Microsoft was founded in 1975. Our mission is to enable people and businesses throughout the world to realize their full potential by creating technology that transforms the way people work, play, and communicate. We develop and market software, services, and hardware devices that deliver new opportunities, greater convenience, and enhanced value to people’s lives. We do business worldwide and have offices in more than 100 countries.

We generate revenue by developing, licensing, and supporting a wide range of software products and services, by designing and selling hardware devices, and by delivering relevant online advertising to a global customer audience. In addition to selling individual products and services, we offer suites of products and services.

Our products include operating systems for computing devices, servers, phones, and other intelligent devices; server applications for distributed computing environments; productivity applications; business solution applications; desktop and server management tools; software development tools; video games; and online advertising. We also design and sell hardware devices including Surface RT and Surface Pro, the Xbox 360 gaming and entertainment console, Kinect for Xbox 360, Xbox 360 accessories, and Microsoft PC accessories.

We offer cloud-based solutions that provide customers with software, services, and content over the Internet by way of shared computing resources located in centralized data centers. Examples of cloud-based computing services we offer include Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, Windows Azure, Bing, Skype, Xbox LIVE, and Yammer. Cloud revenue is earned primarily from usage fees, advertising, and subscriptions. We also provide consulting and product and solution support services, and we train and certify computer system integrators and developers.