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Cover and table of contents
UNITED STATES
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
Washington, D.C. 20549
FORM 10-K
| ☒ | ANNUAL REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934 |
|---|
| For the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 2021 | |
| OR | |
| ☐ | TRANSITION REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934 |
| For the Transition Period From to |
Commission File Number 001-37845
MICROSOFT CORPORATION
| Washington | 91-1144442 | |
|---|---|---|
| (STATE OF INCORPORATION) | (I.R.S. ID) |
ONE MICROSOFT WAY, REDMOND, Washington 98052-6399
(425) 882-8080
| Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act: | ||||
| Title of each class | Trading Symbol | Name of exchange on which registered | ||
| Common stock, $0.00000625 par value per share | MSFT | Nasdaq | ||
| 2.125% Notes due 2021 | MSFT | Nasdaq | ||
| 3.125% Notes due 2028 | MSFT | Nasdaq | ||
| 2.625% Notes due 2033 | MSFT | Nasdaq | ||
| Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(g) of the Act: | ||||
| None |
Indicate by check mark if the registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act. Yes ☒ No ☐
Indicate by check mark if the registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or Section 15(d) of the Act. Yes ☐ No ☒
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days. Yes ☒ No ☐
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has submitted electronically every Interactive Data File required to be submitted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§232.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to submit such files). Yes ☒ No ☐
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, a smaller reporting company, or an emerging growth company. See the definitions of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer,” “smaller reporting company,” and “emerging growth company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.
| Large Accelerated Filer ☒ | Accelerated Filer ☐ | |
|---|---|---|
| Non-accelerated Filer ☐ | Smaller Reporting Company ☐ | |
| Emerging Growth Company ☐ |
If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act. ☐
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has filed a report on and attestation to its management’s assessment of the effectiveness of its internal control over financial reporting under Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (15 U.S.C. 7262(b)) by the registered public accounting firm that prepared or issued its audit report. ☒
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Act). Yes ☐ No ☒
As of December 31, 2020, the aggregate market value of the registrant’s common stock held by non-affiliates of the registrant was $1.7 trillion based on the closing sale price as reported on the NASDAQ National Market System. As of July 26, 2021, there were 7,514,891,248 shares of common stock outstanding.
DOCUMENTS INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE
Portions of the definitive Proxy Statement to be delivered to shareholders in connection with the Annual Meeting of Shareholders to be held on November 30, 2021 are incorporated by reference into Part III.
MICROSOFT CORPORATION
FORM 10-K
For the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 2021
INDEX
PART I
Item 1
Note About Forward-Looking Statements
This report includes estimates, projections, statements relating to our business plans, objectives, and expected operating results that are “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Forward-looking statements may appear throughout this report, including the following sections: “Business” (Part I, Item 1 of this Form 10-K), “Risk Factors” (Part I, Item 1A of this Form 10-K), and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” (Part II, Item 7 of this Form 10-K). These forward-looking statements generally are identified by the words “believe,” “project,” “expect,” “anticipate,” “estimate,” “intend,” “strategy,” “future,” “opportunity,” “plan,” “may,” “should,” “will,” “would,” “will be,” “will continue,” “will likely result,” and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially. We describe risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and events to differ materially in “Risk Factors,” “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations,” and “Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures about Market Risk” (Part II, Item 7A of this Form 10-K). Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date they are made. We undertake no obligation to update or revise publicly any forward-looking statements, whether because of new information, future events, or otherwise.
PART I
ITEM 1. BUSINESS
GENERAL
Embracing Our Future
Microsoft is a technology company whose mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. We strive to create local opportunity, growth, and impact in every country around the world. Our platforms and tools help drive small business productivity, large business competitiveness, and public-sector efficiency. They also support new startups, improve educational and health outcomes, and empower human ingenuity.
We bring technology and products together into experiences and solutions that unlock value for our customers. Our ecosystem of customers and partners has stepped up to help people and organizations in every country use technology to be resilient and transform during the most trying of circumstances. Amid rapid change we’ve witnessed technology empower telehealth, remote manufacturing, and new ways of working from home and serving customers. These capabilities have relied on the public cloud, which is built on the investments we have made over time.
We are living in the new era of the intelligent cloud and intelligent edge, which is being sharpened by rapid advances in distributed computing, ambient intelligence, and multidevice experiences. This means the places we go and the things we interact with will increasingly become digitized, creating new opportunities and new breakthroughs. In the next phase of innovation, computing is more powerful and ubiquitous from the cloud to the edge. Artificial intelligence (“AI”) capabilities are rapidly advancing, fueled by data and knowledge of the world. Physical and virtual worlds are coming together with the Internet of Things (“IoT”) and mixed reality to create richer experiences that understand the context surrounding people, the things they use, the places they go, and their activities and relationships. A person’s experience with technology spans a multitude of devices and has become increasingly more natural and multi-sensory with voice, ink, and gaze interactions.
What We Offer
Founded in 1975, we develop and support software, services, devices, and solutions that deliver new value for customers and help people and businesses realize their full potential.
We offer an array of services, including cloud-based solutions that provide customers with software, services, platforms, and content, and we provide solution support and consulting services. We also deliver relevant online advertising to a global audience.
Our products include operating systems, cross-device productivity applications, server applications, business solution applications, desktop and server management tools, software development tools, and video games. We also design and sell devices, including PCs, tablets, gaming and entertainment consoles, other intelligent devices, and related accessories.
