The Evolution and Social Impact of IT in Microsoft's Business

This research project delves into the evolution of information technology within Microsoft, examining its journey from inception to its current global presence. The study explores the company's emergence as an international competitor, analyzing the impact of IT on its business strategies, product development, and social influence. It covers Microsoft's historical development, including key milestones like the introduction of MS-DOS and Windows, and discusses its current state, focusing on cloud computing, mobile platforms, and software innovation. The project investigates the social implications of Microsoft's products, addressing challenges such as competition from Android and the sustainability of new product innovations. Furthermore, it reviews the external factors affecting software engineers and the broader IT industry. The research methodology includes both primary and secondary data collection, employing a conceptual framework to guide the analysis. The project also outlines its aims, objectives, problem statement, and research questions, providing a comprehensive overview of Microsoft's role in the IT sector and its impact on society.

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Executive summary
This report discusses the evolution of information technology from its initiation to its current
stage and social impact of IT industry in the business of Microsoft. This chapter is to analyse the
Microsoft’s emergence in the industry and how they evolved and became an international
competitor in the business. Further, the research review and conceptual framework of the
research base is given and project budget and project schedule is described in the chapter. The
research methodology and data collection process is also given. The research includes both
primary and secondary data collection and analysis of the data. The organisation of the study has
been highlighted as different chapters and thus it will balance the flow of the chapters for any
readers. The sampling technique and the research method is also thoroughly discussed in the
following company. Further, the organisation of the study done on the impact of IT in this
business is also given in the following chapter.

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Table of Contents
1. Introduction..................................................................................................................................5
2. Background of the study..............................................................................................................5
3. Research aims and objectives......................................................................................................6
3.1 Aims.......................................................................................................................................6
3.2 Objectives..................................................................................................................................6
3.3 Problem statement.....................................................................................................................6
3.4 Research questions.....................................................................................................................7
4. Literature review..........................................................................................................................8
4.1 Conceptual framework...........................................................................................................8
4.2 History and development of information technology............................................................9
4.3 Rise of Microsoft...................................................................................................................9
4.4 Social impact and challenges faced by Microsoft...............................................................11
4.5 Impact of information technology in society.......................................................................11
4.6 External factors and issues faced by software engineers.....................................................12
5. Research methodology...............................................................................................................13
5.1 Introduction..........................................................................................................................13
5.2 Research approach...............................................................................................................13
5.3 Data collection method........................................................................................................13
5.4 Factors that needs to be considered.....................................................................................14

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5. 5 Sampling method................................................................................................................14
5.6 Sample size..........................................................................................................................15
6. Organisation of the study...........................................................................................................15
7. Project Budget...........................................................................................................................17

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1. Introduction
Microsoft is one of the well-known global competitors of the IT business. The first
operating system that they used was MS-Dos and after that, they started their business in
personal computers (Bahr et al., 2013). This report discusses the evolution of information
technology from its initiation to its current stage and social impact of IT industry in the business
of Microsoft. First, they were in business of manufacturing different hardware for computers and
then they moved to exclusively in software business. Information technology business has
benefitted from this company hugely. Microsoft Windows was a new operating system with the
existing systems like, Linux and Java (Tasevska, Damij & Damij, 2014). Further, the
organisation of the study done on the impact of IT in this business is also given in the following
chapter. This chapter is to analyse the Microsoft’s emergence in the industry and how they
evolved and became an international competitor in the business. Further, the research review and
conceptual framework of the research base is given and project budget and project schedule is
described in the chapter (Kim, 2013). The organisation of the study has been highlighted as
different chapters and thus it will balance the flow of the chapters for any readers. The sampling
technique and the research method are also thoroughly discussed in the following company
(Christensen & Raynor, 2013). The sample size and the sampling tools and techniques are
discussed later in the chapter.
2. Background of the study
The background of this study is based in the study of IT sector growth over the years and
different products that have been developed to make the human life easier. The purpose of this
research also is to study the stimulation of developing the IT products and applications in

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everyday life of people (Christensen & Raynor, 2013). The social impact after developing the
products and the different demography of people who likes to use these products in their
everyday lives.
3. Research aims and objectives
3.1 Aims
The focused aim of this research is to gather information on the development of
Microsoft as global competitors. In addition, another aim is to study the emergence of
Information technology and in accordance with Microsoft.
3.2 Objectives
 To study the supporting role played by IT behind the growth of Microsoft
 To study the external factors that the company has faced during the initial stage and also
in the next years and the social impact of their products and innovations
 To study the impact of other companies innovations in their system
 To study information technology from its initial to current stage
3.3 Problem statement
There also have been some challenges for this industry in the last two or three decades.
The fear of reaching the stagnant stage has hit the industry in most cases. The most important
part of innovation that the company has faced in their initial stages and during their growth and
mature stage what are the plans and approach that, they have taken. Moreover, the problems,

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they have learnt from over the years and what where the customer’s feedback in their different
products are also the foundation of the study (Christensen & Raynor, 2013).

