Microsoft's ambitions are anything but small. The world's #1 software company develops and sells a variety of products used by consumers and businesses. Its core products are the ubiquitous Windows PC operating system and the Office business productivity application suite that are sold in part through PC makers such as Acer, Lenovo, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and Toshiba, who pre-install the software on devices. Microsoft also sells directly online and through resellers. Other products include enterprise applications (Microsoft Dynamics), server and storage software, and video game consoles (Xbox). It also makes mobile phone software. Microsoft has acquired Nokia's handset business. *** Microsoft is a Challenger. Its EAP tools are Azure DevOps and GitHub. Consider Microsoft if you are a Visual Studio or Azure user wishing to take advantage of native Microsoft integration, or if you want to use an open-source-inspired ?innersourcing? model. Microsoft offers two distinct EAP tools. Azure DevOps provides a broad suite available on-premises or in the cloud, committed support for open-source technologies, and integration with Git and DevOps tools. GitHub offers comparable functionality, but emphasizes an open-source approach to development. Strengths Microsoft offers social streams and work item history in Azure DevOps to improve collaboration between, and traceability for, developers. Microsoft?s focus is on supporting the work of individuals on development teams. It goes beyond planning and status reporting of items by enabling users to drill down into specific workflows and tying branch/merge actions and defects directly to story cards. Microsoft offers a broad range of developer training options and certifications, as well as a large ecosystem of product extensions. Cautions Microsoft?s support for a product-driven approach in Azure DevOps is still evolving. Microsoft does not support enterprise agile frameworks natively. Instead, it relies on partners for such support. Microsoft?s strategy for Azure DevOps and GitHub is still unfolding. Customers deciding between the two should consult Microsoft for guidance. (Gartner 2020 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Agile Planning Tools) *** Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington, U.S., has an international presence and delivers a core set of collaborative content management capabilities as part of its SharePoint offerings, including SharePoint Server and Office 365 via SharePoint and OneDrive for Business. SharePoint Server is available on-premises, while SharePoint Online is a cloud-based multitenant offering typically bundled with Microsoft Office 365 subscriptions. Although the two products use common code bases, they differ programmatically and functionally. Microsoft released a mobile app for SharePoint in 2016. SharePoint is tightly integrated with Microsoft Office and Microsoft OneDrive for Business, as part of the Office 365 productivity platform. Seamless integration with emerging cloud-based Microsoft applications such as Teams, Flow and Microsoft Graph means richer team-based and insight-oriented content productivity use cases. Microsoft is a good fit for customers with deep Microsoft investments for productivity and business processing. (Gartner Magic Quadrant for Content Services Platforms) (Sources: Microsoft Corporation; Amazon; Billion Dollar Roundtable; Bing search; Bloomberg; Crunchbase; Disability:IN; Facebook; Forbes; Fortune; FT; Gartner 2020 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Agile Planning Tool); Gartner Magic Quadrant for Content Services Platforms; Glassdoor; Google Finance; Google search; Hoovers; IIndeed; MapQuest; Reuters; U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission; Wikipedia; Yahoo Finance; Yahoo search; ndeed; ResNet contributor Rick Rodgers)

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