PART I
Item 1
The Ambitions That Drive Us
To achieve our vision, our research and development efforts focus on three interconnected ambitions:
| • | Reinvent productivity and business processes. |
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| • | Build the intelligent cloud and intelligent edge platform. |
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| • | Create more personal computing. |
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Reinvent Productivity and Business Processes
At Microsoft, we’re providing technology and resources to help our customers navigate a remote environment. We’re seeing our family of products play key roles in the ways the world is continuing to work, learn, and connect.
Our growth depends on securely delivering continuous innovation and advancing our leading productivity and collaboration tools and services, including Office, Dynamics, and LinkedIn. Microsoft 365 brings together Office 365, Windows, and Enterprise Mobility + Security to help organizations empower their employees with AI-backed tools that unlock creativity, increase teamwork, and fuel innovation, all the while enabling compliance coverage and data protection. Microsoft Teams is enabling rapid digital transformation by giving people a single tool to chat, call, meet, and collaborate. Microsoft Viva is an employee experience platform that brings together communications, knowledge, learning, resources, and insights powered by Microsoft 365. Microsoft Relationship Sales solution brings together LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Dynamics to transform business to business sales through social selling. Dynamics 365 for Talent with LinkedIn Recruiter and Learning gives human resource professionals a complete solution to compete for talent. Microsoft Power Platform empowers employees to build custom applications, automate workflow, and analyze data no matter their technical expertise.
These scenarios represent a move to unlock creativity and discover new habits, while simplifying security and management. Organizations of all sizes have digitized business-critical functions, redefining what they can expect from their business applications. This creates an opportunity to reach new customers and increase usage and engagement with existing customers.
Build the Intelligent Cloud and Intelligent Edge Platform
In the new remote world, companies have accelerated their own digital transformation to empower their employees, optimize their operations, engage customers, and in some cases, change the very core of their products and services. Partnering with organizations on their digital transformation during this period is one of our largest opportunities and we are uniquely positioned to become the strategic digital transformation platform and partner of choice; their success is our success.
Our strategy requires continued investment in datacenters and other hybrid and edge infrastructure to support our services. Azure is a trusted cloud with comprehensive compliance coverage and AI-based security built in.
Our cloud business benefits from three economies of scale: datacenters that deploy computational resources at significantly lower cost per unit than smaller ones; datacenters that coordinate and aggregate diverse customer, geographic, and application demand patterns, improving the utilization of computing, storage, and network resources; and multi-tenancy locations that lower application maintenance labor costs.
The Microsoft Cloud is the most comprehensive and trusted cloud, providing the best integration across the technology stack while offering openness, improving time to value, reducing costs, and increasing agility. Being a global-scale cloud, Azure uniquely offers hybrid consistency, developer productivity, AI capabilities, and trusted security and compliance. We see more emerging use cases and needs for compute and security at the edge and are accelerating our innovation across the spectrum of intelligent edge devices, from IoT sensors to gateway devices and edge hardware to build, manage, and secure edge workloads. With Azure Stack, organizations can extend Azure into their own datacenters to create a consistent stack across the public cloud and the intelligent edge. Our hybrid infrastructure consistency spans security, compliance, identity, and management, helping to support the real-world needs and evolving regulatory requirements of commercial customers and enterprises. Azure Arc simplifies governance and management by delivering a consistent multi-cloud and on-premises management platform. Security, compliance, identity, and management underlie our entire tech stack. We offer integrated, end-to-end capabilities to protect people and organizations. In April 2021, we entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Nuance Communications, Inc., a cloud and AI software provider with healthcare and enterprise AI experience. The acquisition will build on our industry-specific cloud offerings.
PART I
Item 1
We are accelerating our development of mixed reality solutions with new Azure services and devices. Microsoft Mesh enables presence and shared experiences from anywhere through mixed reality applications. The opportunity to merge the physical and digital worlds, when combined with the power of Azure cloud services, unlocks the potential for entirely new workloads and experiences which we believe will shape the next era of computing.
The ability to convert data into AI drives our competitive advantage. Azure SQL Database makes it possible for customers to take SQL Server from their on-premises datacenter to a fully managed instance in the cloud to utilize built-in AI. Azure Synapse Analytics, a limitless analytics service, brings together data integration, enterprise data warehousing, and big data analytics for immediate business intelligence and machine learning needs. We are accelerating adoption of AI innovations from research to products. Our innovation helps every developer be an AI developer, with approachable new tools from Azure Machine Learning Studio for creating simple machine learning models, to the powerful Azure Machine Learning Workbench for the most advanced AI modeling and data science. From GitHub to Visual Studio, we provide a developer tool chain for everyone, no matter the technical experience, across all platforms, whether Azure, Windows, or any other cloud or client platform.
Create More Personal Computing
We strive to make computing more personal by putting people at the core of the experience, enabling them to interact with technology in more intuitive, engaging, and dynamic ways. Microsoft 365 is empowering people and organizations to be productive and secure as they adapt to more fluid ways of working and learning. The PC has been mission-critical across work, school, and life to sustain productivity in a remote everything world.