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3.4 Research questions
 How Microsoft has affected the Information technology sector?
 What would preference to use among the operating systems available for PC?
 What are the challenges that the company has faced during the growth period of
Information technology?

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Information Technology
initiation stage
Rise of Microsoft
Current stage of Microsoft
Social impact of Microsoft products in the
global market
Overall impact of IT in the global
market and society
Change of Java to android
External factors affect
Supporting role of other IT to Microsoft
4. Literature review
4.1 Conceptual framework
Figure: conceptual framework

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Source: created by author
4.2 History and development of information technology
The first ever known technology was abacus in the history. Then came the minicomputers
and computer technology and science was developed initially. Near about 1970 mainframes of
minicomputers were developed. The rise of IBM as computer technology development was
marked to be the initiation of growth period of this industry (Kim, 2013). Microsoft today is a
global leader and this journey by the company has been remarkable for many reasons. Microsoft
has been the key to worldwide development of different of technological advances. First of its
kind was used to create, manipulate and only distribute the data but that scenario has been
changed (Kerzner, 2013). The importance of the data transferability and accessibility has been
long realised by the professionals. The programs written in many language has been realised and
thus the functions of them were thoroughly tested in expectation that this innovation will save a
lot of time and effort in working process of human (Agrawal, Khatri & Srinivasan, 2012). The
application in hardware and software were first ranged for simple addition, multiplication,
subtraction and division. In addition, after that the evolution came to a point are people are able
to search and access historical data and build programs and databases based on that. Virtual
reality and commercial electronic media development has caught the attention of all existing
people (Goasduff & Pettey, 2012). This has also allowed people to travel virtually in the
available.
4.3 Rise of Microsoft
Company history

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Paul Allen and Bill Gates are founders of Microsoft. The preliminary operation was on
programming and named their founded company as Traf-O-Data in 1972. The rudimentary work
was to track and analyse data traffic in automobile. The first product was a basic interpreter and
named Altair BASIC (Kerzner, 2013).
The first operating system invented in 1980, Unix and Xenix was the first version. With
the excusive demand in MS-Dos operating system, later they became the most important
Personal Computer operator and vendor in the local and global market. Microsoft invented
Microsoft windows and OS 2 with graphical extension and in 1985, they went unrestricted with
the rise in the stock of share. From 1985 till 1994, they extended their program facilities in their
wide product range in 32 bit OS as well in Microsoft Windows NT (Riha et al., 2014). It also
happened to grow in the World Wide Web of computer networking. Online services were also
given with the different product assistance (Zhang, 2012). Like the other companies, they also
shaped Trusted Computing Platform Alliance and started programming in protecting its own
research base.
Current state
Microsoft is also a technology exclusive company, that translates its mission to empower
every person’s experience in personal computing. Different company has acquired the hardware
corporation of this industry. IBM’s products have developed the foundation of their hardware
business. The platforms and productivity innovation in the field of service they are, mobile
cloud computing and software also in considered under their product service area (Agrawal,
Khatri & Srinivasan, 2012). Some of the focused area for discussion of present state of the
company operating from it is headquarter in United States capital Redmond, Washington is

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below. Cloud revenue rate was around $12.1 billion. In addition, Office 365 consumer
subscription has increased. Microsoft dynamics CRM online seat additions also increased
(Tasevska, Damij & Damij, 2014). Microsoft Azure and SQL databases Customer relationship
management program solution doubled over the year. Windows 10 upgradation. Xbox active
users also increased. Today the company is more focused on developing the networking platform
by using the World Wide Web. The windows 10 development and Microsoft Azure is platform
of their innovation (Goasduff & Pettey, 2012). After the event of stepping down of Steve
Ballmer, Satya Nadella is leading the business to more cloud and enterprise based. Then
acquiring the Nokia devices and services they are restructuring the company for millions
(Goasduff & Pettey, 2012). The innovation products are windows 10 in mobile, Microsoft edge,
Azure and Hololens and other upgradation of their applications and services.
4.4 Social impact and challenges faced by Microsoft
Some of the biggest challenges faced by Microsoft were, the development of android,
which affected their market share drastically. This was a challenge given by the competitors
Apple, Lenovo, Dell, HP an Acer and others (Zhu, Mukhopadhyay & Kurata, 2012). Another
challenge faced by was the sustainability of their new innovative products except office365. The
development of Bing was regarded second to any Google search engine. In addition, the pricing
of the products with compared to others are known to be of high priced. However, these
challenges were faced head on by the company and they remained competitive during their
growth stage (Silverman, 2016).