fully trusting the management team to make the right decisions to grow the stock price. Discussed in further detail earlier (I assume), Microsoft has been plagued by mismanagement issues throughout the entire history of the company. From missed opportunities, bad releases and overall just plain bad management, it really is hard to trust Microsoft to keep a tight ship. Although Nadella has taken steps to curb out some of these problems, the culture that was there before him seems so ingrained within the company that it’s hard to justify putting faith in their management team. Secondly, it is hard to estimate how much exactly it would cost to buy this minority stake, as if announced publicly before shares are bought, the price could rapidly fluctuate. If this grows too high, International Everything would probably see a reduced stake in the company to what they wanted, and their value would lessen since the stock price would be too high. If they somehow timed it right when the stock price has dipped then this could be a considerable option, but that is too risky and unpredictable to be a viable strategy. Another alternative to this alternative would be to buy a division within the company, but it is extremely unlikely that Microsoft would sell anything to them and what they might give them, the Nokia division, would not be worth it. The second alternative would be to acquire the whole company and keep the current leadership in place. Again, this would be contingent on International Everything trusting the new leadership led by Nadella and his team. Microsoft’s early returns with him at the helm have been promising and could leave some to believe that this time is different. His new motto of “Mobile first, Cloud first” has been shown with his increased investment in Cloud computing that has seen revenue grow 114% compared to last year and $5.5 billion in annualized revenues, and his adoption of putting Office 365 and Windows for free or very little cost on iOS and Android to jumpstart business on these products. He has taken visible steps to change the culture and has publicly denounced it as too bureaucratic and political with no real accountability. Additionally, he has laid off 18,000 employees, with most coming from the Nokia Division, in a sign of change and warning that Microsoft needs to be more efficient to compete. He has also unveiled Windows 10, set to be released in December ‘15, and has added popular features back and removed the Metro interface which has caused problems for Microsoft in the past. He is set to release this for free for Windows 7 and 8 for the first year after its release to try to bring back consumer support for the product, although it’s estimated that it could lose up to $500 million from this strategy. Along with this, Office 365 subscribers have jumped up 30%, Surface sales have reached new highs, Bing’s market share has grown to 19.7%, and search and advertising revenues have increased by 23%. However, this alternative would be rejected for a lot of the same reasons as before. It still is hard to trust Microsoft’s management in any capacity even though some of these changes have been a breath of fresh air for the company. Change stems from the top, and bringing in a new face from outside the company could do wonders if the goal of acquisition is for Microsoft to retake the position as the true global tech leader over Google, Apple and Amazon. Possible problems might occur between the new board of directors and the current management system if it is kept intact, and this might lead to even more mismanagement down the line which would essentially just be a repeat of the same cycle. We personally disagree with some of the decisions that Nadella has made in his first year, and if the owners and management team are not on the same page would spell trouble for the future. It would also be a massive investment for International Everything to make, as Microsoft is one of the richest companies in the world, and we would have to have absolute trust that they can turn this ship around to make it a worthwhile investment for our company to make. A third alternative would be Alternatives to for the products Microsoft is offering: Proposed Solution: While the main problem of Microsoft is clearly its management overall, it inevitably trickled down and created issues through every department of the company. These problems include innovation, company culture norms, and escalated commitment. These problems were created by the overarching issue of mismanagement. While looking at these problems we came up with specific solutions to address each of these issues. These solutions combined with continued effective management from Nadella will help put Microsoft back on track to the top. With innovation we believe that the best solution is to get ahead of the competition of some companies like Apple and Sony. The best way to do this is to allocate more resources to research and development and use scenario planning to see the future of innovation before it happens. Microsoft ran into many problems in the past with being late to the market with products instead of considering new ventures that have not been explored by other companies. Specific areas that Microsoft needs to be focusing their resources and scenario planning are mobile and cloud computing. In an article published by Vanity Fair it was said that Microsoft was “...littered with errors, missed opportunities, and the devolution of one of the industry’s innovators into a “me too” purveyor of other companies’ consumer products” (Eichenwald, 2012). From what we learned in class and from this article it is clear that Microsoft needs to stop jumping on every other company's bandwagon and instead create something new of their own. This solution is best because it is moving towards the future. Cloud computing is an innovation that is changing our world on the internet and being a top contender in that market would help improve Microsoft’s competitive advantage. Improving their market share on the mobile device market is key in gaining competitive advantage against other big names like Apple. With this scenario based planning and more narrow focus of R&D Microsoft can once again be a leader in the industry. Regarding the issues of Microsoft's company culture, there are a few things that can help resolve this problem. The first solution would be to flatten the organizational structure. There are also too many high positions of power which affect their efficiency. By flattening the organization, something that we discussed in class, it would remove some of these hierarchies and would allow Microsoft to clearly make decisions. Another solution would be to empower employees. We see that the employee retention is extremely low in Microsoft and empowering these employees is a step in the right direction to change that. Another solution to this problem of poor company culture is enhanced performance review assessments. In microsoft we see that the way employees are reviewed is extremely flawed. Instead of a 360 assessment like we have discussed in class Microsoft ranks their employees into two categories. The first category being “outstanding performers”, ones that have all the qualities of Gates himself and stick to the strict timeline he has in place for progress. The other group is “poor performers”, these employees are just as good as the other group in any other standards but do not match how fast Gates wants to see improvement. This ranking system that Microsoft has in place inherently pits employees and departments against each other instead of having them work effectively as a team, and creates