MGT610 Module 2: Microsoft Company Strategic Analysis Report

This report presents a strategic analysis of Microsoft, examining its operations, quality management, and supply chain practices. The report explores Microsoft's key areas of operation, including its diverse product offerings and market segments. It then delves into the company's quality management strategies, such as Six Sigma and TQM, highlighting their importance in maintaining customer satisfaction and product excellence. The analysis further investigates Microsoft's supply chain management, emphasizing its complexity and the use of digital solutions. The report also discusses Microsoft's relationship with the CIS Benchmarks, highlighting their role in ensuring the security of Microsoft products. Finally, it identifies Microsoft's weaknesses, such as declining computer shipments and increasing cyber-crime instances, before concluding with a summary of the company's strengths and opportunities for future growth. This report is designed to provide students with a comprehensive understanding of Microsoft's strategic approach and challenges.

Running Head: MICROSOFT
Microsoft
Name of the student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Executive Summary
Microsoft is remote from the world's leading technology businesses with merchandise
inclusive of Windows operating systems, workplace productivity packages and Azure cloud
services. Microsoft software is a crucial business product. The company uses various
approaches to bring quality products to the market. The Internet Security Center (CIS)
publishes metrics for Microsoft products and services, including metrics for Microsoft Azure
and Microsoft 365 Core. It intends Microsoft products which including Windows OS and
Microsoft Office to enhance productivity and productiveness. For example, it tests Office 365
against registered services, and the resulting Microsoft 365 database contains various
recommendations for determining appropriate security policies, including account and
authentication, data management, application permissions, storage, and other areas of security
policy. Administrators and system administrators, security professionals, and others who
develop solutions for Microsoft products with services can use these best practices to assess
and improve the security of their applications. To keep potential customers and increase their
market segment, Microsoft needs to enhance the quality of the product. Like all CIS criteria,
Microsoft's metrics will be create through a consensus review process based on input from
industry experts with a variety of backgrounds, including software development, auditing and
compliance, security studies, operations, and government and law. Also, Microsoft expects
three excellent products, namely functionality, performance, and time, to produce high-
quality storage software. Microsoft uses simulation software on a large scale to control and
manage the challenges of supply change in the 4.0 technology industry with digital supply
chain solutions.

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Table of Contents
Executive Summary...................................................................................................................1
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Areas of Operations....................................................................................................................4
Quality Management..............................................................................................................4
Supply Chain Management....................................................................................................7
Microsoft and the CIS Benchmarks...........................................................................................8
Weaknesses................................................................................................................................9
Conclusion................................................................................................................................10
References................................................................................................................................12

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Introduction
Microsoft is solitary of the world's nuclear technology businesses with merchandises,
which include Windows working systems, office productiveness applications with Azure
cloud offerings. Microsoft's geographical earnings are sent evenly in the course of the United
States and other countries (Quick & Choo, 2013). In the eyes of stakeholders, this provides to
the trillion-dollar market funding. Microsoft is energetic in three creativity areas: More
personal computers, commercial enterprise productivity and processes, and smart cloud. The
More Private Computing phase generates about 35% of income from the sale of products and
services to end-users, developers and IT, tool managers. It includes a Windows operating
gadget product. Devices comprise Surface tablets, cell telephones and laptop accessories;
Games involving Xbox and Xbox Live hardware; Video game; HoloLens virtual fact
technology; and prizes for third-party video games; and look for advertisements. The
Productivity and Business Processes segment, approximately a 3rd of sales, along with
productivity, communique, and facts products besides tool and platform offerings. Products
encompass Office, Office 365 (cloud version), Exchange, SharePoint, Skype, and Skype for
Business besides Dynamics ERP and CRM merchandise. Office merchandise and cloud
offerings by myself account for approximately a quarter of total sales. The Intelligent Cloud
segment, which bills for around 30% of sales, includes public, personal, along with hybrid
server merchandise and cloud offerings managed with the aid of Azure cloud computing
offerings. Other products and services are SQL Server, Windows Server, Visual Studio, and
System Centre. Microsoft has a market funding of $ 777.35 billion, a yearly income of $
110.36 billion, and an internet income of $ 16.57 billion (Barwise & Watkins, 2018).
Microsoft merchandise, such as Windows OS and Microsoft Office, grows overall
performance and productiveness. The report is about the Microsoft Company strategic plan.

