Microsoft engineering groups are the operating divisions of
Microsoft. Starting in April 2002, Microsoft organised itself into seven groups, each an independent financial entity.[1] In September 2005, Microsoft announced a reorganization of its then seven groups into three.[2] In July 2013, Microsoft announced another reorganization into five engineering groups and six corporate affairs groups.[3] A year later, in June 2015, Microsoft reformed into three engineering groups.[4] In September 2016, a new group was created to focus on
artificial intelligence and research.[5] On March 29, 2018, a new structure merged all of these into three.[6][7]
This group produces consumer and enterprise experiences, spanning from Windows products and devices to Microsoft 365 productivity subscription solution. Experiences and Devices is led by Rajesh Jha; Windows and Devices is led by Panos Panay; Office Product Group is led by Joe Belfiore; Web Experiences and Advertising is led by Mikhail Parakhin.
Windows IoT – 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.[11]
Windows 10 Mobile,
Windows Phone and
Windows Mobile – designed for smartphones and small tablets. The last OS in this group viz. Windows 10 Mobile includes all basic consumer features, including
Continuum capability. These all have been discontinued.[12][13][14]
The Microsoft hardware division is responsible for producing self-branded
hardware and various lines of
consumer electronics products. They consist of:
Bing (known previously as Live Search, Windows Live Search, and MSN Search) is a
web search engine (advertised as a "
decision engine"[27]) from
Microsoft. As of October 2018[update], Bing is the third largest search engine globally, with a query volume of 4.58%, behind
Google (77%) and
Baidu (14.45%).[28] A complete list of search offerings from Bing can be found
here. Under Bing, below non-search offerings are also listed:
Bing Ads – an advertising service that provides
pay per click advertising on various search engines.[29]
MSN is a
web portal and related collection of
Internet services and
apps for
Windows and
mobile devices, provided by
Microsoft. It was launched in 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.[34] The redesign of MSN proved positive and helped increase traffic with an additional ten million daily visitors after two months.[35] MSN is based in the
United States and offers international versions of its portal for dozens of countries around the world.[36]
Cloud + AI
This group focuses on building the core foundations. It was originally the Cloud and Enterprise group until March 2018, when it was expanded with the Windows core platform team merged into it. Led by
Scott Guthrie.
Microsoft Azure[37] 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. Within the Azure team
Microsoft Visual Studio[38] 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.
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.[39]
Microsoft Servers[40] (previously called Windows Server System) is a brand that encompasses
Microsoft's
server products. This includes the
Windows Server editions of the
Microsoft Windowsoperating system itself, as well as products targeted at the wider business market.[41] Microsoft's 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.
In July 2016, Microsoft moved the Windows Server team and its related products to the Windows and Devices Group, further justifying one Windows core across all platforms.[42]
In 2016, Microsoft made plans to operate an experimental
underwater server farm off the coast of
Orkney.[41] The
nitrogen-atmosphere enclosed server farm was actually moved into position under the sea in May 2018, and included 855 servers. Powered exclusively by electricity from the
Sun and
wind, the server farm operated for two years, until May 2020, when the experiment ended, the enclosed tube was recovered, and brought to the surface for analysis. Preliminary results showed only 8 of the 855 servers failed during the two-year test, a failure rate of just 1/8 that of Microsoft's above ground server farms.[43][needs update]
Technologies + Research
This group was created in September 2016 to emphasize the company's presence on artificial intelligence. It was formed when parts of the former Apps and Services group came together with the research team to form a fourth engineering group.[5][44] Led by
Harry Shum.
Microsoft Research was created with the intent to advance state of the art computing and solve difficult world problems through technological innovation in collaboration with academic, government, and industry researchers.