Windows 10 serves the enterprise as the most secure and productive operating system. It empowers people with AI-first interfaces ranging from voice-activated commands through Cortana, inking, immersive 3D content storytelling, and mixed reality experiences. Our ambition for Windows 10 monetization opportunities includes gaming, services, subscriptions, and search advertising. In June 2021, Microsoft announced the next generation of Windows – Windows 11. Windows 11 builds on the strengths of productivity, versatility, and security on Windows 10 today and adds in new experiences that include powerful task switching tools like new snap layouts, snap groups, and desktops; new ways to stay connected through chat; the information you want at your fingertips; and more. Windows also plays a critical role in fueling our cloud business and Microsoft 365 strategy, and it powers the growing range of devices on the “intelligent edge.”
Microsoft Edge is our fast and secure browser that helps protect your data, with built-in shopping tools designed to save you time and money. Organizational tools such as Collections, Vertical Tabs, and Immersive Reader help you make the most of your time while browsing, streaming, searching, sharing, and more.
We are committed to designing and marketing first-party devices to help drive innovation, create new device categories, and stimulate demand in the Windows ecosystem. The Surface family includes Surface Book 3, Surface Laptop Go, Surface Go 2, Surface Pro 7, Surface Laptop 4, Surface Pro X, Surface Studio 2, and Surface Duo.
To expand usage and deepen engagement, we continue to invest in content, community, and cloud services as we pursue the expansive opportunity in the gaming industry. We have broadened our approach to how we think about gaming end-to-end, from the way games are created and distributed to how they are played, including cloud gaming so players can stream across PC, console, and mobile. We have a strong position with our large and growing highly engaged community of gamers, including the March 2021 acquisition of ZeniMax Media Inc., the parent company of Bethesda Softworks LLC, one of the largest, privately held game developers and publishers in the world. Xbox Game Pass is a community with access to a curated library of over 100 first- and third-party console and PC titles. Xbox Cloud Gaming is Microsoft’s game streaming technology that is complementary to our console hardware and gives fans the ultimate choice to play the games they want, with the people they want, on the devices they want.
PART I
Item 1
Our Future Opportunity
In a time of great disruption and uncertainty, customers are looking to us to accelerate their own digital transformations as software and cloud computing play a huge role across every industry and around the world. We continue to develop complete, intelligent solutions for our customers that empower people to stay productive and collaborate, while safeguarding businesses and simplifying IT management. Our goal is to lead the industry in several distinct areas of technology over the long-term, which we expect will translate to sustained growth. We are investing significant resources in:
| • | Transforming the workplace to deliver new modern, modular business applications to improve how people communicate, collaborate, learn, work, play, and interact with one another. |
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| • | Building and running cloud-based services in ways that unleash new experiences and opportunities for businesses and individuals. |
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| • | Applying AI to drive insights and act on our customer’s behalf by understanding and interpreting their needs using natural methods of communication. |
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| • | Using Windows to fuel our cloud business, grow our share of the PC market, and drive increased engagement with our services like Microsoft 365 Consumer, Teams, Edge, Bing, Xbox Game Pass, and more. |
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| • | Tackling security from all angles with our integrated, end-to-end solutions spanning security, compliance, identity, and management, across all clouds and platforms. |
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| • | Inventing new gaming experiences that bring people together around their shared love for games on any devices and pushing the boundaries of innovation with console and PC gaming by creating the next wave of entertainment. |
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Our future growth depends on our ability to transcend current product category definitions, business models, and sales motions. We have the opportunity to redefine what customers and partners can expect and are working to deliver new solutions that reflect the best of Microsoft.
COVID-19
In March 2020, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak of COVID-19 to be a pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic continues to have widespread and unpredictable impacts on global society, economies, financial markets, and business practices, and continues to impact our business operations, including our employees, customers, partners, and communities. Refer to Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations (Part II, Item 7 of this Form 10-K) for further discussion regarding the impact of COVID-19 on our fiscal year 2021 financial results. The extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic impacts our business going forward will depend on numerous evolving factors we cannot reliably predict. Refer to Risk Factors (Part I, Item 1A of this Form 10-K) for a discussion of these factors and other risks.
Corporate Social Responsibility
Commitment to Sustainability
We work to ensure that technology is inclusive, trusted, and increases sustainability. We are accelerating progress toward a more sustainable future by reducing our environmental footprint, advancing research, helping our customers build sustainable solutions, and advocating for policies that benefit the environment. In January 2020, we announced a bold commitment and detailed plan to be carbon negative by 2030, and to remove from the environment by 2050 all the carbon we have emitted since our founding in 1975. This included a commitment to invest $1 billion over four years in new technologies and innovative climate solutions. We built on this pledge by adding commitments to be water positive by 2030, zero waste by 2030, and to protect ecosystems by developing a Planetary Computer. We also help our suppliers and customers around the world use Microsoft technology to reduce their own carbon footprint.
In January 2021, we announced that in fiscal year 2020 we reduced Microsoft’s carbon emissions by 586,683 metric tons. We purchased the removal of 1.3 million metric tons of carbon from 26 projects around the world. Furthermore, we shared a commitment to transparency by subjecting the data in our annual sustainability report to third-party review and to accountability by including progress on sustainability goals as a factor in determining executive pay.
PART I
Item 1
The investments we make in sustainability carry through to our products, services, and devices. We design our devices, from Surface to Xbox, to minimize their impact on the environment. Our cloud and AI services and datacenters help businesses cut energy consumption, reduce physical footprints, and design sustainable products. We also pledged a $50 million investment in AI for Earth to accelerate innovation by putting AI in the hands of those working to directly address sustainability challenges. We are committed to playing our part to help accelerate the world’s transition to a more economically and environmentally sustainable future for us all.