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Areas of Operations
Operations are one of the primary features of the administration. Heizer, Render, and
Muson describes ten dimensions along with product and carrier design, quality management,
region strategy, format strategy, technique and capability plan, human sources, and job
design. Supply chain administration, inventory administration, planning with maintenance
(Krajewski, Ritzman & Malhotra, 2013). Through operations, enterprise enables strategies
and development, sales, advertising, and carrier enterprise goals to be align. It provides an
outline for well scheduled along with the balanced allocation of progress, deals, advertising
with marketing and carrier assets in the organization.
Quality Management
Most organizations have quality administration systems such as Six Sigma, 1PPI,
benchmarking, ISO, CMMI, JIT, TQM, etc. to growth output, proficiency, with patron
gratification (Riley & White, 2013). Microsoft has always believed in continuous
improvement with innovation to keep patrons happy. For this reason, Microsoft uses the Six
Sigma methods as the foremost driver for excellence strategies. Microsoft patrons worldwide
use over 35.99% Windows as the functioning structure. To keep potential customers and
increase its market stake (because of the Android market 36.5%), Microsoft must improve
merchandise quality. In the table, the Quality Administration method Explained by Microsoft
Corporation to raise Global Productivity.

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Table 1: Quality administration methods used by Microsoft Firm
Quality Administration Tools Approach
LEAN Ensure a stable progression for optimizing merchandise value using
tools with techniques.
Total Quality Management (TQM) Eliminating unused along with ensuring employee quality while
saving cash on sending and continuously improving high-quality
custom products.
Balance scorecard Empower employees to improve management based on
measurement and feedback continuously.
ISO 9000 Improved organizational efficiency (especially international industry
standards for established quality administration systems)
Six sigma Patron-oriented quality scheme for a. determine Opportunities, b.
measure the ability to analyze results to improve presentation.

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Microsoft software is a core corporate product; the corporation uses numerous
techniques to launch great merchandise. They consider each software program development a
separate task. Because every software improvement has its independent enter and output
workflows and design personnel, Microsoft gives a security application to work. Microsoft
believes strongly in skilled employees for their success. Especially when the software
program is relatively excessive, Microsoft is used to divide Microsoft into subsections.
Besides, Microsoft expects three pleasant merchandise, viz. Functionality, presentation, along
with deadlines, to produce exceptional storage software program. Microsoft were involve in
approximately the risks related to task implementation. Therefore, usually use a chance
mitigation approach to lessen the risks associated with imposing software program. Microsoft
has also recognized numerous essential best problems, inclusive of Low dependability, high
interoperability, with low-slung scalability. Also, Microsoft identifies exceptional differences
as deviations from the social customer expectations may generate that. In this way, Microsoft
uses a collaborative application improvement method.

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Microsoft Corp believes strongly in the first-class of its hardware and software
merchandise. Therefore, Microsoft makes use of a unique method for generating hardware
components underneath reliability, trying out based on outstanding industry standards. Above
all, Microsoft uses enterprise-leading measures, Microsoft's systems, and the client enjoys to
deliver perfect merchandise. Therefore, Microsoft must carry out a rigorous testing system
before launching the product. Microsoft has a Reliability Engineering crew that is responsible
for this product's reliability, design reviews, and product qualification issues. Microsoft also
gained an excessive stage of expertise in this department. Microsoft merchandise engineers,
testing engineers, with merchandise inventers, are a part of the merchandise improvement
procedure from the commencement to the entirety of merchandise development/initialization.
Besides, the final intention of the undertaking crew is to develop exquisite merchandise with
a high grade of consistency and to make sure the longevity of the merchandise life cycle.
Supply Chain Management
Supply Chain Management (SCM) is a fundamental portion of a company's planned
commerce. Because of globalization, the planet has become a "global village," now the
market is cross-border. Therefore, every SCM is crucial to the achievement of the company,
both internationally and locally. Consider Microsoft's supply chain and with over 30,000
merchandises with changing life cycles. In addition, over 600 providers, 13 agreement
manufacturers, 52 circulation centres in 191 nations.
Microsoft must maintain comprehensive and sustainable SC management. Microsoft
supports the theory of managing supply chain best performs for One Device Supply Chain
(IDC) by:
 A series of plans, implementations, and improvements needed in the supply chain.
 A group of companies looks at a resource preparation system (SAP) that minimizes
errors.