a toxic work environment. Our solution of more positive and rounded reviews will help solve this problem of poor corporate culture and is backed up by an article in “The Guardian” suggesting the same antidote. In this article they also lay out a more positive way to go about reviews by stating what said employee is doing well and securing their job before focussing on ways to improve (Gassee, 2012). We believe these positive reviews combined with 360 assessments will stop the toxic work environment. These solutions will aid Microsoft in being more efficient and maintain employees. The solution to Microsoft’s issue of escalated commitment is to focus on the feedback loop. Microsoft tends to “go all in” on products that aren’t doing well instead of calling it and moving on to other innovations. We saw this escalated commitment with their gaming counsel, Xbox. Microsoft poured resources into development even though they were extremely far behind their competitors in the market. This led to exorbitant losses on both time and money. This is a situation that we want to avoid. Instead of putting resources to this market they could have used that money and time on breaking into a new market in the future. They should listen to the feedback loop, especially when it is warning major losses. Microsoft is very good at customer responsiveness and using that competitive advantage they would be able to further their market share and avoid escalated commitment. While the overarching problem that Microsoft faces is in their managerial department it has clearly leaked into every aspect of the company. The issue of poor management is very broad and does not have a specific solution besides simply hiring better CEO’s. With these solutions we took a look at the many problems, including innovation, company culture, and escalated commitment, that are caused by this poor management and ways that they can be fixed. Recommendations: Keshana • Determine and discuss specific strategies for accomplishing the proposed solution. • If applicable, recommend further action to resolve some of the issues. • What should be done and who should do it? There are multiple recommendations Microsoft can implement to improve their overall strategy and competitive position. These suggestions include scenario planning, decentralized planning, identifying past success and failed strategic initiatives, and maintaining quality and customer responsiveness to promote a positive image and brand loyalty. This can be achieved through “what-if” scenarios to make wise investment decisions when considering new ventures, improve R&D on products that correspond closely to customer needs. Decentralized planning can include giving more power to employees, rather than incentives that cause them to retire, lose competitive edge, or circulate within the company. Instead, managers should invite discussion, recommendations, and ideas from employees to retain talent. Other methods to improve decision making include devil’s advocacy, dialectic inquiry, and outside view to facilitate better planning and communication in the company overall. Top managers should execute a plan reflecting the current reality, but implement alternatives if they recognize changes in that reality. Microsoft’s global strategy is an international strategy as they sell products that meet universal needs. Unfortunately this strategy is characterized by challenges with emerging markets as we see more success with developed markets, especially the U.S. Issues in China, for instance, included piracy, intellectual property violations, and difficulty meeting needs of consumers in such emerging markets. Recommendations to improve Microsoft’s global strategy include more diversity in the company’s approach with products and business models to compete globally and shifting focus to cloud computing and looking at trends to determine what appeals to emerging markets. As far as innovation, Microsoft attempted to expand their product offerings by developing their Xbox gaming console as well as mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones. Unfortunately, due to strong competitors and their poor positioning strategies, innovation outcomes were not met with the intended success. For example, the Windows phone suffered from poor design and was targeted to business users, whereas Apple products were much more user friendly and appealed to a wider range of consumers. Recommendations to improve Microsoft’s innovation strategies would be to innovate in areas that aren’t saturated or flooding the market, focus on successful product offerings, and position accordingly. References Eichenwald, K. (2012, August). How Microsoft Lost Its Mojo: Steve Ballmer and Corporate America's Most Spectacular Decline. Vanity Fair. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2012/08/microsoft-lost-mojo-steve-ballmer. Gassee, J.-L. (2012, August 13). How Microsoft's human resources culture drove away talent. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2012/aug/13/microsoft-human-resourcesculture. stop the toxic work environment. These solutions will aid Microsoft in being more efficient and maintain employees. The solution to Microsoft's issue of escalated commitment is to focus on the feedback loop. Microsoft tends to “go all in” on products that aren't doing well instead of calling it and H Heidi Wadovick 11:14 PM Yesterday moving on to other innovations. We saw this escalated commitment with their gaming counsel, find book/ course references to this solution Xbox. Microsoft poured resources into development even though they were extremely far behind their competitors in the market. This led to exorbitant losses on both time and money. This is a situation that we want to avoid. Instead of putting resources to this market they could have used that money and time on breaking into a new market in the future. They should listen to the Proposed Solution: While the main problem of Microsoft is clearly its management overall, it inevitably + trickled down and created issues through every department of the company. These problems H Heidi Wadovick 10:12 PM Yesterday include innovation, company culture norms, and escalated commitment. These problems were we can build off of this and add more substance to back up each solution with things from the book and outside sources created by the overarching issue of mismanagement. While looking at these problems we came up with specific solutions to address each of these issues. These solutions combined with continued effective management from Nadella will help put Microsoft back on track to the top. up with specific solutions to address each of these issues. These solutions combined with continued effective management from Nadella will help put Microsoft back on track to the top. With innovation we believe that the best solution is to get ahead of the competition of some companies like Apple and Sony. The best way to do this is to allocate more resources to H Heidi Wadovick 10:56 PM Yesterday research and development and use scenario planning to see the future of innovation before it https://www.vanityfair.com/news/busin ess/2012/08/microsoft-lost-mojo-steve- ballmer happens. Microsoft ran into many problems in the past with being late to the market with products instead of considering new ventures that have not been explored by other companies. H Heidi Wadovick 11:17 PM Yesterday Specific areas that Microsoft needs to be focusing their resources and scenario planning are Ahmed, feel free to add book/ course references into this mobile and cloud computing. In an article published by Vanity Fair it was said that Microsoft