Microsoft 2015 Annual Report Download - page 16

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15
Skype competes with a variety of instant messaging, voice, and video communication providers, ranging from start-
ups to established enterprises.
Commercial Other
The principal products and services provided by the Commercial Other segment are: Commercial Cloud, comprising
Office 365 Commercial, Microsoft Azure, Dynamics CRM Online, and other Microsoft Office online offerings; and
Enterprise Services, including Premier Support Services and Microsoft Consulting Services.
Office 365 Commercial is an online services offering that includes Microsoft Office, Exchange, SharePoint, and
Skype for Business, and is available across a variety of devices and platforms.
Microsoft Azure is a scalable cloud platform with computing, networking, storage, database, and management, along
with advanced services such as analytics, and comprehensive solutions such as Enterprise Mobility Suite. Microsoft
Azure also includes a flexible platform that helps developers build, deploy, and manage enterprise, mobile, web, and
IoT applications, for any platform or device without having to worry about the underlying infrastructure. Microsoft
Azure enables customers to devote more resources to development and use of applications that benefit their
organizations, rather than managing on-premises hardware and software.
Dynamics CRM Online is designed to provide customer relationship management and analytics applications for small
and mid-size businesses, large organizations, and divisions of global enterprises. Revenue is largely driven by the
number of information workers licensed.
Enterprise Services, including Premier Support Services and Microsoft Consulting Services, assist customers in
developing, deploying, and managing Microsoft server and desktop solutions and provide training and certification to
developers and information technology professionals on various Microsoft products.
Competition
Competitors to Office 365 Commercial are the same as those discussed above for Office Commercial.
Microsoft Azure faces diverse competition from companies such as Amazon, Google, IBM, Oracle, Salesforce.com,
VMware, and open source offerings. Azure competes by enabling deployment of existing data centers with our public
cloud into a single, cohesive infrastructure, and runs at a scale that meets the needs of businesses of all sizes and
complexities.
Dynamics CRM Online primarily competes with Salesforce.com’s on-demand CRM offerings.
The Enterprise Services business competes with a wide range of companies that provide strategy and business
planning, application development, and infrastructure services, including multinational consulting firms and small
niche businesses focused on specific technologies.
OPERATIONS
We have operations centers that support all operations in their regions, including customer contract and order
processing, credit and collections, information processing, and vendor management and logistics. The regional
center in Ireland supports the European, Middle Eastern, and African region; the center in Singapore supports the
Japan, India, Greater China, and Asia-Pacific region; and the centers in Fargo, North Dakota, Fort Lauderdale,
Florida, Puerto Rico, Redmond, Washington, and Reno, Nevada support Latin America and North America. In
addition to the operations centers, we also operate data centers throughout the Americas, Australia, Europe, and
Asia.
To serve the needs of customers around the world and to improve the quality and usability of products in
international markets, we localize many of our products to reflect local languages and conventions. Localizing a
product may require modifying the user interface, altering dialog boxes, and translating text.
We operate manufacturing facilities for the production and customization of phones, predominantly in Vietnam.
Our Xbox consoles, Surface, first-party video games, Microsoft PC accessories, and other hardware are primarily
manufactured by third-party contract manufacturers. We generally have the ability to use other manufacturers if a
current vendor becomes unavailable or unable to meet our requirements.