Addressing Racial Injustice and Inequity
Our future opportunity depends on reaching and empowering all communities, and we are committed to taking action to help address racial injustice and inequity. With significant input from employees and leaders who are members of the Black and African American community, our senior leadership team and board of directors announced in June 2020 that we had developed a set of actions to help improve the lived experience at Microsoft and drive change in the communities in which we live and work. These efforts include increasing our representation and strengthening our culture of inclusion by doubling the number of Black and African American people managers, senior individual contributors, and senior leaders in the United States by 2025; evolving our ecosystem with our supply chain, banking partners, and partner ecosystem; and strengthening our communities by using data, technology, and partnerships to help address racial injustice and inequities of the Black and African American communities in the U.S. and improve the safety and wellbeing of our employees and their communities.
Over the last year, we have collaborated with partners and worked within neighborhoods and communities to launch and scale a number of projects and programs including: expanding our existing justice reform work with a five-year, $50 million sustained effort, expanding access to affordable broadband and devices for Black and African American communities and key institutions that support them in major urban centers, expanding access to skills and education to support Black and African American students and adults to succeed in the digital economy, and increasing technology support for nonprofits that provide critical services to Black and African American communities.
We have more than doubled our percentage share of transaction volume with Black- and African American-owned financial institutions and increased our deposits with Black- and African American-owned minority depository institutions, enabling increased funds into local communities. Additionally, we have seen growth in our Black- and African American-owned supplier base and in Black- and African American-owned technology partners in the Microsoft Partner Network, and we launched the Black Channel Partner Alliance community to support partners onboarding to the Microsoft Cloud and to unlock partner benefits for co-selling with Microsoft.
We acknowledge we have more work ahead of us to address racial injustice and inequity, and are applying many of the programs above to help other underrepresented communities.
Investing in Digital Skills
With a continued focus on digital transformation, Microsoft is helping to ensure that no one is left behind, particularly as economies recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. We announced in June 2020 that we are expanding access to the digital skills that have become increasingly vital to many of the world’s jobs, and especially to individuals hardest hit by recent job losses. Our skills initiative brings together learning resources, certification opportunities, and job-seeker tools from LinkedIn, GitHub, and Microsoft Learn, and is built on data insights drawn from LinkedIn’s Economic Graph. We also invested $20 million in key non-profit partnerships through Microsoft Philanthropies to help people from underserved communities that are often excluded by the digital economy.
Over 42 million people across every continent have accessed free training through our skills initiative. The effort surpassed its initial goals and has been expanded with a new emphasis on connecting learners with jobs that help put their new training to use and connecting employers with skilled job seekers they might not find in traditional networks.
PART I
Item 1
HUMAN CAPITAL RESOURCES
Overview
Microsoft aims to recruit, develop, and retain diverse, world-changing talent. To foster their and our success, we seek to create an environment where people can do their best work – a place where they can proudly be their authentic selves, guided by our values, and where they know their needs can be met. We strive to maximize the potential of our human capital resources by creating a respectful, rewarding, and inclusive work environment that enables our global employees to create products and services that further our mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
As of June 30, 2021, we employed approximately 181,000 people on a full-time basis, 103,000 in the U.S. and 78,000 internationally. Of the total employed people, 67,000 were in operations, including manufacturing, distribution, product support, and consulting services; 60,000 were in product research and development; 40,000 were in sales and marketing; and 14,000 were in general and administration. Certain of our employees are subject to collective bargaining agreements.
Our Culture
Microsoft’s culture is grounded in the growth mindset. This means everyone is on a continuous journey to learn and grow. We believe potential can be nurtured and is not pre-determined, and we should always be learning and curious - trying new things without fear of failure. We identified four attributes that allow growth mindset to flourish:
| • | Obsessing over what matters to our customers. |
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| • | Becoming more diverse and inclusive in everything we do. |
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| • | Operating as one company, One Microsoft, instead of multiple siloed businesses. |
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| • | Making a difference in the lives of each other, our customers, and the world around us. |
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Our employee listening systems enable us to gather feedback directly from our workforce to inform our programs and employee needs globally. 88% of employees globally participated in our fiscal year 2021 MS Poll engagement survey, which covers a variety of topics such as inclusion, pay and benefits, and learning and development. Throughout the fiscal year, we also collect nearly 75,000 Daily Pulse employee survey responses. During fiscal year 2021, our Daily Pulse surveys gave us invaluable insights into ways we could support employees through the COVID-19 pandemic and addressing racial injustice. In addition to poll and pulse surveys, we gain insights through onboarding and exit surveys, internal Yammer channels, employee Q&A sessions, and AskHR Service support.
Diversity and Inclusion
At Microsoft we have an inherently inclusive mission: to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. We think of diversity and inclusion as core to our business model, informing our actions to impact economies and people around the world. There are billions of people who want to achieve more, but have a different set of circumstances, abilities, and backgrounds that often limit access to opportunity and achievement. The better we represent that diversity inside Microsoft, the more effectively we can innovate for those we seek to empower.