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Microsoft usages imitation software extensively to control and manage the encounters of
changing supply in the 4.0 technology industry with digital supply chain solutions. Supply
chain solutions "Every logic" that can control the supply chain and gain more in-depth
knowledge and optimize supply chain solutions in external complex systems and processes,
including optimization of transportation planning and optimization of logistics networks,
supply chain design, as well as the establishment and optimization of warehousing.
Microsoft and the CIS Benchmarks
The Center for Internet Security (CIS) publishes metrics for Microsoft products and
services, including Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365 Core metrics, Windows 10
benchmarks, and Windows Server 2016 benchmarks. CIS criteria were recognize
internationally as a security standard for protecting IT systems and data against cyber-attacks
(Dayton, 2018). Thousands of companies use them and offer guidelines for creating a secure
base configuration. Administrators and system administrators, security professionals, and
others who develop solutions with Microsoft products with services can use these best
practices to test and improve the security of their applications. Like all CIS criteria,
Microsoft's metrics were create through a consensus review process based on contributions
from industry experts from various backgrounds, including software development, auditing
and compliance, security research, operations and government, and legislation. Microsoft is a
crucial partner in this CIS effort. For example, it tests Office 365 against registered services,
and the resulting Microsoft 365 database contains a variety of recommendations for
determining appropriate security policies that include account and authentication, data
management, application permissions, storage, and other areas of security policy. In addition
to Microsoft product and service criteria, CIS also publishes hardened CIS images for use
with Azure virtual machines that were configure to meet CIS criteria. This includes the CIS
Hardened Image for Microsoft Windows Server that is Azure certified 2016 (Anisetti et al.,

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2017). In the CIS, it says: "All images uploaded to CIS available on the Azure market are
certified for approval on Azure. The images are ready and compatible Azure public cloud,
Microsoft's cloud platform hosted by a cloud service provider and Windows Server Hyper-V
deployment on the client-side" (Fayyad-Kazan, Perneel & Timmerman, 2013).
Weaknesses
Computer shipments regularly decline because of charge increases and
fluctuations within the seller's currency. This has placed Microsoft in a susceptible position.
Increasing cyber-crime instances make Microsoft in a fragile state. Hackers have reportedly
attacked Windows cyber-security numerous times (Zachary, 2014). Microsoft hasn't
been able to increase the income of its hardware products, which include high-
end professional computers and telephones. Still lagging in terms of innovation and
sophisticated technology, at the same time as Apple, Google, and Amazon
are fast beginning new avenues. While Google, Safari, and Firefox
gained marketplace share within the browser segment, Microsoft lost the marketplace.
Microsoft IE & Edge hasn't even made a list of the most popular net browsers for 2018.
Fewer acquisitions from Microsoft along with WebTV, Link Exchange, Massive and Danger,
caused errors and sales. Such unprofitable funding is Microsoft's biggest weakness.
Imitability of some merchandise is a weakness due to it can lessen the electricity of the
Microsoft brand. In addition, the company's product portfolio is dominate with the aid
of software program products, which weakens that commercial enterprise compared to
competitors who've dominant hardware and software program products within
the market (Ghaffari, Delgosha & Abdolvand, 2014). Microsoft is a defendant
in various pending instances. He were concerns in diverse criminal disputes associated
with product design, production and overall performance obligations, and
other legal disputes related to contracts, labor issues, or intellectual property rights. Because

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of its high use, Microsoft clients regularly complain that Microsoft continues to improve its
products, but there is not anything new from the ground up. It advances apple to Microsoft to
operate machine features. As a result, Apple slowly evolved into the selected working gadget.
Conclusion
The Microsoft Company achieves extreme performance in the discipline of this
solution via decisions based on sustainable market analysis. The
operational significance of market evaluation lies in supporting suitable answers that cope
with current troubles in Microsoft business. Microsoft Company has
numerous possibilities to keep its position. The options are Cloud-based services have
achieved superb increase and success in recent years. In this way, Microsoft extends its cloud
business. Microsoft has excellent possibilities in many innovative fields, which include AI
and sports technology. Microsoft can gain from investing in this field. Microsoft can make
consciousness on getting into new strategic alliances and partnerships.
This allows the employer to get a substantial marketplace share. The acquisition
of big excessive-tech organizations may also be a win-win possibility for Microsoft (Krotov,
2017). The rapidly growing phone and tablet marketplace is a massive opportunity for
Microsoft. This can take gain of the increasing needs of that merchandise. It may allow
Microsoft to raise income and revenue with supplying its merchandise at low prices. It
can also save you, hackers, from using their software program illegally. In the past,
Microsoft relied on everyday improvements for Windows and Office to generate new sales.
However, over time, a "proper enough" model is available for users instead of being
upgraded. At present, the best 16% of computers international use Windows 8 / 8.1. A
survey using Forrester Research in the past due to 2013 found that 28% of
the agencies surveyed have been still the use of Office 2003 (Assunção, et al., 2015).
To reduce this fragmentation, Microsoft is selling its One Windows strategy. Windows 10,

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which is obtainable as a free update for most Windows 7 and Windows eight users,
can carry together a lot of these computers, pills, and
smartphones below the identical operating device. The scalability of this working gadget can
take a gain of Microsoft's overall performance on computer systems to catch up on the
weaknesses of mobile devices. Microsoft has additionally switched from frequent updates to
Office with Office 365, its cloud-primarily based subscription productivity package. All
cloud businesses - such as Office 365, Dynamics CRM with Azure - are the inspiration of
Microsoft's enduring growth approach.