Leveraging the Microsoft Community

Editor's Notes

• #3: Microsoft is one of the most well-known and pervasive companies in the world today. Our products are used by billions of people every day across the globe, as part of the way they live, work, learn and play. So, maybe, you think you know us well already?  Well today, I want to share with you the past, present and, especially, the future of Microsoft. We have a rich and proud history, we are currently transforming our business and we have a very exciting future ahead of us.
• #4: Four key points:  We’re 125,000 employees.  We’re a global company. Today, we operate in over 190 countries.  And we’re diverse. Yes, we are a software company. So naturally we have a lot of mathematicians, engineers, software designer and computer scientists. We employ, for example, over 1,000 PhD’s. But we also offer plenty of opportunities for a very wide range of individuals – sales, marketing, finance, customer services, we employ musicians, Oscar winners, social anthrapologists, story-tellers etc etc  Finally, in every country were we operate, we want to make a lasting and sustainable contribution to our local community. One of our primary areas of focus here is education, where we are committed to helping realize the potential of young people.  As one example, we have a program called Partners in Learning which offers software, services and support to schools and colleges. I am pleased to share with you that this program has already benefited more than 40M students and 2M teachers here in Asia Pacific.      
• #5: I said we had a rich and proud history and one that is fairly well-known in our industry. Microsoft was founded in 1975 by two young friends – Bill Gates and Paul Allen. They saw a magazine cover, shown here, that featured the world’s first affordable “personal” computer. As you can see, it really didn’t amount to much – no screen, no keyboard, sound or graphics etc – not even an operating system. But it was the first PC as we know it today. These two friends built the first operating system for this rudimentary computer – called MS-DOS – and Microsoft was born. <<Click>> From the beginning, the founders had a simple, but compelling vision – a PC on every desk and in every home. Now at that time, the world was dominated by mainframe computing, so this was a highly-radical vision, one that the world was not necessarily prepared for. But, by and large, that vision came true.
• #6: These images sum up the rapid pace of change that has happened from here to there. We will always be ‘here’, trying to figure out what ‘there’ looks like so we can help create it. This image shows the importance of always imagining a future that seems impossible. I am inspired by the thought and strategy going into what ‘there’ looks like.
• #7: Now today, there are two trends that are really dominating our industry and causing it to radically transform. The first is that the PC is not the only device anymore. In fact, there has been an explosion of a wide variety of different devices – PCs, of course, but also mobile phones, tablets, hybrid devices. And this will continue as computing becomes more pervasive through trends like Wearable Computing. So Microsoft needs to transform too, it needs to follow the market and expand beyond the PC. This is one reason why we have chosen to acquire Nokia’s Devices and Services business.
• #9: And, more recently, we have changed the leadership of the company, announcing long-term veteran of our company Satay Nadella as only the 3rd CEO in our 39 year history.
• #11: http://www.rasmussen.edu/student-life/blogs/main/careers-high-demand-college-graduates/