We strive to include others by holding ourselves accountable for diversity, driving global systemic change in our workplace and workforce, and creating an inclusive work environment. Through this commitment we can allow everyone the chance to be their authentic selves and do their best work every day. We support multiple highly active Employee Resource Groups for women, families, racial and ethnic minorities, military, people with disabilities, or who identify as LGBTQI+, where employees can go for support, networking, and community-building. As described in our 2020 Proxy Statement, annual performance and compensation reviews of our senior leadership team include an evaluation of their contributions to employee culture and diversity. To ensure accountability over time, we publicly disclose our progress on a multitude of workforce metrics including:
| • | Detailed breakdowns of gender, racial, and ethnic minority representation in our employee population, with data by job types, levels, and segments of our business. |
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| • | Our EEO-1 report (equal employment opportunity). |
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| • | Disability representation. |
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PART I
Item 1
Total Rewards
We develop dynamic, sustainable, and strategic programs with the goal of providing a highly differentiated portfolio to attract, reward, and retain top talent and enable our employees to do their best work. These programs reinforce our culture and values such as collaboration and growth mindset. Managers evaluate and recommend rewards based on, for example, how well we leverage the work of others and contribute to the success of our colleagues. We monitor pay equity and career progress across multiple dimensions.
As part of our effort to promote a One Microsoft and inclusive culture, we expanded stock eligibility to all Microsoft employees as part of our annual rewards process. This includes all non-exempt and exempt employees and equivalents across the globe including business support professionals and datacenter and retail employees.
Pay Equity
In our 2020 Diversity and Inclusion Report, we reported that all racial and ethnic minority employees in the U.S. combined earn $1.006 for every $1.000 earned by their white counterparts, that women in the U.S. earn $1.001 for every $1.000 earned by their counterparts in the U.S. who are men, and women in the U.S. plus our ten other largest employee geographies (Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Israel, Japan, and United Kingdom) combined earn $1.000 for every $1.000 by men in these countries. Our intended result is a global performance and development approach that fosters our culture, and competitive compensation that ensures equitable pay by role while supporting pay for performance.
Wellness and Safety
Microsoft is committed to supporting our employees’ well-being and safety while they are at work and in their personal lives.
We took a wide variety of measures to protect the health and well-being of our employees, suppliers, and customers during the COVID-19 pandemic. We made substantial modifications to employee travel policies and implemented office closures so non-essential employees could work remotely. We continued to pay hourly service providers such as cleaning and reception staff who may have otherwise been furloughed. We implemented a global Paid Pandemic School and Childcare Closure Leave to support working parents, added wellbeing days for those who needed to take time off for mental health and wellness, implemented on-demand COVID-19 testing and vaccinations on our Redmond, Washington campus, and extended full medical plan coverage for coronavirus testing, treatment, and telehealth services. We also expanded existing programs such as our Microsoft CARES Employee Assistance Program and family backup care.
In addition to the extraordinary steps and programs relating to COVID-19, our comprehensive benefits package includes many physical, emotional, and financial wellness programs including counseling through the Microsoft CARES Employee Assistance Program, flexible fitness benefits, savings and investment tools, adoption assistance, and back-up care for children and elders. Finally, our Occupational Health and Safety program helps ensure employees can stay safe while they are working.
Learning and Development
Our growth mindset culture begins with valuing learning over knowing – seeking out new ideas, driving innovation, embracing challenges, learning from failure, and improving over time. To support this culture, we offer a wide range of learning and development opportunities. We believe learning can be more than formal instruction, and our learning philosophy focuses on providing the right learning, at the right time, in the right way. Opportunities include:
| • | Personalized, integrated, and relevant views of all learning opportunities on our internal learning portal, our external learning portal MS Learn, and LinkedIn Learning that is available to all employees worldwide. |
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| • | In-the-classroom learning, learning “pods,” our early-in-career Aspire program, and manager excellence communities. |
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| • | On-the-job “stretch” and advancement opportunities. |
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| • | Managers holding conversations about employees’ career and development plans, coaching on career opportunities, and programs like mentoring and sponsorship. |
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| • | Customized manager learning to build people manager capabilities and similar learning solutions to build leadership skills for all employees including differentiated leadership development programs. |
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PART I
Item 1
| • | New employee orientation covering a range of topics including company values, culture, and Standards of Business Conduct, as well as ongoing onboarding program. |
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Our employees embrace the growth mindset and take advantage of the formal learning opportunities as well as thousands of informal and on-the-job learning opportunities. In terms of formal on-line learning solutions, in fiscal year 2021 our employees completed over 5 million courses, averaging over 18 hours per employee. Given our focus on understanding core company beliefs and compliance topics, all employees complete required learning programs like Standards of Business Conduct, Privacy, Unconscious Bias, and preventing harassment courses. Our corporate learning portal has over 100,000 average monthly active users. All of our approximately 23,000 people managers must complete between 25-30 hours of required manager capability and excellence training and are assigned ongoing required training each year. In addition, all employees complete skills training based on the profession they are in each year.
New Ways of Working
The global pandemic has accelerated our capabilities and culture with respect to flexible work. Microsoft has introduced a Hybrid Workplace Flexibility Guide to better support managers and employees as they adapt to new ways of working that shift paradigms, embrace flexibility, promote inclusion, and drive innovation. Our ongoing survey data shows employees value the flexibility related to work location, work site, and work hours, and while many indicate they intend to return to a worksite once conditions permit, they also intend to adjust hours or spend some portions of workweeks working remotely. We are focused on building capabilities to support a variety of workstyles where individuals, teams, and our business can be successful.
