The Microsoft you didn't know - Amazing facts about the behemoth

“Our passion is to enable people to thrive in this mobile-first and cloud-first world”

- Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft

Microsoft has seen an eventful 39 years since its inception. The initial years of competition with Apple and the one-upmanship contest between Bill Gates & Steve Jobs until Gates became an investor in Apple years later; the establishment of Windows as the de facto standard for all PCs; the monopoly and anti-trust accusations and the numerous lawsuits; then the decade under the leadership of Steve Ballmer which was a mixed bag; the growth and profits in the Kinect gaming category; the missed ‘mobile’ bus; a me-too cloud product named Azure; and the very expensive (not just financially) Nokia acquisition.

The giant company is now working to change its direction under the leadership of Satya Nadella – to cut costs, optimize operations, increase collaborations between different product groups which were almost being run as individual fiefdoms and create a relevant mobile and cloud strategy. In the letter, Nadella also said, “The combination of many devices and cloud services used for generating and consuming data creates a unique opportunity for us”, indicating that the firm will be pushing its cloud services and first party devices. While it is trying to play catch up with Apple and Google before the profitable PC sector and server sales decline, the company also announced layoffs of about 18,000 employees across various groups.

Mailing employees through public forum seems to be the way Satya Nadella works at Microsoft. In his recent mail to his colleagues, he informed that he will be making major changes in the engineering and organisational structure of the company.

There are various other services, products and solutions which are being consumed and are making a difference across the world. Here are some fun facts released by the Fortune 34 American conglomerate

Windows Phone

• 245,000 apps - The Windows Phone Store features more than 245,000 apps and games. Hundreds more are added every day
• 6 personal assistants - Researchers interviewed six real celebrity personal assistants to help identify the most essential traits for Cortana, Windows Phone’s digital personal assistant

Windows & Office

• 3.5 million - Office 365 Home Premium has 3.5 million subscribers and growing
• 1.5 billion people - 1.5 billion people use Windows every day
• 1 in 7 people - More than 1.1 billion people use Office. That’s 1 in 7 people on the planet
• 4 billion downloads - The Windows Phone Store has seen 2 billion downloads of apps and games

Bing Search Engine

• 4 trips to Venus - If you were to line up pixels from all the aerial imagery within Bing Maps, you could make four round trips to Venus with pixels to spare
• 2 billion status updates – Bing search engine indexes more than 2 billion Facebook status updates and half a billion tweets every single day

Reach

• 7 companies - Seven of the top 10 Fortune 500 companies use Microsoft Dynamics CRM and ERP
• 85 percent - 85 percent of Fortune 500 companies use Yammer
• 430,000 partners - The Microsoft Partner Network includes over 430,000 organizations with more than 160 million mutual customers worldwide

Social Consciousness

• $1 billion - Microsoft’s ‘Employee Giving’ campaign has donated $1 billion to over 31,000 charities
• $6.5 billion - Microsoft has provided $6.5 billion in cash and software to nonprofits worldwide since 1983
• $1.9 billion - Microsoft spent $1.9 billion with suppliers that are minority-, disabled-, veteran- and woman-owned businesses in FY 2013. (Source: Microsoft)
• 1 million people - Over 1 million people are victims of cybercrime every day. Microsoft’s Cybercrime Center helps them fight back
• 4,728 works of art - The Microsoft Art Collection includes 4,728 pieces, including a chandelier by Dale Chihuly and a piece of the Berlin Wall. It’s one of the largest corporate art collections in the world
• 50% less - Microsoft’s modular data centers consume 50% less energy than traditional data centers

Xbox & Kinect

• 48 million members - Xbox Live has over 48 million members in 41 countries
• 24 million sensors - More than 24 million Kinect sensors have been sold worldwide
• 740 million hours - Xbox One has delivered over 740 million hours of gaming, app and TV fun

Colossal Size

• 4 million cups - Microsoft employees consume about 4 million cups of tea each year on campus. Green tea is the most popular, with over 1.1 million packets used annually
• 2nd largest - Microsoft is the second-largest purchaser of green power in the U.S
• 16 businesses - Microsoft has 16 different $1 billion-plus businesses.
• 1 million sandwiches - Microsoft employees eat about 1 million sandwiches each year in campus cafeterias. The most popular sandwich is the turkey club – 225,000 are eaten annually

Miscellaneous

• 50 billion minutes - Skype users make an average of 50 billion minutes of calls per month
• 400 million users - Outlook.com has over 400 million active users and is the world’s fastest-growing email service
• 320 major awards - Microsoft Research Scientists have won more than 320 major awards, including the Turing Award, MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, MIT Technology Review’s TR35 Award, the Draper Prize, IEEE John von Neumann Medal, IEEE Piore Award, the Kyoto Prize, multiple Oscars and a British knighthood

Know any more interesting factoids about Microsoft? Share in the comments below!