Microsofts international

The company has its headquarters at Redmond, Washington, United States and operations in several more companies throughout the world. Outside the US, the company has regional operation centers in Singapore and Ireland to support its operations in the European region, Asia Pacific and other parts of the world outside the Americas.

Its datacenters are located across five continents and the company added 15 new datacenter regions in Apart from its Windows and Microsoft Office products, Microsoft also generates revenues from cloud computing services, search advertising, gaming products and services and devices including PCs and accessories.

Microsoft has divided its business into three main operating segments and eight main categories of products and services. The company employed , full time employees in , of which , were employed in the US alone.

As of , it had a portfolio of 65, patents issued in the US and internationally and around 21, pending patents. Microsoft maintains a heavy focus on research and development to maintain its pace of innovation and competitive edge in the technology sector. Microsoft is a global business with physical operations, data centers and research centers in various corners of the globe. Microsoft runs its business operations in North and Latin America through its regional offices located in the US mainly.

What Ballmer intended can be further gleaned from certain repeatedly emphasized concepts. Important among these are operational speed and responsive speed. The company will operate faster -- "Be nimble" is how Ballmer describes it -- and respond faster to local markets around the world. In addition to a general emphasize on speed, Ballmer also stresses the need for faster corporate communications and increased and faster developing collaboration that empowers Microsoft employees in local markets.

The over-riding purpose of the "One Microsoft" strategy is create a company with increased market-penetration speed. One significant difference between Microsoft's diversity initiatives and what may seem to be similar initiatives at other global corporations, is that while most global companies have strategic diversity initiatives, at Microsoft the Global Diversity Initiative is the encompassing strategy that contains all others.

In a recent corporate mission statement, all other initiatives were described as aspects of GDI. On its website, Microsoft emphasizes the necessity in a growingly diverse world market of being in tune with that market, partly as a matter of economic justice and largely as a survival necessity.

The company discusses GDI in three specific areas: representation, which it describes as a means of building a pipeline of future leaders; inclusion, which it describes in terms of creating a work environment that promotes engagement; and innovation, which it synopsizes as driving market excellence. For Microsoft, global diversity and inclusion are the means to achieve closer alignment with local markets that in turn improves market penetration speed. What may be the core idea here -- that effective companies look like their clients -- has increasingly become a concern in the 21st century for smaller companies as well.