OPERATING SEGMENTS
We operate our business and report our financial performance using three segments: Productivity and Business Processes, Intelligent Cloud, and More Personal Computing. Our segments provide management with a comprehensive financial view of our key businesses. The segments enable the alignment of strategies and objectives across the development, sales, marketing, and services organizations, and they provide a framework for timely and rational allocation of resources within businesses.
Additional information on our operating segments and geographic and product information is contained in Note 19 – Segment Information and Geographic Data of the Notes to Financial Statements (Part II, Item 8 of this Form 10-K).
Our reportable segments are described below.
Productivity and Business Processes
Our Productivity and Business Processes segment consists of products and services in our portfolio of productivity, communication, and information services, spanning a variety of devices and platforms. This segment primarily comprises:
| • | Office Commercial (Office 365 subscriptions, the Office 365 portion of Microsoft 365 Commercial subscriptions, and Office licensed on-premises), comprising Office, Exchange, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, Office 365 Security and Compliance, and Skype for Business. |
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| • | Office Consumer, including Microsoft 365 Consumer subscriptions and Office licensed on-premises, and Office Consumer Services, including Skype, Outlook.com, and OneDrive. |
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| • | LinkedIn, including Talent Solutions, Marketing Solutions, Premium Subscriptions, Sales Solutions, and Learning Solutions. |
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| • | Dynamics business solutions, including Dynamics 365, comprising a set of intelligent, cloud-based applications across ERP, CRM, Customer Insights, Power Apps, and Power Automate; and on-premises ERP and CRM applications. |
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PART I
Item 1
Office Commercial
Office Commercial is designed to increase personal, team, and organizational productivity through a range of products and services. Growth depends on our ability to reach new users in new markets such as frontline workers, small and medium businesses, and growth markets, as well as add value to our core product and service offerings to span productivity categories such as communication, collaboration, analytics, security, and compliance. Office Commercial revenue is mainly affected by a combination of continued installed base growth and average revenue per user expansion, as well as the continued shift from Office licensed on-premises to Office 365.
Office Consumer
Office Consumer is designed to increase personal productivity through a range of products and services. Growth depends on our ability to reach new users, add value to our core product set, and continue to expand our product and service offerings into new markets. Office Consumer revenue is mainly affected by the percentage of customers that buy Office with their new devices and the continued shift from Office licensed on-premises to Microsoft 365 Consumer subscriptions. Office Consumer Services revenue is mainly affected by the demand for communication and storage through Skype, Outlook.com, and OneDrive, which is largely driven by subscriptions, advertising, and the sale of minutes.
LinkedIn connects the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful and transforms the way companies hire, market, sell, and learn. Our vision is to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce through the ongoing development of the world’s first Economic Graph, a digital representation of the global economy. In addition to LinkedIn’s free services, LinkedIn offers monetized solutions: Talent Solutions, Marketing Solutions, Premium Subscriptions, Sales Solutions, and Learning Solutions. Talent Solutions provide insights for workforce planning and tools to hire, nurture, and develop talent. Marketing Solutions help companies reach, engage, and convert their audiences at scale. Premium Subscriptions enables professionals to manage their professional identity, grow their network, and connect with talent through additional services like premium search. Sales Solutions help companies strengthen customer relationships, empower teams with digital selling tools, and acquire new opportunities. Finally, Learning Solutions, including Glint, help businesses close critical skills gaps in times where companies are having to do more with existing talent. LinkedIn has over 750 million members and has offices around the globe. Growth will depend on our ability to increase the number of LinkedIn members and our ability to continue offering services that provide value for our members and increase their engagement. LinkedIn revenue is mainly affected by demand from enterprises and professional organizations for subscriptions to Talent Solutions, Learning Solutions, Sales Solutions, and Premium Subscriptions offerings, as well as member engagement and the quality of the sponsored content delivered to those members to drive Marketing Solutions.
Dynamics
Dynamics provides cloud-based and on-premises business solutions for financial management, enterprise resource planning (“ERP”), customer relationship management (“CRM”), supply chain management, and other application development platforms for small and medium businesses, large organizations, and divisions of global enterprises. Dynamics revenue is driven by the number of users licensed and applications consumed, expansion of average revenue per user, and the continued shift to Dynamics 365, a unified set of cloud-based intelligent business applications, including Power Apps and Power Automate.
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Item 1
Competition
Competitors to Office include software and global application vendors, such as Apple, Cisco Systems, Facebook, Google, IBM, Okta, Proofpoint, Slack, Symantec, Zoom, and numerous web-based and mobile application competitors as well as local application developers. Apple distributes versions of its pre-installed application software, such as email and calendar products, through its PCs, tablets, and phones. Cisco Systems is using its position in enterprise communications equipment to grow its unified communications business. Google provides a hosted messaging and productivity suite. Slack provides teamwork and collaboration software. Zoom offers videoconferencing and cloud phone solutions. Skype for Business and Skype also compete with a variety of instant messaging, voice, and video communication providers, ranging from start-ups to established enterprises. Okta, Proofpoint, and Symantec provide security solutions across email security, information protection, identity, and governance. Web-based offerings competing with individual applications have also positioned themselves as alternatives to our products and services. We compete by providing powerful, flexible, secure, integrated industry-specific, and easy-to-use productivity and collaboration tools and services that create comprehensive solutions and work well with technologies our customers already have both on-premises or in the cloud.
