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Microsoft
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What is Microsoft?

Microsoft is one of the most studied companies in business and technology education, appearing frequently in courses on strategic management, marketing, information systems, and corporate finance. Its scale, product diversity, and long history of market competition make it a productive subject for academic analysis. Students are drawn to the company because it operates across software, hardware, and cloud services, giving essays a wide range of organizational and technological dimensions to examine. Its involvement in competitive battles with rivals and its influence on how users and businesses interact with technology provide rich material for coursework that demands real-world application of business frameworks.

The papers archived on this topic reflect a broad range of academic approaches. Several apply structured business frameworks, including SWOT analysis, the five forces model, and the four P's of marketing, to evaluate Microsoft's competitive position and product strategy. Others focus on specific products and decisions, such as the Windows Vista marketing failure, the entry into the cell phone market, and the features of Microsoft Office 2007. Comparative analyses appear as well, including technology comparisons between Microsoft .NET and J2EE platforms, and competitive case studies set against companies like Google and eBay. Cost accounting, corporate social responsibility, and diversification strategy also appear as distinct angles.

A strong essay on Microsoft benefits from a focused thesis rather than a general company overview. Evidence drawn from specific products, market decisions, or financial strategies carries more analytical weight than broad claims about the company's size or reputation. The most common pitfall is treating Microsoft as a monolithic success story — stronger essays acknowledge strategic missteps and competitive pressures to build a more credible, balanced argument.

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Business intelligence implementation at Marshfield Clinic improves patient care
Improves Efficiency with More Accurate and Timely Access to records
Essay Doctorate
Apple's value chain strategy and organizational response to market complexity
Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) has emerged as one of the most profitable and prolific companies in the world, generating a market capitalization rate of $623B as of this writing in late August, 2012, delivering $148B in Revenues in their latest fiscal year and $40B in Net Income (Apple Investor Relations, 2012). One of Apple's greatest strengths is its ability to quickly translate innovative product concepts and designs into state-of-the-art products that deliver exceptional customer experiences. Apple has honed this through decades of disciplined execution and a continual focus on creating a highly synchronized supply chain, highly collaborative product design and development workflows, and the ability to take concepts to completed products in a fraction of the time of their competitors (Murray, Goode, Muro, 2010). Apple is credited with creating the smartphone market, tablet PC, cloud-based music buying and delivery service (iTunes), centralized document and image storage (iCloud) and more innovations in operating systems in the last five years than Microsoft (Apple Investor Relations, 2012). All of these accomplishments taken together have led to Apple creating a catalyst of growth in the tablet PC market, fueling a 100%+ increase in iPad sales (13% year over year) and iPhone sales that have increased 152% over the last eighteen months as well (Apple Investor Relations, 2012). Apple continues to accelerate the sales of their iPad, iPhone, iTouch devices in addition to its mainstream laptops and systems. Apple is able to accomplish these significant results by concentrating on the execution of its value chain, a decades-only concept that Dr. Michael Porter originally created to illustrate how the functional departments of a company all must be synchronized to deliver profitability (Porter, 2008). Apple's value chain is exceptionally effective in managing the coordinating of supply chain, sourcing, quality management, production, product design, marketing services, logistics and retailing operations. As long as two decades ago Apple had been concentrating on how to create this level of synchronization across their entire enterprise (Larson, 1994). As the business model of Apple has continually become more complex, the ability of the organization to stay agile and quick to respond has increasingly become more difficult. This is a common problem companies have as they grow in size and complexity of their business models. For Apple, the environmental factors in the areas of economic, social, technological and political change have challenged their ability to grow, and also forced them to create a more market-driven organizational structure, abandoning the highly successful product divisions of the 1990s and early 2000 timeframe (Apple Investor Relations, 2012). The intent of this analysis is to evaluate how Apple is managing to continually grow despite economic, social, technological and political environmental forces impacting their business. In addition, an analysis of their market environment, response to the turbulent economic environment they operate in, the nature of their product strategies, an assessment of their strategic direction and strategic options are all included in this analysis. A separate section is included for each of these areas throughout the analysis. The Porter Fives Forces Model is used for analyzing these market dynamics (Porter, 2008).
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Borgata Casino's web-based recruitment strategy for 5,000 employees
This is an analysis of Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa Applied case study of the recruitment methods and management of the Casino. It looks at the various aspects that have to be considered when carrying out the recruitment of the staff within the organization and the possible challenges that may come up with the process.
Paper Doctorate
Industry analysis of computer and peripherals manufacturing
Seen as the primary catalysts of technological change, the computer and peripherals manufacturing industry continues to go through a disruptive series of shifts that are together fundamentally redefining how these…
Research Paper Undergraduate
Tom's identity crisis and aggressive behavior: an Erikson analysis
The 10th grade student looked at in this report, called Tom, was a quiet boy who played football because of his size. He was extremely intelligent, made good grades and seemed popular with the girls, though he appeared…
Paper Doctorate
The DREAM Act's provisions for undocumented student citizenship and education
¶ … Dream Act's Newest Proposal -- May 2011, Senate Bill 952
Paper Undergraduate
Fossil fuels as a non-renewable resource and the energy crisis
Fossil Fuels - an Exploration of a Dying Resource
Research Paper Doctorate
Web-enabled databases for interactive business information systems
What exactly is a 'web-enabled database? The World Wide Web, as everyone knows, provides the user with a host of tools with which he cane gain access to information and knowledge on the Internet and browse for…
Essay Doctorate
Market structure evolution in the smartphone operating system industry
This paper discusses the mobile operating system industry. The industry composition and structure (oligopoly, monopolistic competition etc) is evaluated. The measures that are commonly used to measure success in the industry are identified and recommendations are made to improve upon these measures by delivering measures that are more useful to managers.
Paper Doctorate
Workstation domains and LAN security in enterprise architecture
¶ … Workstation Domains Figure Into Your Organizations Security Policies, Please Cite and List Your References