LinkedIn faces competition from online professional networks, recruiting companies, talent management companies, and larger companies that are focusing on talent management and human resource services; job boards; traditional recruiting firms; and companies that provide learning and development products and services. Marketing Solutions competes with online and offline outlets that generate revenue from advertisers and marketers, and Sales Solutions competes with online and offline outlets for companies with lead generation and customer intelligence and insights.
Dynamics competes with cloud-based and on-premises business solution providers such as Oracle, Salesforce.com, and SAP.
Intelligent Cloud
Our Intelligent Cloud segment consists of our public, private, and hybrid server products and cloud services that can power modern business and developers. This segment primarily comprises:
| • | Server products and cloud services, including Azure; SQL Server, Windows Server, Visual Studio, System Center, and related Client Access Licenses (“CALs”); and GitHub. |
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| • | Enterprise Services, including Premier Support Services and Microsoft Consulting Services. |
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Server Products and Cloud Services
Azure is a comprehensive set of cloud services that offer developers, IT professionals, and enterprises freedom to build, deploy, and manage applications on any platform or device. Customers can use Azure through our global network of datacenters for computing, networking, storage, mobile and web application services, AI, IoT, cognitive services, and machine learning. 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. Azure revenue is mainly affected by infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service consumption-based services, and per user-based services such as Enterprise Mobility + Security.
Our server products are designed to make IT professionals, developers, and their systems more productive and efficient. Server software is integrated server infrastructure and middleware designed to support software applications built on the Windows Server operating system. This includes the server platform, database, business intelligence, storage, management and operations, virtualization, service-oriented architecture platform, security, and identity software. We also license standalone and software development lifecycle tools for software architects, developers, testers, and project managers. GitHub provides a collaboration platform and code hosting service for developers. Server products revenue is mainly affected by purchases through volume licensing programs, licenses sold to original equipment manufacturers (“OEM”), and retail packaged products. CALs provide access rights to certain server products, including SQL Server and Windows Server, and revenue is reported along with the associated server product.
Enterprise Services
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 IT professionals on various Microsoft products.
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Competition
Azure faces diverse competition from companies such as Amazon, Google, IBM, Oracle, VMware, and open source offerings. Our Enterprise Mobility + Security offerings also compete with products from a range of competitors including identity vendors, security solution vendors, and numerous other security point solution vendors. Azure’s competitive advantage includes enabling a hybrid cloud, allowing deployment of existing datacenters with our public cloud into a single, cohesive infrastructure, and the ability to run at a scale that meets the needs of businesses of all sizes and complexities. We believe our cloud’s global scale, coupled with our broad portfolio of identity and security solutions, allows us to effectively solve complex cybersecurity challenges for our customers and differentiates us from the competition.
Our server products face competition from a wide variety of server operating systems and applications offered by companies with a range of market approaches. Vertically integrated computer manufacturers such as Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Oracle offer their own versions of the Unix operating system preinstalled on server hardware. Nearly all computer manufacturers offer server hardware for the Linux operating system and many contribute to Linux operating system development. The competitive position of Linux has also benefited from the large number of compatible applications now produced by many commercial and non-commercial software developers. A number of companies, such as Red Hat, supply versions of Linux.
We compete to provide enterprise-wide computing solutions and point solutions with numerous commercial software vendors that offer solutions and middleware technology platforms, software applications for connectivity (both Internet and intranet), security, hosting, database, and e-business servers. IBM and Oracle lead a group of companies focused on the Java Platform Enterprise Edition that competes with our enterprise-wide computing solutions. Commercial competitors for our server applications for PC-based distributed client-server environments include CA Technologies, IBM, and Oracle. Our web application platform software competes with open source software such as Apache, Linux, MySQL, and PHP. In middleware, we compete against Java vendors.
Our database, business intelligence, and data warehousing solutions offerings compete with products from IBM, Oracle, SAP, and other companies. Our system management solutions compete with server management and server virtualization platform providers, such as BMC, CA Technologies, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and VMware. Our products for software developers compete against offerings from Adobe, IBM, Oracle, and other companies, and also against open-source projects, including Eclipse (sponsored by CA Technologies, IBM, Oracle, and SAP), PHP, and Ruby on Rails.
We believe our server products provide customers with advantages in performance, total costs of ownership, and productivity by delivering superior applications, development tools, compatibility with a broad base of hardware and software applications, security, and manageability.
Our 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.
More Personal Computing
Our More Personal Computing segment consists of products and services that put customers at the center of the experience with our technology. This segment primarily comprises:
| • | Windows, including Windows OEM licensing (“Windows OEM”) and other non-volume licensing of the Windows operating system; Windows Commercial, comprising volume licensing of the Windows operating system, Windows cloud services, and other Windows commercial offerings; patent licensing; Windows IoT; and MSN advertising. |
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| • | Devices, including Surface and PC accessories. |
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| • | Gaming, including Xbox hardware and Xbox content and services, comprising digital transactions, Xbox Game Pass and other subscriptions, video games, third-party video game royalties, cloud services, and advertising. |
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| • | Search advertising. |
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PART I
Item 1
Windows
The Windows operating system is designed to deliver a more personal computing experience for users by enabling consistency of experience, applications, and information across their devices. Windows OEM revenue is impacted significantly by the number of Windows operating system licenses purchased by OEMs, which they pre-install on the devices they sell. In addition to computing device market volume, Windows OEM revenue is impacted by:
| • | The mix of computing devices based on form factor and screen size. |
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| • | Differences in device market demand between developed markets and growth markets. |
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| • | Attachment of Windows to devices shipped. |
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| • | Customer mix between consumer, small and medium businesses, and large enterprises. |
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| • | Changes in inventory levels in the OEM channel. |
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| • | Pricing changes and promotions, pricing variation that occurs when the mix of devices manufactured shifts from local and regional system builders to large multinational OEMs, and different pricing of Windows versions licensed. |
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| • | Constraints in the supply chain of device components. |
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| • | Piracy. |
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Windows Commercial revenue, which includes volume licensing of the Windows operating system and Windows cloud services such as Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection, is affected mainly by the demand from commercial customers for volume licensing and Software Assurance (“SA”), as well as advanced security offerings. Windows Commercial revenue often reflects the number of information workers in a licensed enterprise and is relatively independent of the number of PCs sold in a given year.
Patent licensing includes our programs to license patents we own for use across a broad array of technology areas, including mobile devices and cloud offerings.
Windows IoT extends the power of Windows and the cloud to intelligent systems by delivering specialized operating systems, tools, and services for use in embedded devices.
MSN advertising includes both native and display ads.
Devices
We design and sell devices, including Surface and PC accessories. Our devices are designed to enable people and organizations to connect to the people and content that matter most using Windows and integrated Microsoft products and services. Surface is designed to help organizations, students, and consumers be more productive. Growth in Devices is dependent on total PC shipments, the ability to attract new customers, our product roadmap, and expanding into new categories.
Gaming
Our gaming platform is designed to provide a variety of entertainment through a unique combination of content, community, and cloud. Our exclusive game content is created through Xbox Game Studios, a collection of first-party studios creating iconic and differentiated gaming experiences. We continue to invest in new gaming studios and content to expand our IP roadmap and leverage new content creators. These unique gaming experiences are the cornerstone of Xbox Game Pass, a subscription service and gaming community with access to a curated library of over 100 first- and third-party console and PC titles.
The gamer remains at the heart of the Xbox ecosystem. We continue to open new opportunities for gamers to engage both on- and off-console with both the launch of Xbox Cloud Gaming, our game streaming service, and continued investment in gaming hardware. Xbox Cloud Gaming utilizes Microsoft’s Azure cloud technology to allow direct and on-demand streaming of games to PCs, consoles, and mobile devices, enabling gamers to take their favorites games with them and play on the device most convenient to them.
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Xbox enables people to connect and share online gaming experiences that are accessible on Xbox consoles, Windows-enabled devices, and other devices. Xbox is designed to benefit users by providing access to a network of certified applications and services and to benefit our developer and partner ecosystems by providing access to a large customer base. Xbox revenue is mainly affected by subscriptions and sales of first- and third-party content, as well as advertising. Growth of our Gaming business is determined by the overall active user base through Xbox enabled content, availability of games, providing exclusive game content that gamers seek, the computational power and reliability of the devices used to access our content and services, and the ability to create new experiences through first-party content creators.
Search Advertising
Our Search business, including Bing and Microsoft Advertising, is designed to deliver relevant online advertising to a global audience. We have several partnerships with other companies, including Verizon Media Group, through which we provide and monetize search queries. Growth depends on our ability to attract new users, understand intent, and match intent with relevant content and advertiser offerings.
Competition
Windows faces competition from various software products and from alternative platforms and devices, mainly from Apple and Google. We believe Windows competes effectively by giving customers choice, value, flexibility, security, an easy-to-use interface, and compatibility with a broad range of hardware and software applications, including those that enable productivity.
Devices face competition from various computer, tablet, and hardware manufacturers who offer a unique combination of high-quality industrial design and innovative technologies across various price points. These manufacturers, many of which are also current or potential partners and customers, include Apple and our Windows OEMs.
Xbox and our cloud gaming services face competition from various online gaming ecosystems and game streaming services, including those operated by Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Tencent. We also compete with other providers of entertainment services such as video streaming platforms. Our gaming platform competes with console platforms from Nintendo and Sony, both of which have a large, established base of customers. We believe our gaming platform is effectively positioned against, and uniquely differentiated from, competitive products and services based on significant innovation in hardware architecture, user interface, developer tools, online gaming and entertainment services, and continued strong exclusive content from our own first-party game franchises as well as other digital content offerings.
Our search business competes with Google and a wide array of websites, social platforms like Facebook, and portals that provide content and online offerings to end users.
OPERATIONS
We have operations centers that support 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 datacenters throughout the Americas, Europe, Australia, and Asia, as well as in the Middle East and Africa.
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.
Our devices are primarily manufactured by third-party contract manufacturers. For the majority of our products, we have the ability to use other manufacturers if a current vendor becomes unavailable or unable to meet our requirements. However, some of our products contain certain components for which there are very few qualified suppliers. For these components, we have limited near-term flexibility to use other manufacturers if a current vendor becomes unavailable or is unable to meet our requirements. Extended disruptions at these suppliers could lead to a similar disruption in our ability to manufacture devices on time to meet consumer demand.
PART I
Next: Item 1. RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT