Microsoft acquisition history

Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard, the publisher behind franchises such as Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Diablo, Overwatch and Candy Crush, for $95.00 per share in cash, about $68.7 billion — the largest acquisition in Microsoft's history. The deal, which closed after nearly two years of global regulatory review (including remedies for cloud-gaming rights), made Microsoft the world's third-largest gaming company by revenue and brought Activision, Blizzard and King studios into Microsoft Gaming under Phil Spencer.

Gaming is the most dynamic and exciting category in entertainment across all platforms today and will play a key role in the development of metaverse platforms.Satya Nadella — Chairman and CEO, Microsoft

Miburo is a cyber threat-analysis firm specializing in detecting and countering foreign information operations across 16 languages. Microsoft acquired it to expand its threat intelligence and better understand how foreign adversaries combine information operations with cyber-attacks.

Microsoft acquired Xandr, AT&T's data-enabled digital advertising marketplace and technology platform connecting marketers and media owners through first-party, data-led advertising including video and connected TV. Microsoft framed it as accelerating its digital advertising and retail media ambitions; Xandr was folded into Microsoft Advertising. Terms were not disclosed.

RiskIQ is a provider of global threat intelligence and attack surface management, helping enterprises discover and assess security risk across their entire internet-facing estate spanning cloud, on-premises and supply-chain environments. Microsoft acquired the company to give customers comprehensive visibility of external threats and vulnerable assets as they pursue digital transformation and Zero Trust.

The vision and mission of RiskIQ is to provide unmatched internet visibility and insights to better protect our customers and partners' security programs.Elias Manousos — Cofounder and CEO, RiskIQ

Microsoft acquired Metaswitch Networks, a provider of virtualized, cloud-native network software and voice/data communications solutions for operators. It complemented Microsoft's earlier Affirmed Networks purchase, adding depth to Azure's infrastructure for virtualized communications. Terms were not disclosed.

The convergence of cloud and communication networks presents a unique opportunity for Microsoft to serve operators globally via continued investment in Azure.Yousef Khalidi — Corporate Vice President, Azure Networking, Microsoft

Microsoft acquired Affirmed Networks, a provider of fully virtualized, cloud-native mobile network software that helps carriers simplify operations and launch new services. The deal extended Azure into telecommunications as operators move toward 5G. Terms were not disclosed.

With Affirmed Networks, we will be able to offer new and innovative solutions tailored to the unique needs of operators.Yousef Khalidi — Corporate Vice President, Azure Networking, Microsoft

npm operates the public npm registry, the package manager used by millions of developers in the JavaScript community. GitHub (a Microsoft subsidiary) acquired it to invest in registry infrastructure and improve the developer experience while keeping the public registry free and available.

We're honored to be part of the next chapter of npm and support the JavaScript community in a new way.Jeremy Epling — GitHub

Avere Systems provides high-performance NFS and SMB file-based storage and caching for Linux and Windows clients across cloud, hybrid, and on-premises environments, aimed at large-scale compute workloads such as media and entertainment. Microsoft acquired it to combine Avere's storage technology with Azure for demanding high-performance computing workloads.

By bringing together Avere's storage expertise with the power of Microsoft's cloud, customers will benefit from industry-leading innovations.Jason Zander — Executive Vice President, Strategic Missions and Technologies at Microsoft

Cloudyn provides cloud cost-management and optimization tools, giving enterprises and managed service providers visibility, analytics, monitoring, and cost allocation across Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud. Microsoft acquired it to give Azure customers enterprise-grade management of consumption, cost, and performance.

Cloudyn gives enterprise customers tools to identify, measure and analyze consumption, enable accountability and forecast future cloud spending.Jeremy Winter — Director of Program Management, Azure Security and Operations Management

Intentional Software, founded in 2002 by Charles Simonyi, built a platform for a new generation of team-productivity applications after early work on intentional programming. Microsoft acquired it to strengthen its productivity and collaboration capabilities.

We're excited about the company's work on productivity applications, especially given our focus of putting people at the center of experiences and our continued effort to reimagine collaboration.Rajesh Jha — Executive Vice President, Office Product Group

Deis builds Kubernetes-based container management tooling that improves the agility, efficiency, and reliability of applications for developers. Microsoft acquired it to strengthen Azure's container capabilities and deepen its commitment to open source and developer productivity.

Deis gives developers the means to vastly improve application agility, efficiency and reliability through their Kubernetes container management technologies.Scott Guthrie — Executive Vice President, Cloud + AI

Maluuba is a Montreal-based deep-learning research lab focused on natural-language understanding, question-answering, and decision-making using deep and reinforcement learning. Microsoft acquired it to advance machine reading and writing and its broader effort to democratize AI.

Maluuba's expertise in deep learning and reinforcement learning for question-answering and decision-making systems will help us advance our strategy to democratize AI.Harry Shum — Executive Vice President, Microsoft AI and Research Group

Microsoft acquired professional-networking company LinkedIn — then with more than 433 million members — for $196.00 per share in cash, about $26.2 billion. LinkedIn retained its distinct brand, culture and independence, with CEO Jeff Weiner reporting to Satya Nadella. Microsoft framed the deal as connecting the world's leading professional cloud with the world's leading professional network to reinvent selling, marketing, learning and productivity across Office 365 and Dynamics.

The LinkedIn team has grown a fantastic business centered on connecting the world's professionals. Together we can accelerate the growth of LinkedIn, as well as Microsoft Office 365 and Dynamics.Satya Nadella — CEO, Microsoft

Microsoft acquired SwiftKey, maker of a predictive software keyboard and SDK that then powered more than 300 million Android and iOS devices across roughly 100 languages. Microsoft kept developing SwiftKey's keyboard apps while folding the predictive technology into its broader portfolio. Financial terms were not disclosed.

We believe that together we can achieve orders of magnitude greater scale than either of us could have achieved independently.Harry Shum — Executive Vice President, Microsoft AI and Research Group

Revolution Analytics was the leading commercial provider of software and services for R, the open-source language for statistical computing and predictive analytics. Microsoft acquired it to bring advanced analytics and data science to its data platform across on-premises, hybrid, and Azure environments and help close the data-science skills gap.

We are at the threshold of a revolution in information technology driven by the use of statistics and scientific analyses on big data.Joseph Sirosh — Corporate Vice President, Data Group, Microsoft

Microsoft completed its acquisition of Sentillion, a healthcare IT software company specializing in context management and single sign-on / identity management for clinicians. Combining Sentillion's technology with Microsoft's Amalga Unified Intelligence System aimed to streamline clinicians' access to health-IT applications and patient data, freeing more time for patient care.

We're excited to bring Sentillion's talent, thought leadership and innovation in health IT into the Health Solutions Group.Peter Neupert — Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Health Solutions Group

FAST was a leading provider of enterprise search technology. Microsoft launched an all-cash tender offer at 19.00 NOK per share, a 42% premium, valuing FAST at about 6.6 billion NOK (~$1.2 billion). FAST's high-end search expertise complemented Microsoft's SharePoint products.

The combination of Microsoft and FAST gives customers a new choice: a single vendor with solutions that span the full range of customer needs.Jeff Raikes — President, Microsoft Business Division

Danger was a software-as-a-service company whose platform powered popular consumer handsets, delivering mobile messaging, social networking, web browsing and email on a single customizable phone. Microsoft added Danger to its Entertainment and Devices Division to accelerate its move into the mobile consumer space. Price was not disclosed.

The addition of Danger serves as a perfect complement to our existing software and services.Robbie Bach — President, Entertainment and Devices Division, Microsoft

Founded in 1999, Tellme was a leading provider of voice services including nationwide directory assistance, enterprise customer service and voice-enabled mobile search, answering millions of calls daily. Microsoft folded Tellme's voice expertise into offerings from unified communications to mobile search. Deal terms were not disclosed.

Speech is universal, simple and holds incredible promise as a key interface for computing.Steve Ballmer — CEO, Microsoft

Softricity provided application-virtualization and dynamic-streaming technology that reduces application management cost and complexity by serving applications centrally and delivering them to desktops as virtualized images. Microsoft acquired it to accelerate application and OS deployments and enable centrally managed software services.

With application virtualization and software streaming, Microsoft can now deliver virtualization at the application layer.Bob Muglia — Senior Vice President, Server and Tools Business, Microsoft

Sybari Software, headquartered in New York with global operations, made enterprise antivirus, anti-spam and content-filtering products (notably Antigen) that protected messaging and collaboration servers for more than 10,000 businesses. Microsoft acquired it to strengthen its enterprise security strategy with multi-engine server-level protection.

Enterprise customers face a complex set of attacks through their e-mail and collaboration infrastructure.Mike Nash — Corporate Vice President, Security Business and Technology Unit, Microsoft

PlaceWare, based in Mountain View, California, was a leading Web-conferencing provider whose service enabled real-time, interactive online presentations and meetings scaling from small groups to thousands of attendees. Microsoft acquired it to expand its Information Worker real-time collaboration offerings; the product became Microsoft Office Live Meeting.

PlaceWare is a solid company and has built a strong Web conferencing business. We look forward to merging our strengths.Jeff Raikes — Group Vice President of Productivity and Business Services, Microsoft

Connectix was a U.S. developer of virtual-machine software, including Virtual PC for Windows and Mac and Virtual Server. Microsoft acquired the virtualization technology so customers could run legacy Windows applications while migrating to newer operating systems and consolidate servers.

Our customers told us they wanted a best-of-breed virtual machine solution that enables them to run their legacy Windows applications, even as they migrate to more modern operating system technology.Bill Veghte — Corporate Vice President, Windows Server Group, Microsoft

Vicinity Corporation, based in Sunnyvale, California, provided location-based technology that let businesses and governments market local product and service availability across Web, wireless and speech platforms. Microsoft acquired it to strengthen its MapPoint .NET location-services platform.

Our combined strengths will put us in a better position to deliver the benefits of location in the widest range of enterprise and consumer applications.Ted Johnson — Corporate Vice President, Microsoft

Navision was a global provider of integrated business software solutions. The stock-and-cash purchase offered shareholders 300 DKK per share, about $1.3 billion at announcement. Combining Navision with Microsoft Great Plains strengthened Microsoft's geographic and product coverage for small and midmarket business software.

The combined vision, business strategy and product offerings of Microsoft and Navision will provide great benefits to small and midmarket customers.Steve Ballmer — CEO, Microsoft

Great Plains Software was a leading supplier of mid-market business management applications. Structured as a stock purchase exchanging 1.1 Microsoft shares per Great Plains share, it brought Great Plains in as a division of Microsoft's Productivity and Business Services Group and expanded Microsoft's reach into integrated business software for small and mid-sized companies.

Microsoft and Great Plains see the future of business applications for small and medium-sized companies in the same way.Steve Ballmer — President and CEO, Microsoft

WebAppoint.com operated a real-time, Web-based appointment-scheduling service (an application service provider) that let businesses and consumers book and manage appointments online any time. Microsoft folded the online calendaring/scheduling service into its bCentral small-business Web services.

DriveOff.com was an automotive e-commerce company (a subsidiary of Navidec Inc.) that helped consumers research, finance and buy cars online. Microsoft's MSN CarPoint acquired it to make online car buying easier, operating DriveOff.com as a wholly owned subsidiary of CarPoint.

Visio was a maker of business and technical diagramming and visualization software. Microsoft folded it into its Business Productivity Group as the Visio Division, keeping the Seattle offices, with Visio shareholders receiving 0.45 Microsoft shares per Visio share.

We are thrilled to officially welcome Visio, a pioneer in delivering unique diagramming solutions to business and enterprise customers, to the Microsoft family of business products.Bob Muglia — Group Vice President, Microsoft

WebTV Networks offered an end-to-end system that delivered internet access through television sets via set-top boxes (licensed to Philips and Sony), letting consumers browse the web using a remote control. Microsoft acquired the Palo Alto company for roughly $425 million in stock and cash, operating it as a subsidiary reporting to senior vice president Craig Mundie as part of its digital-broadcasting and consumer-internet strategy.

This partnership with WebTV underscores our strategy of delivering to consumers the benefits of the Internet together with emerging forms of digital broadcasting.Bill Gates — Chairman and CEO, Microsoft

Microsoft agreed to buy Nuance, a maker of conversational-AI and cloud-based ambient clinical documentation tools for healthcare providers (products include Dragon Ambient eXperience, Dragon Medical One and PowerScribe One), for $56.00 per share in cash, about $19.7 billion including net debt. The deal built on a partnership the two firms began in 2019 and folded Nuance into Microsoft's Intelligent Cloud segment, with CEO Mark Benjamin staying on. Microsoft said the purchase would roughly double its addressable market in the healthcare-provider space to nearly $500 billion.

Nuance provides the AI layer at the healthcare point of delivery and is a pioneer in the real-world application of enterprise AI. AI is technology's most important priority, and healthcare is its most urgent application.Satya Nadella — CEO, Microsoft

Microsoft agreed to acquire GitHub, the software-development and code-collaboration platform then used by more than 28 million developers, in an all-stock deal worth $7.5 billion. GitHub kept operating independently with a developer-first approach, with Microsoft's Nat Friedman becoming GitHub CEO. Microsoft reported GitHub within its Intelligent Cloud segment after closing.

Microsoft is a developer-first company, and by joining forces with GitHub we strengthen our commitment to developer freedom, openness and innovation.Satya Nadella — CEO, Microsoft

Microsoft announced plans to buy ZeniMax Media, the privately held parent of publisher Bethesda Softworks, for $7.5 billion in cash. ZeniMax brought franchises such as The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, DOOM, Quake, Wolfenstein and Dishonored plus more than 2,300 employees across eight studios. The deal grew Microsoft's first-party lineup from 15 to 23 creative studio teams, with Bethesda's games coming to Xbox Game Pass.

Quality differentiated content is the engine behind the growth and value of Xbox Game Pass.Satya Nadella — CEO, Microsoft

Microsoft agreed to acquire Skype, the internet voice and video communications service, for $8.5 billion in cash from an investor group led by Silver Lake. Skype then had about 170 million connected users and had carried over 207 billion minutes of voice and video calls in 2010. Skype became a new Microsoft business division, with CEO Tony Bates reporting to Steve Ballmer.

Together we will create the future of real-time communications so people can easily stay connected to family, friends, clients and colleagues anywhere in the world.Steve Ballmer — CEO, Microsoft

Microsoft agreed to purchase substantially all of Nokia's Devices & Services business — the Mobile Phones and Smart Devices units, the Lumia and Asha brands, design teams and production facilities — plus a license to Nokia's patents and HERE mapping services, for EUR 5.44 billion in cash. About 32,000 Nokia employees were expected to transfer to Microsoft.

It's a bold step into the future — a win-win for employees, shareholders and consumers of both companies.Steve Ballmer — CEO, Microsoft

Microsoft agreed to acquire aQuantive, a digital-marketing company and parent of the Atlas ad-tech platform, DRIVEpm and interactive agency Avenue A | Razorfish, for $66.50 per share in cash, about $6 billion. aQuantive had roughly 2,600 employees and kept operating from Seattle within Microsoft's Online Services Business. approximately $6 billion.

The advertising industry is evolving and growing at an incredible pace, moving increasingly toward online and IP-served platforms.Steve Ballmer — CEO, Microsoft

Microsoft agreed to acquire Mojang, the Stockholm studio behind Minecraft, for $2.5 billion. Minecraft had surpassed 100 million PC downloads since its 2009 launch and was among the top-selling games across PC, Xbox, iOS and Android. The Mojang team joined Microsoft Studios, and Microsoft committed to keep Minecraft available across PC, iOS, Android, Xbox and PlayStation.

Minecraft is more than a great game franchise — it is an open world platform, driven by a vibrant community we care deeply about.Satya Nadella — CEO, Microsoft

Microsoft agreed to acquire Yammer, an enterprise social-networking provider, for $1.2 billion in cash. Launched in 2008, Yammer had more than 5 million corporate users spanning 85 percent of the Fortune 500. Yammer joined the Microsoft Office Division while continuing to develop its standalone service.

The acquisition of Yammer underscores our commitment to deliver technology that businesses need and people love.Steve Ballmer — CEO, Microsoft

Founded in 2006 by multi-touch pioneer Jeff Han, Perceptive Pixel developed large-scale multi-touch display hardware and software. Microsoft acquired it into its Office Division, planning to pair its large touch displays with OEM hardware to create Windows 8-based collaboration PCs. Terms were not disclosed.

PPI's large touch displays, when combined with hardware from our OEMs, will become powerful Windows 8-based PCs.Kurt DelBene — President, Office Division, Microsoft

Massive operated a leading network for dynamic in-game video game advertising, inserting brands into games on objects like billboards, cans and posters. Microsoft acquired it to deliver targeted, measurable ads across its online services starting with Xbox Live and MSN Games. Terms were not disclosed.

Massive and Microsoft can help lead with our shared vision of delivering more targeted, measurable and effective opportunities for advertisers.Joanne Bradford — Corporate Vice President, Microsoft

Microsoft agreed to acquire Xamarin, a cross-platform mobile app development company whose tooling lets developers write native iOS, Android and Windows apps in C# using .NET. At announcement Xamarin had more than 15,000 customers and over 1.3 million developers, and the two firms had already integrated Xamarin into Visual Studio, Azure and Office 365. Terms were not disclosed.

I am pleased to announce today that Microsoft has signed an agreement to acquire Xamarin, a leading platform provider for mobile app development.Scott Guthrie — Executive Vice President, Cloud + Enterprise, Microsoft

Microsoft acquired Semantic Machines, a Berkeley company using machine learning to build conversational AI that goes beyond command-and-response bots toward natural dialogue. Microsoft used the technology to advance products like Cortana. Financial terms were not disclosed.

With the acquisition of Semantic Machines, we will establish a conversational AI center of excellence in Berkeley.David Ku — CVP and Chief Technology Officer, Microsoft AI & Research

Microsoft acquired Citus Data, behind an open-source extension that turns PostgreSQL into a horizontally scalable distributed database. Microsoft said the technology would boost the performance and scale of its Azure PostgreSQL service. Financial terms were not disclosed.

I am thrilled to announce that we have acquired Citus Data, a leader in the PostgreSQL community.Rohan Kumar — Corporate Vice President, Azure Data, Microsoft

Microsoft acquired Fungible, a maker of composable infrastructure and low-power data processing units (DPUs) that accelerate networking and storage performance in datacenters. The Fungible team joined Microsoft's datacenter infrastructure engineering group. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Microsoft is announcing the acquisition of Fungible Inc., a provider of composable infrastructure aimed at accelerating networking and storage performance in datacenters.Girish Bablani — Corporate Vice President, Azure Core, Microsoft

Fintool is an AI-powered financial research and analysis startup led by founder Nicolas Bustamante. Microsoft acquired the team into its Office Product Group, positioning Fintool's domain specialization to be paired with the Microsoft Office suite for customers.

This addition is a perfect complement to our overall strategy and will benefit our customers by pairing the specialization of Fintool with the capabilities of the Office suite.Sumit Chauhan — Microsoft Office Product Group

Osmos is an AI data-engineering platform that uses agentic AI to turn raw data into analytics- and AI-ready assets. Microsoft acquired it to advance autonomous data engineering inside Microsoft Fabric, reducing the manual, slow and costly work of preparing data in OneLake.

Osmos solves this problem by applying agentic AI to turn raw data into analytics and AI-ready assets in OneLake, the unified data lake at the core of Microsoft Fabric.Bogdan Crivat — Corporate Vice President, Azure Data

Pi Labs, Inc. is an AI startup whose team, including co-founders David Karam and Achint Srivastava, joined Microsoft. The acquisition was announced by Microsoft's R.V. Guha; the announcement did not detail the specific product scope or deal terms.

Lumenisity is an innovator in hollow core fiber (HCF) cabling, a technology that carries data faster and more securely than conventional silica optical fiber. Microsoft acquired it to optimize its global cloud infrastructure and better serve customers with strict latency and security requirements.

EduBrite is a platform for creating, hosting and deploying professional certificates. LinkedIn (a Microsoft subsidiary) acquired it to integrate EduBrite's certification and assessment engine into LinkedIn Learning, letting members test, verify and showcase skills as part of LinkedIn's skills-first approach to hiring and learning.

Minit is a process-mining company whose technology analyzes, monitors and optimizes business operations to surface improvement opportunities. Microsoft acquired it to strengthen process-mining capabilities in the Power Platform and help customers standardize and improve processes.

Oribi is an Israel-based marketing-analytics company offering code-free marketing attribution, website conversion measurement and audience building. LinkedIn (a Microsoft subsidiary) acquired it to enhance campaign attribution and help advertisers optimize ROI across LinkedIn's business lines.

Understanding which channels and messages have the greatest impact...is critical to the effectiveness of any marketing campaign.Tomer Cohen — Chief Product Officer, LinkedIn

Two Hat is a content-moderation company whose technology detects and removes harmful content from online communities. Microsoft acquired it to strengthen content moderation across gaming and consumer services such as Xbox, Minecraft and MSN.

For any online community to thrive, content moderation is a critical investment to ensure positive user experiences and maintain engagement over time.Dave McCarthy — Corporate Vice President, Xbox Product Services

Clear Software is an integration-platform (iPaaS) and business-process provider with strong connectors for SAP and Oracle systems. Microsoft acquired it to strengthen Power Platform's ability to connect to complex enterprise systems of record.

Clear Software's API access and system knowledge will strengthen Microsoft Power Platform's integration with outside systems and accelerate how customers leverage data and processes that reside beyond Microsoft first-party services.Stephen Siciliano — Vice President, Power Automate

Ally.io is an objectives-and-key-results (OKR) software platform that aligns employees' day-to-day work with company goals. Microsoft acquired it to strengthen its Viva employee-experience platform with goal-setting, transparency and alignment for hybrid work.

When teams see how they are delivering impact, employees stay more engaged, focused and driven in achieving both company growth and their own personal fulfillment.Kirk Koenigsbauer — Chief Operating Officer & Corporate Vice President, Experiences + Devices

TakeLessons is an online marketplace connecting students with instructors for live one-on-one and group lessons across subjects such as music, academics and languages. It is listed on Microsoft's official investor acquisition-history page (announced September 8, 2021); no press release, deal value or further detail is available from the official source.

Clipchamp is an in-browser video creation and editing platform founded in 2013 that makes it easy for non-professionals to produce videos. Microsoft acquired it to bring cloud-powered video creation into Microsoft 365 and Windows and empower creators of all skill levels.

Clipchamp is an in-browser video creation and editing experience founded in 2013 with a mission to empower anyone to tell stories worth sharing.Chris Pratley — Corporate Vice President, Office Media Group

Peer5 offers a WebRTC-based enterprise content delivery network (eCDN) that runs in-browser and uses self-balancing mesh networks to optimize bandwidth for large-scale live video, without extra endpoint installs or network changes. Microsoft acquired it to provide a first-party eCDN for high-quality live streaming in Microsoft Teams.

Suplari provides AI-powered supplier spend intelligence, turning data from contracts, purchase orders, invoices and expenses into actionable insights. Microsoft acquired it to give finance and procurement leaders strategic visibility into spend within Dynamics 365.

CloudKnox Security is a Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) provider offering visibility into privileged access and helping enforce least-privilege across multi-cloud environments. Microsoft acquired it to add unified privileged-access and cloud-entitlement management to Azure Active Directory.

CloudKnox offers complete visibility into privileged access. It helps organizations right-size permissions and consistently enforce least-privilege principles to reduce risk.Joy Chik — Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Identity

media-streams.com AG was a Zurich, Switzerland-based developer of VoIP (voice over Internet protocol) communications applications for enterprise and small to midsize customers. Microsoft acquired it to accelerate its unified-communications vision, integrating voice into the collaboration capabilities of the Microsoft Office System via Office Live Communications Server.

We are in lock-step with Microsoft's vision of bringing voice and data collaboration together.Erich Gebhardt — CEO, media-streams.com

Teleo was a San Francisco-based VoIP company (founded 2003) whose software let users place calls from a PC to traditional phones, with click-to-call integration into Outlook and Internet Explorer. Microsoft combined Teleo's technology and team with its existing MSN VoIP investments to build enhanced consumer communication products.

Teleo has great technology to deliver superior VoIP quality and an excellent overall customer experience.Blake Irving — Corporate Vice President, MSN Communication Services and Member Platform, Microsoft

FrontBridge Technologies was a Los Angeles-based provider of managed secure-messaging services, including email and IM archiving, spam filtering, virus scanning, encryption, policy enforcement, and disaster recovery. Microsoft acquired it to complement Exchange Server and help customers meet compliance requirements such as Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA.

We see FrontBridge's services as a perfect complement to Exchange. The FrontBridge team brings significant expertise in helping customers mitigate messaging risks before they ever reach the corporate firewall.Dave Thompson — Corporate Vice President, Exchange Server Group, Microsoft

Groove Networks, based in Beverly, Massachusetts and founded by Lotus Notes creator Ray Ozzie, made peer-to-peer collaboration software for the virtual office, letting distributed teams work together as if co-located. Microsoft acquired it to add peer-to-peer collaboration to its Information Worker offerings; Ozzie became a Microsoft CTO.

Ray and his team are true innovators. Microsoft and its customers will greatly benefit from their experience.Bill Gates — Founder, Chairman and Chief Software Architect, Microsoft

GIANT Company Software was a provider of top-rated anti-spyware and Internet-security products. Microsoft acquired GIANT's intellectual property and team to build spyware protection into Windows; the technology became the basis of Microsoft's AntiSpyware (later Windows Defender).

Spyware is a serious and growing problem for PC users, and customers have made it clear that they want Microsoft to deliver effective solutions to protect against the threat.Mike Nash — Corporate Vice President, Security Business and Technology Unit, Microsoft

ActiveViews, based in Provo, Utah, built an ad hoc reporting system on top of Microsoft .NET and SQL Server Reporting Services that let users explore and build reports over data in multiple systems. Microsoft acquired the technology to extend SQL Server's business-intelligence platform; it later shipped as Report Builder in SQL Server 2005.

By incorporating this functionality within the business intelligence capabilities of SQL Server, Microsoft will provide a more complete BI solution than has been offered in the industry before.Bill Baker — General Manager for Business Intelligence, Microsoft

Rare Ltd., based in Warwickshire, England, was a leading video-game developer behind hits such as GoldenEye 007, Perfect Dark, Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64. Microsoft acquired it for $375 million in cash to broaden the Xbox portfolio with exclusive first-party titles.

This partnership significantly broadens our already outstanding portfolio of games that will be available for Xbox.Robbie Bach — Chief Xbox Officer, Microsoft

XDegrees was a Mountain View, California startup that developed peer-to-peer and distributed file/storage technology for secure, Web-based information exchange across the extended enterprise. Microsoft acquired the company for its technology and engineering team. No official press release for the acquisition is indexed on Microsoft's newsroom; the deal appears on Microsoft's investor acquisition-history page.

Ensemble Studios, based in Dallas, Texas, was the real-time-strategy developer behind the award-winning Age of Empires franchise, which had sold roughly 8.5 million units by 2001. Microsoft acquired the studio to reinforce its position as a PC-games leader and expand its first-party development talent.

The depth of talent and the leadership of Tony Goodman is a winning combination, and this acquisition will help strengthen our mutual commitment to remaining a PC games industry leader.Stuart Moulder — General Manager, Games Division, Microsoft

NCompass Labs, headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia (with U.S. offices in San Jose), developed NCompass Resolution, a Web content-management system for building dynamic, personalized e-business sites on the Microsoft platform. Microsoft acquired it to meet customer demand for Web content management; the product was rebranded Microsoft Content Management Server 2001.

By acquiring NCompass Labs' Web content management system and integrating it with the Microsoft .NET Enterprise Servers, we will enable customers to implement complete e-business solutions faster and more effectively than ever.Paul Flessner — Senior Vice President, .NET Enterprise Server Division, Microsoft

Design Intelligence was a Seattle-based developer of document-design and publishing technology for automated, high-quality page layout and composition. Microsoft acquired the company for its document-composition technology, which was later incorporated into Microsoft's productivity and document-rendering products. No official acquisition press release is indexed on Microsoft's newsroom; the deal appears on Microsoft's investor acquisition-history page.

Digital Anvil was an Austin, Texas game developer founded by Chris Roberts, known for the space-combat simulation Freelancer. Microsoft acquired the studio to gain rights to select titles including Freelancer and an unannounced Xbox game and to bolster its PC and Xbox development lineup.

The acquisition of Digital Anvil will strengthen our commitment to producing top-quality PC and Xbox titles.Ed Fries — Vice President of Games Publishing, Microsoft

Pacific Microsonics developed HDCD (High Definition Compatible Digital), a patented signal-processing technology used in recording studios to correct distortions in digital audio, applied to more than 5,000 CD titles and licensed to audio makers such as Denon, Harman Kardon, Marantz and Toshiba. Microsoft bought the company to bring its digital-audio expertise into future PC and consumer-device offerings.

PMI has done amazing work to improve the sound quality of audio CDs with HDCD, which has been embraced by the recording industry. Its wealth of experience and innovative technology will be a tremendous addition to our industry-leading audio technology.Will Poole — Vice President, Digital Media Division, Microsoft

MongoMusic was a digital-music infrastructure startup known for music-search and recommendation technology and for close working relationships with record labels and artists. Microsoft acquired it to strengthen the digital-music content and capabilities of its MSN network and WindowsMedia.com.

MongoMusic's expertise, technology and relationships will help further our goal of offering compelling digital music content through our existing sites such as MSN and WindowsMedia.com.Jeff Camp — General Manager, Personal Services and Devices Group, Microsoft

NetGames USA, based in Kansas, developed scoring, matchmaking and other online enhancements for retail and Web-based games. Microsoft acquired it to boost the competitiveness of its Zone.com gaming site and to add matchmaking technology to retail titles then in development, such as MechWarrior 4: Vengeance.

Bungie was a Chicago-based independent developer of action-oriented computer and video games, creator of the Marathon and Myth franchises and the then-upcoming Halo. Microsoft acquired the studio to bolster its games portfolio for PC and the forthcoming Xbox, securing exclusive publishing rights to select titles including Halo, and set Bungie up as an independent studio inside its Game Division.

This acquisition reflects our commitment to growing our business with a strong portfolio of quality games for the PC and Xbox platforms.Ed Fries — Vice President of Games Publishing, Microsoft

Peach Networks, based in Or-Yehuda, Israel, built technology to deliver interactive services (email, messaging, Internet access) to basic digital cable set-top boxes without heavy bandwidth use. Microsoft acquired it to extend the Microsoft TV platform to the basic digital set-top boxes already deployed by cable operators.

Peach's offering excels over all other solutions we evaluated and is the best in this space to deliver scalable Internet and interactive services to digital set-top boxes.Phil Goldman — General Manager, Microsoft TV Platform Group

Entropic was a leader in speech-recognition software and toolkits (including ESPS/waves+ and HTK), with expertise in speech recognition, dialogue development and telephony integration. Microsoft acquired it to enhance its Speech API (SAPI) and advance server-based, speech-enabled applications.

Entropic brings expertise and an established track record in developing and shipping world-class speech technology and development toolkits.Doug Henrich — Manager, Speech Product Group, Microsoft

Softway Systems, a privately held San Francisco company, made Interix, a suite of utilities and developer tools providing a POSIX.1-compliant UNIX subsystem on Windows NT that let developers port UNIX scripts and applications with minimal changes. Microsoft acquired the assets to strengthen future UNIX-to-Windows interoperability (technology that became Windows Services for UNIX).

STNC, founded in 1993 and based in Bury St. Edmunds, England, developed communication software (including a compact browser) for the digital cellular telephone industry, with about 40 employees. Microsoft acquired it, keeping the team in the U.K. as part of its Productivity Appliances Division, to let mobile devices read email, view calendar/contact data and access the Internet.

ZOOMIT was the leading provider of meta-directory products, letting organizations manage identity data (accounts, passwords, configurations, access rights) across heterogeneous directory services. Microsoft acquired it to integrate meta-directory capabilities with Active Directory in Windows 2000 Server. (Microsoft's press release is dated July 8, 1999.)

Sendit, headquartered in Stockholm with offices in London, Seattle and Hong Kong, was a world leader in mobile Internet solutions counting many major GSM operators as clients. Microsoft's tender offer was accepted by more than 90% of Sendit shareholders, making it a wholly owned subsidiary and giving Microsoft its first product-development center in the Nordic region.

OmniBrowse, founded in 1997, was a wireless data-services company delivering personalized content (news, weather, sports, stock quotes and alerts) to interactive pagers, cellular phones and handheld devices such as the PalmPilot. Microsoft announced the acquisition alongside the launch of MSN Mobile and folded OmniBrowse's wireless content-delivery services into it.

ShadowFactor, a Canadian developer, made BattleCom (Battlefield Communicator), technology that let players talk to one another by voice during multiplayer Internet gaming instead of typing. Microsoft acquired it, announcing the deal at the Meltdown 99 conference, and planned to incorporate BattleCom into DirectX 8.0.

Jump Networks was a leading provider of Web-based calendar services, letting consumers reach their email, address books and calendars from any Internet-connected computer. Microsoft acquired it to complement MSN communication services (MSN Hotmail, MSN Web Communities) with an all-in-one email, calendaring and community experience.

Access Software, based in Salt Lake City, was the leading developer and publisher of PC golf games, whose Links series had been the best-selling PC golf line since 1992, and also made the Tex Murphy adventure series. Microsoft acquired it to expand its Games Group, keeping the studio in Salt Lake City to preserve and grow the Links franchise.

We are excited to be reuniting the Microsoft and Access Software team that created the original Microsoft 'Golf' franchise.Ed Fries — General Manager, Microsoft Games Group

CompareNet ran one of the internet's leading comparison-shopping services, with a database of more than 40,000 products across nearly 100 categories (electronics, appliances, automobiles, sporting goods and more) drawing over 1.5 million unique users a month. Microsoft bought the 40-person San Francisco company to accelerate MSN's interactive comparison-shopping capabilities and fold the service into the MSN Sidewalk online guide.

LinkExchange provided online marketing services to website owners and small and mid-sized businesses, anchored by a banner-advertising network of more than 400,000 sites plus search-engine submission, e-mail list management and e-commerce tools. Microsoft acquired the 100-employee San Francisco firm to greatly expand MSN's small-business services and pull LinkExchange's large network of smaller sites into the MSN ecosystem.

MSN is committed to being an important ally for every small business online, and with this acquisition MSN can bring small-business customers excellent online marketing tools.Laura Jennings — Vice President, MSN

Valence Research developed TCP/IP load-balancing and fault-tolerance software for Windows NT, best known for its Convoy Cluster Software. Microsoft acquired the Beaverton, Oregon company to extend the clustering and high-availability capabilities of Windows NT Server for mission-critical environments and internet server farms.

We are excited to extend our clustering capabilities with this acquisition so that many more Microsoft customers can benefit from this technology.Jim Allchin — Senior Vice President, Personal and Business Systems Group, Microsoft

The MESA Group built migration tools and services for moving Lotus Notes applications to Microsoft Exchange Server, including coexistence solutions and cc:Mail archive migration. Microsoft acquired the Boston firm to give customers a complete path for migrating Notes applications to Exchange as Exchange Server adoption accelerated.

We have helped over 100 JumpStart customers migrate their Notes applications to Exchange, evaluating over 10,000 Notes applications in the process, with 1,000 fully converted applications to date.Eric Schultz — CEO, The MESA Group

Firefly Network, an MIT Media Lab spinoff, developed privacy technology enabling the trusted exchange of personal information online and was instrumental in the early TRUSTe program and the P3P privacy standard. Microsoft acquired the Cambridge, Massachusetts company to accelerate its implementation of the World Wide Web Consortium's Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) and deliver more privacy-rich internet products and services.

Privacy is not a product differentiator; it is a fundamental right for Internet consumers.Bob Herbold — Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Microsoft

Flash Communications was a provider of corporate (enterprise) instant-messaging software. After the acquisition, Flash's team joined Microsoft and helped lead development of the company's enterprise real-time collaboration offerings, including instant messaging, chat, voice over IP and NetMeeting. No dedicated Microsoft newsroom release for this small 1998 deal is reachable; the acquisition is documented on Microsoft's official investor acquisition-history page.

Hotmail was a pioneering free, web-based e-mail service that let members reach a permanent e-mail address from any internet-connected PC, with features such as retrieval from up to four POP3 accounts, attachments and an address book. Microsoft acquired it to strengthen The Microsoft Network, combining Hotmail's web-mail with Microsoft services to offer consumers both free and premium e-mail; Hotmail continued as a wholly owned subsidiary within MSN.

Hotmail has been a Web-mail pioneer. It has built a strong following by offering a free, high-quality e-mail service that lets its members access a permanent e-mail address from any PC with an Internet connection.Laura Jennings — Vice President, The Microsoft Network

VXtreme developed streaming-media technology, including adaptive compression that adjusts dynamically to available bandwidth and network video-delivery solutions, with customers such as CNN Interactive and General Electric. Microsoft acquired the Sunnyvale company to fold its compression and delivery technology into the NetShow streaming-media platform as part of a broader streaming multimedia strategy launched alongside NetShow 2.0.

VXtreme has developed superb compression technology and network delivery solutions that fully complement our streaming media product strategy.Paul Maritz — Group Vice President, Platforms and Applications, Microsoft

LinkAge Software built e-mail connectivity and directory-synchronization software that enabled Microsoft Exchange Server to coexist with legacy messaging systems such as IBM OfficeVision, SNADS-based systems and Lotus Notes. Microsoft acquired the Toronto company to enhance Exchange Server's interoperability with diverse legacy e-mail environments; the development team moved to Redmond while consulting and support staff stayed in Toronto.

We have been working with LinkAge for more than five years and found it committed to delivering best-of-breed solutions for connecting customers' legacy e-mail environments with Microsoft Exchange Server.Rich Tong — Vice President of Marketing, Personal and Business Systems Group, Microsoft

Cooper & Peters specialized in object-oriented user-interface framework technology and components for Java and Smalltalk, with products such as Widgets, WindowBuilder and EyeOpener and expertise dating to 1989. Microsoft acquired the Boulder, Colorado firm to bring experienced developers onto its Application Foundation Classes (AFC) effort and extend those Java class libraries.

We want to make the largest possible impact on the industry, and Microsoft is the place to do that.Ted Peters — Principal, Cooper & Peters

Dimension X, founded in 1995 as one of the first Java start-ups, built Java-based multimedia tools including the Liquid Motion authoring tool and the Liquid Reality VRML browser and runtime. Microsoft acquired the San Francisco company to reinforce its Java and multimedia commitment and enhance Internet Explorer and the DirectX APIs.

Intersé developed the award-winning Intersé Market Focus web-site analysis (traffic and usage analytics) software. Microsoft acquired the Sunnyvale company to integrate Market Focus into the Microsoft BackOffice family, strengthening its internet and intranet web-site solutions with usage analysis.

NetCarta built client/server web-site management and navigation tools, most notably the WebMapper site-mapping and management product. Microsoft acquired the Scotts Valley, California company to add site management and content analysis to the BackOffice family, giving it a web-site lifecycle solution spanning authoring, dynamic application development and complex site management.

ResNova Software developed internet server and client technologies for the Macintosh, including its WebForOne and Boulevard products. Microsoft acquired two of ResNova's Macintosh internet technologies and hired five of its developers (working out of Microsoft's San Jose offices) to incorporate the technology into future versions of Internet Explorer for the Macintosh.

Panorama Software Systems of Tel Aviv developed high-performance multidimensional Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) technology that could integrate multidimensional and relational data for decision-support and enterprise information systems. Microsoft acquired the OLAP technology to add multidimensional analytics to its SQL Server and BackOffice families; it later became the basis of SQL Server OLAP Services (Analysis Services).

Panorama's products have the capability to seamlessly integrate data stored in multidimensional databases with data residing in relational databases such as Microsoft SQL Server, maximizing performance and scalability.David Vaskevitch — Vice President of Database and Transaction Products, Microsoft

Electric Gravity Inc. operated the Internet Gaming Zone, one of the most popular early online destinations for playing classic multiplayer games such as bridge, chess, checkers and hearts over the internet. Microsoft acquired the company to jump-start its move into online multiplayer gaming, and the Zone became the foundation of what later grew into MSN Games.

eShop Inc. was a San Mateo, California internet-commerce company that built merchandising and shopping systems merchants used to run online stores, and ran the eShop Plaza online mall. Microsoft acquired eShop to accelerate its own e-commerce effort, folding the technology and team into what became the Microsoft Merchant Server product for internet retailing.

The lack of integrated electronic-commerce solutions is a key reason for the slow adoption of electronic commerce by merchants.Paul Maritz — Group Vice President, Platforms Group, Microsoft

EXOS Inc., a Boston, Massachusetts firm founded in 1988, designed and manufactured force-feedback controllers for arcades, home video systems and PCs. Microsoft acquired EXOS to add tactile force-feedback realism to its PC gaming input devices, complementing products such as the SideWinder 3D Pro joystick.

We are excited to bring added realism, provided by the force feedback technology, to our consumers' gaming experience.Rick Thompson — General Manager, Input Device Group, Microsoft

aha! software developed pen-based productivity applications, most notably aha! InkWriter, which let users write and edit with a stylus and convert handwriting into text on pen-enabled and handheld devices. Microsoft acquired the company to bolster its pen-computing and mobile handwriting technology.

In a single announcement Microsoft acquired Colusa Software Inc., maker of the OmniWare technology that let developers build memory-protected, safely downloadable internet software components using Software Fault Isolation, and agreed to acquire Aspect Software Engineering Inc., whose dbWeb middleware gave web servers real-time access to databases without programming. Microsoft folded both into its internet and developer-tools roadmap.

These agreements demonstrate Microsoft's strong commitment to providing state-of-the-art technology and products for the Internet.Paul Maritz — Group Vice President, Platforms Group, Microsoft

Vermeer Technologies Inc., of Cambridge, Massachusetts, was a pioneer of visual, standards-based web-publishing software; its flagship product, FrontPage, let people create and manage rich web sites without programming. Microsoft acquired Vermeer to make FrontPage a cornerstone of its web-authoring strategy for both the internet and corporate intranets.

The Bruce Artwick Organization of Champaign, Illinois was the original developer of Microsoft Flight Simulator, the best-selling flight-simulation franchise Microsoft had published since the early 1980s. Microsoft acquired the studio to bring ongoing Flight Simulator development in-house within its consumer games group.

Netwise Inc. developed remote-procedure-call (RPC) based interoperability tools that connected Windows PCs to mainframe and UNIX systems. Microsoft acquired Netwise's interoperability technology and expertise to strengthen enterprise connectivity and distributed-computing support in Windows.

The Blue Ribbon SoundWorks, an Atlanta, Georgia company, made digital-audio and music software including the Bars&Pipes sequencer and the SuperJAM! interactive music-composition tool. Microsoft acquired it for its interactive-music technology, which was later merged with DirectSound to form DirectMusic.

Acquisition listed on Microsoft's official investor acquisition-history page (announced July 31, 1995). Dare to Dream Entertainment was an interactive-entertainment developer; no dedicated official press release or SEC filing detailing the deal was reachable, so no value, terms or further detail are stated.

Microsoft acquired SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) network-management technology from Network Managers. The technology supported Microsoft's systems-management efforts, feeding into SNMP support in Windows NT Server and the Systems Management Server (SMS) product.

RenderMorphics, a London-based company founded in 1992, developed Reality Lab, a high-performance 3-D graphics API used in games and multimedia applications. Microsoft acquired it in February 1995 to jump-start 3-D graphics on Windows; the Reality Lab technology became the basis of Direct3D within DirectX.

One Tree Software created SourceSafe, a source-code version-control system for software development teams. Microsoft acquired One Tree Software and rebranded the product Microsoft Visual SourceSafe, retiring its own earlier Delta version-control tool in favor of it.

NextBase was a United Kingdom developer of PC-based mapping and route-planning software, best known for AutoRoute. Microsoft acquired NextBase to enter the consumer mapping and navigation software market; the technology evolved into Microsoft AutoRoute and the Streets product line.

Altamira Software, founded by Pixar co-founder Alvy Ray Smith, developed Altamira Composer, an early object-based image-composition and editing application for Windows. Microsoft acquired the company and its imaging technology, which became the basis of Microsoft Image Composer bundled with FrontPage.

Softimage, based in Montreal, Quebec, was a leading developer of high-performance 2-D and 3-D computer-animation and visualization software used by film studios, broadcasters and game makers. Microsoft acquired Softimage in an all-stock deal to gain a strong presence in professional digital media and to bring high-end 3-D animation to Windows NT.

The market for digital media is growing rapidly and Softimage is a technology leader in this area.Bill Gates — Chairman and CEO, Microsoft

ReFirm Labs specializes in firmware security analysis and is the creator of Binwalk, an open-source tool that scans device firmware for vulnerabilities, unpatched CVEs and insecure secrets across IoT and embedded systems. Microsoft acquired it to close a firmware-level security gap and strengthen protection across intelligent edge devices.

This acquisition marks the next step in our journey and ability to help secure customers from the chip to the cloud, backed by more than 3,500 defenders at Microsoft.David Weston — Corporate Vice President, Microsoft

Kinvolk GmbH is an open-source cloud-native engineering firm known for Flatcar Container Linux, the Lokomotive and Inspektor Gadget projects, and early work on Kubernetes, eBPF and container-optimized Linux. Microsoft acquired the team to advance Azure's container platform and deepen its upstream open-source contributions.

Microsoft is excited to bring the expertise of the Kinvolk team to Azure, where they will be key contributors to the engineering development of Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Azure Arc, and future projects that will expand Azure's hybrid container platform capabilities.Brendan Burns — Corporate Vice President and Technical Fellow, Microsoft Azure

The Marsden Group is a specialist in industrial technology innovation and rapid prototyping, helping enterprises in asset-intensive industries identify needs and build high-quality prototypes. Microsoft acquired it to accelerate digital transformation for customers in infrastructure, manufacturing and resources sectors.

We want to empower our customers to implement digital initiatives faster. That's why we're thrilled to welcome The Marsden Group to the Microsoft family.Omar Abbosh — Corporate Vice President, Cross-Industry Solutions, Microsoft

Orions Systems builds large-scale hybrid smart-vision systems that use human-in-the-loop machine teaching for video and image content analysis across edge-to-cloud configurations. Microsoft acquired it to let retailers and organizations build and train custom computer-vision AI models without deep technical expertise.

CyberX provides IoT and operational-technology security, discovering existing connected assets and managing security on legacy 'brownfield' devices across factory floors and buildings. Microsoft acquired it to give customers visibility into already-connected IoT devices and manage security for those using custom industrial protocols.

CyberX will complement the existing Azure IoT security capabilities, and extends to existing devices including those used in industrial IoT, Operational Technology and infrastructure scenarios.Michal Braverman-Blumenstyk and Sam George — Corporate Vice Presidents, Microsoft Cloud + AI

ADRM Software provides large-scale, industry-specific data models used as information blueprints by large enterprises, with 75 vertical schemas refined over decades for business-critical analytics. Microsoft acquired it to pair these data models with Azure storage and compute for building intelligent data lakes.

Softomotive is a world-leading robotic process automation (RPA) provider with over 15 years of experience and the creator of WinAutomation, serving more than 9,000 global customers. Microsoft acquired it to add desktop RPA authoring to Power Automate and further democratize automation of Windows-based business processes.

Today, we are announcing the acquisition of Softomotive, a world-leading provider of robotic process automation (RPA) with over 15 years of experience and the creator of WinAutomation.Charles Lamanna — Corporate Vice President, Low Code Application Platform, Microsoft

Mover is a cloud file-migration provider offering admin-led and self-service migration from more than a dozen cloud sources including Box, Dropbox, Egnyte and Google Drive into OneDrive and SharePoint. Microsoft acquired it to simplify and speed file migration to Microsoft 365.

As customer demand to move content to the cloud continues to grow, Mover will help make it easier than ever for customers to migrate files to Microsoft 365.Jeff Teper — Corporate Vice President, Office, SharePoint and OneDrive, Microsoft

Semmle provides a semantic code-analysis engine that lets developers write queries to identify code patterns and security vulnerabilities across large codebases, used by security teams at organizations such as Uber, NASA, Microsoft and Google. GitHub (a Microsoft subsidiary) acquired it to help secure the open-source software supply chain.

Software security is a community effort; no single company can find every vulnerability or secure the open source supply chain behind everyone's code.Nat Friedman — CEO, GitHub

Movere is a cloud-migration technology provider with discovery and assessment capabilities built over 11 years of enabling customers' journeys to the cloud. Microsoft acquired it to complement Azure Migrate and make migrating existing applications and infrastructure to Azure easier.

Today, I am pleased to announce that Microsoft has acquired Movere, an innovative technology provider in the cloud migration space.Jeremy Winter — Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Azure

jClarity is the leading contributor to the AdoptOpenJDK project, staffed by Java champions and data scientists specializing in data-driven Java Virtual Machine (JVM) performance optimization. Microsoft acquired it to improve Java workload performance on Azure and support the team's continued open-source contributions.

At Microsoft, we strongly believe that we can do more for our customers by working alongside the Java community.John Montgomery — Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Azure

PromoteIQ is the leading provider of vendor-marketing technology to online retailers and brands, pioneering the private-marketplace approach to digital vendor marketing. Microsoft acquired it to complement its retail advertising offerings and help retailers modernize their e-commerce platforms and monetization.

I am excited to announce that Microsoft has acquired PromoteIQ, the leading provider of vendor marketing technology to online retailers and brands.Rik van der Kooi — Microsoft Advertising

BlueTalon provides unified, data-centric access control for modern data platforms, delivering centralized data access management and auditing across diverse systems. Microsoft acquired it to help enterprises enforce data governance and security at scale as they digitally transform.

Pull Panda helps teams manage code-review workflows through Pull Reminders (Slack notifications for pending reviews), Pull Analytics (insights into review effectiveness) and Pull Assigner (automatic distribution of reviews across a team). GitHub (a Microsoft subsidiary) acquired it to help teams create more efficient and effective code review and ship code faster.

Double Fine Productions is a video game development studio led by Tim Schafer, known for inventive titles such as Psychonauts, Brutal Legend and Broken Age. Microsoft announced its intent to acquire the studio to join Xbox Game Studios, citing its nearly two-decade reputation for original, player-centric games.

That's why I'm honored today to announce our intent to acquire legendary game development studio Double Fine Productions.Will Tuttle — Xbox Wire

Drawbridge is a San Mateo-based advertising and marketing technology company specializing in cross-device identity and audience measurement. LinkedIn acquired it to strengthen its Marketing Solutions platform and help businesses reach, engage and measure their professional audiences at scale.

We plan to integrate Drawbridge's technology into our marketing solutions portfolio to help our customers better reach and understand their professional audiences and measure the ROI of their campaigns.LinkedIn Corporate Communications

Dependabot is an automated dependency-management tool that monitors a project's dependencies for known security vulnerabilities and opens pull requests to update them to safe versions. GitHub acquired and integrated it to power automated security updates for repositories, addressing the fact that most vulnerabilities remain unpatched long after disclosure.

Express Logic is a provider of real-time operating systems (RTOS) for IoT and edge devices powered by microcontroller units, whose ThreadX RTOS had more than 6.2 billion deployments worldwide. Microsoft acquired it to bring the vast installed base of RTOS-powered MCU devices into the Azure IoT ecosystem.

Our primary goal is to simplify IoT – from the cloud all the way down to the smallest MCU based devices.Sam George — Corporate Vice President, Azure IoT

DataSense is a U.S.-based integration platform-as-a-service (iPaaS) for education that helps schools and districts collect, manage and control access to their data for analytics. Microsoft added it to the Microsoft Education product family to help institutions move to the cloud and use data to improve student outcomes.

Spectrum is a platform for building large-scale online communities that combined real-time chat with threaded, searchable public conversations. GitHub acquired the team and technology to bring community-building tools in-house; the original spectrum.chat announcement page is no longer reachable.

FSLogix is a provider of app-provisioning and profile-container technology that reduces the resources and time needed to support desktop virtualization. Microsoft acquired it to improve Office 365 and Windows Virtual Desktop performance, speeding user-profile load times for Outlook and OneDrive in multi-user virtual environments.

FSLogix solutions enhance customer experience and productivity, while reducing support requirements for IT departments.Brad Anderson and Julia White — Microsoft Corporate Vice Presidents

XOXCO is an Austin-based software product design and development studio focused on conversational AI and bot development; it created the Botkit developer toolkit used by hundreds of thousands of developers and the Howdy scheduling bot for Slack. Microsoft acquired it to bring together leading bot-development communities and advance conversational AI.

Obsidian Entertainment is an Irvine, California RPG studio known for Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II, Fallout: New Vegas, South Park: The Stick of Truth and Pillars of Eternity. Microsoft acquired it for Xbox Game Studios for its PC platform expertise and RPG focus.

It is a genuine pleasure to welcome Obsidian and inXile to the growing Microsoft Studios team.Will Tuttle — Xbox Wire

inXile Entertainment is a California RPG studio (Newport Beach and New Orleans) known for Wasteland 2, Torment: Tides of Numenera and The Bard's Tale IV. Microsoft acquired it for Xbox Game Studios for its RPG world-building expertise.

It is a genuine pleasure to welcome Obsidian and inXile to the growing Microsoft Studios team.Will Tuttle — Xbox Wire

Glint is an enterprise, AI-driven employee-engagement platform that gives talent leaders insight into workforce health and productivity. LinkedIn acquired it to combine internal organizational insights with LinkedIn's external workforce data and turn employee feedback into personalized LinkedIn Learning recommendations.

LinkedIn with Glint offers a unique opportunity to transform the talent function in a way that will help our customers build great teams through visibility into the people they have, the people they need, and with the means to attract, develop and retain the best talent.LinkedIn Corporate Communications

Lobe is a San Francisco startup offering a simple visual, no-code interface for building deep-learning models, letting people create AI-powered apps that can recognize gestures, sounds and handwriting without writing code. Microsoft acquired it to make AI development accessible to non-experts.

We're thrilled to have Lobe join Microsoft and are excited about our future together to simplify AI development for everyone.Kevin Scott — Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Microsoft

Bonsai is a Berkeley, California startup with a machine-teaching platform that uses deep reinforcement learning to build 'brains' for autonomous industrial systems, letting subject-matter experts train systems for robotics, energy, HVAC and manufacturing without deep AI expertise. Microsoft acquired it to advance autonomous systems on Azure.

Bonsai has made tremendous progress here and Microsoft remains committed to furthering this work.Gurdeep Pall — Corporate Vice President of Business AI, Microsoft

Flipgrid is a video-based social learning platform that helps students build communication and social-emotional skills, used in 180 countries by more than 20 million users from pre-kindergarten through Ph.D. Microsoft acquired it for Microsoft Education and made it free for schools.

We're thrilled to see the impact Flipgrid has had in social learning thus far and look forward to helping them continue to thrive as part of the Microsoft family.Eran Megiddo — Corporate Vice President, Microsoft

Ninja Theory is a Cambridge, U.K. game studio known for Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, DmC: Devil May Cry and Heavenly Sword. Microsoft acquired it at E3 2018 for Xbox Game Studios to fund more high-quality, original titles.

It means that we'll be super-charged to bring you more games that, like Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, will each be unique experiences that are rich in creativity, quality and ambition.Ninja Theory

Playground Games is a U.K. studio (Leamington Spa) behind the acclaimed Forza Horizon open-world racing franchise, developed in partnership with Turn 10 Studios. Microsoft acquired it at E3 2018 for Xbox Game Studios to expand original-content development and the U.K. creative community.

Undead Labs is the game studio behind the survival-fantasy franchise State of Decay, known for its open-world zombie-survival gameplay and permadeath mechanics. Microsoft acquired the studio to grow the State of Decay franchise and expand its first-party Xbox game portfolio.

Compulsion Games is a Montreal-based independent game studio (about 40 people) known for stylistically distinctive titles such as We Happy Few. Microsoft acquired the studio to add its creative talent to Microsoft Studios and give it more resources to build larger, more ambitious games.

PlayFab is a complete backend platform for building, launching, and operating cloud-connected games across mobile, PC, and console, including LiveOps, analytics, and player engagement tools. Microsoft acquired it to strengthen Azure's offering for game developers and expand its gaming-cloud business.

PlayFab's backend services reduce the barriers to launch for game developers, offering both large and small studios cost-effective development solutions that scale with their games and help them engage, retain and monetize players.Kareem Choudhry — Corporate Vice President, Gaming Cloud, Microsoft

Cycle Computing is a specialist in cloud orchestration and high-performance computing (HPC), with expertise in massively scalable applications and Linux HPC workloads. Microsoft acquired it to make big-compute and HPC easier to run in the cloud and to strengthen Azure for workloads such as AI and deep learning.

Cycle Computing's depth and expertise around massively scalable applications make them a great fit to join our Microsoft team.Jason Zander — Executive Vice President, Strategic Missions and Technologies at Microsoft

Hexadite delivers agentless, automated incident investigation and remediation for cybersecurity threats. Microsoft acquired it to add AI-based automatic investigation and remediation to Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection, speeding response to advanced cyberthreats.

Our vision is to deliver a new generation of security capabilities that helps our customers protect, detect and respond to the constantly evolving and ever-changing cyberthreat landscape.Terry Myerson — Executive Vice President, Windows and Devices Group, Microsoft

Simplygon (developed by Sweden's Donya Labs) is a leader in automatic 3D data optimization, helping creators optimize 3D content pipelines and streamline workflows, particularly for games. Microsoft acquired it to accelerate its '3D for Everyone' strategy across Windows 10, Paint 3D, and Remix3D.

Simplygon is a leader in 3D game optimization, dedicated to helping creators and users of 3D data across industries optimize content pipelines and streamline workflows.

Genee is an AI-powered scheduling service that uses natural-language processing to automate meeting scheduling, including coordinating across large groups. Microsoft acquired it to bring intelligent scheduling experiences into Office 365.

Genee understands that you want to 'Find a time to meet with Diana for coffee next week' and will streamline the process.Rajesh Jha — Executive Vice President, Office Product Group

Beam is an interactive livestreaming service that lets viewers watch and participate in real time with game streamers, influencing gameplay through in-stream choices and challenges. Microsoft acquired it to make Xbox Live more social and interactive across platforms.

Beam remains committed to its mission of empowering users and streamers across platforms and will now be better positioned to grow and give more back to the community.Matt Salsamendi — CEO, Beam

Wand Labs is a messaging-app developer with expertise in semantic ontologies, services mapping, third-party developer integration, and conversational interfaces. Microsoft acquired it to accelerate its 'Conversation as a Platform' vision and strengthen conversational intelligence in Bing.

The Wand team's expertise around semantic ontologies, services mapping, third-party developer integration and conversational interfaces make them a great fit to join the Bing engineering and platform team.David Ku — Corporate Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Microsoft AI & Research

AltspaceVR is a social virtual-reality platform for hosting and attending live events, meetups, and shared experiences in VR. Microsoft acquired it as part of its Windows Mixed Reality effort to build communal, social experiences in virtual and mixed reality. (The linked announcement page was not reachable during enrichment; details beyond the company profile are left unstated.)

Code Connect is a developer-tools startup best known for 'Alive,' a Visual Studio extension that helps developers navigate and understand code. Microsoft acquired the team to bolster its Visual Studio and developer-tools capabilities. (No official announcement URL was provided in the source list; details beyond the company profile are left unstated.)

Solair is an Italian Internet-of-Things company whose platform helps enterprises in manufacturing, retail, food & beverage and transportation collect and act on data from connected devices. Microsoft acquired it to strengthen its end-to-end enterprise IoT offering and fold Solair's technology into the Azure IoT Suite.

MinecraftEdu was a classroom-focused edition of Minecraft, built by TeacherGaming LLC and already used in more than 7,000 classrooms across over 40 countries. Microsoft acquired it to launch an expanded, purpose-built Minecraft Education Edition with new tools for educators and student collaboration.

students can learn digital citizenship, empathy, social skills and even improve their literacy – while getting real time feedback on their problem solving skills from the teacherAnthony Salcito — Vice President, Worldwide Education, Microsoft

Event Zero built management, reporting and analytics software (the UC Commander suite) for Skype for Business Online. Microsoft acquired the technology to add stronger diagnostics, troubleshooting and reporting for audio, video conferencing and media streams within Skype for Business and Office 365.

Our goal is to make the Skype for Business management tools as powerful and easy-to-use for IT professionals as Skype is for end users.Zig Serafin — Corporate Vice President, Engineering, Skype for Business

Talko was a mobile voice-and-messaging communications app developed by a startup founded by former Microsoft chief software architect Ray Ozzie. Microsoft brought the Talko team into the Skype organization to apply its real-time communications expertise to Skype, and planned to wind down the standalone Talko app.

Metanautix built a data-analytics engine that connects disparate data sources across cloud and on-premises systems so companies can run analytics without costly data centralization. Microsoft acquired it to strengthen its data platform, with plans to integrate the technology into SQL Server and the Cortana Analytics Suite.

How can a company bring all of its data together for analytics to gain powerful insights, discover new opportunities and drive growth through intelligent automation?Joseph Sirosh — Corporate Vice President, Data Group, Microsoft

Secure Islands, an Israeli company, provides data classification, protection and loss-prevention technology for a wide range of file types. Microsoft acquired it to strengthen information protection across on-premises systems, Azure, Office 365, third-party services and devices, integrating the technology into Azure Rights Management Service.

This acquisition accelerates our ability to help customers secure their business data no matter where it is stored – across on-premises systems, Microsoft cloud services like Azure and Office 365, third-party services, and any Windows, iOS or Android device.Takeshi Numoto — Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Microsoft

Mobile Data Labs makes MileIQ, an app that uses a phone's sensors to automatically capture and calculate business mileage for tax deductions and reimbursements. Microsoft acquired it to expand intelligent productivity solutions for the tens of millions of mobile professionals in a mobile-first, cloud-first world.

The average MileIQ subscriber is able to deduct $547 per month in business miles, putting money back in their pockets.Rajesh Jha — Executive Vice President, Office Product Group, Microsoft

Havok is a leading provider of real-time 3D physics and simulation technology widely used in video-game development. Microsoft acquired Havok from Intel to strengthen its gaming and developer-tools portfolio alongside DirectX 12, Visual Studio and Azure.

Adxstudio provided web-portal and application-lifecycle-management solutions for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Microsoft acquired key product and technology assets to accelerate web self-service customer-engagement capabilities, letting organizations make business processes web-facing.

Microsoft is committed to delivering intelligent customer engagement solutions to empower people and organizations to use these new channels to more effectively connect with their customers online.Bob Stutz — Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Double Labs was the developer of Echo Notification Lockscreen, an Android lockscreen app that intelligently surfaced notifications. Microsoft acquired the team, which joined Microsoft to contribute to its Android lockscreen and mobile productivity efforts. No announcement press release is reachable; the deal is listed on Microsoft's official investor acquisition-history page.

Adallom is a cloud-security company whose cloud access security broker gives enterprises visibility and control over how cloud apps such as Salesforce, Box and Dropbox access company data. Microsoft acquired it to extend identity and security across its cloud offerings, complementing Office 365 and the Enterprise Mobility Suite.

Advanced threats and cybercrime will persist in this mobile-first, cloud-first era, but at Microsoft we remain committed to helping our customers protect their data with new and innovative identity and security capabilities.Takeshi Numoto — Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Microsoft

VoloMetrix is an organizational-analytics company whose technology measures and prioritizes how employees spend their time at work. Microsoft acquired it to combine that data with Office 365 and Delve Organizational Analytics, giving workers personalized feedback to make better use of their time.

How can I improve my emails to ensure my communications are impactful? Am I spending my time focused on my priorities?Rajesh Jha — Executive Vice President, Office Product Group, Microsoft

Incent Games developed FantasySalesTeam, a sales-gamification platform that applies fantasy-sports mechanics to team-based sales competitions to boost productivity and CRM adoption. Microsoft acquired it to build the gamification capability into Dynamics CRM.

This feature is revolutionizing team building in the sales setting and the impact has been nothing short of staggering.Bob Stutz — Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Dynamics CRM

FieldOne provides field-service-management software covering work-order management, automated scheduling, asset management and mobile collaboration for enterprises. Microsoft acquired it to expand Dynamics CRM customer-service capabilities and enable predictive service through integration with Azure IoT and Cortana Analytics.

FieldOne is a great fit for Dynamics CRM adding to our extensive customer service capabilitiesBob Stutz — Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Dynamics CRM

BlueStripe Software makes application-management technology that maps, monitors and troubleshoots distributed applications across heterogeneous operating systems and multiple datacenter and cloud environments. Microsoft acquired it to improve application visibility and management in hybrid-cloud scenarios, extending System Center and the Operations Management Suite.

BlueStripe's solution helps map, monitor and troubleshoot distributed applications across heterogeneous operating systems and multiple datacenter and cloud environments.Mike Neil — General Manager, Enterprise Cloud, Microsoft

6Wunderkinder was a Berlin-based startup that created Wunderlist, a highly acclaimed to-do list app with more than 13 million users who had created over a billion tasks. Microsoft acquired it to strengthen its mobile-first, cloud-first productivity portfolio alongside OneNote, Office and Skype.

What's better than completing that last important task on your to-do list? Doing so with a beautiful and useful productivity app.Eran Megiddo — General Manager, OneNote, Microsoft

Datazen was a mobile business intelligence and data-visualization platform optimized for SQL Server, with native apps across Windows, iOS, and Android. Microsoft acquired it to accelerate its Power BI strategy and give customers strong on-premises, mobile-first BI that bridges existing SQL Server investments to the cloud.

This acquisition accelerates our Power BI strategy to help organizations create a data culture with easy-to-use, accessible tools.Kamal Hathi — Partner Director, Cloud + Enterprise, Microsoft

Sunrise built a next-generation mobile calendar app for iOS and Android that unified multiple services into a single scheduling view. Microsoft acquired it to reinvent mobile calendaring within its productivity portfolio, complementing the recent Acompli acquisition and touch-optimized Office apps.

Equivio provided machine-learning technology for eDiscovery and information governance, helping organizations sift through large volumes of email and documents for legal and compliance purposes. Microsoft acquired it to make the eDiscovery and governance capabilities in Office 365 more intelligent and easier to use.

Office 365 includes robust eDiscovery and information governance capabilities today, and we'll use Equivio's machine learning technology to make these vital tools even more intelligent and easy to use in the months ahead.Rajesh Jha — Executive Vice President, Office Product Group, Microsoft

HockeyApp, based in Stuttgart, Germany, was a leading service for mobile crash analytics and beta app distribution across iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. Microsoft acquired it to integrate its crash-reporting and distribution capabilities into the Application Insights service in Visual Studio Online, extending device analytics across all major mobile platforms.

Acompli built mobile email apps for iOS and Android that helped users manage mail across services with features for scheduling meetings and handling attachments. Microsoft acquired it to strengthen mobile productivity and accelerate delivery of Outlook and Office capabilities on mobile devices; the app became the foundation of Outlook Mobile.

The Acompli team is passionate about this quest. Their app provides innovative ways to focus on what's important in your inbox, to schedule meetings, and work with attachments and files.Rajesh Jha — Executive Vice President, Office Product Group, Microsoft

Aorato was an enterprise security firm that used machine learning to profile normal behavior in Windows Server Active Directory environments and flag anomalous, suspicious activity. Microsoft acquired it to bolster identity and access protection across on-premises and cloud infrastructure and complement Azure Active Directory in its hybrid-cloud security strategy.

It understands what normal behavior is and then identifies anomalies, so a company can quickly see suspicious behavior.Takeshi Numoto — Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Microsoft

InMage developed cloud-based business continuity and disaster-recovery technology for backing up, replicating, and recovering data and applications across Windows, Linux, physical, and virtualized (Hyper-V and VMware) environments. Microsoft acquired it to make Azure a comprehensive disaster-recovery destination and ease migration for VMware customers.

SyntaxTree created UnityVS, a plugin that let developers using the Unity cross-platform game engine author, browse, and debug their code inside Visual Studio. Microsoft acquired it to integrate Unity support more deeply into Visual Studio and strengthen the tooling for game developers (later shipped as Visual Studio Tools for Unity).

Capptain was a mobile push and user-analytics provider whose platform let organizations analyze customer and employee app behavior in real time and respond with targeted push messages and content. Microsoft acquired it to add real-time mobile engagement analytics to the Azure end-to-end mobile app development story (later Azure Mobile Engagement).

GreenButton, a New Zealand-based company, provided integrated on-demand solutions that let customers run compute-intensive (big compute / HPC) workloads in the cloud without recoding their existing software. Microsoft acquired it to integrate those capabilities into Azure and make large-scale simulation and data processing simpler for industries from science and finance to media.

Parature was a provider of cloud-based customer engagement and self-service software serving midsize and enterprise organizations, with about 70 million users and more than 500 brands. Microsoft acquired it to add world-class customer self-service (knowledge base, ticketing, social, and chat) to Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The company stated the terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Parature is a perfect fit for every business and will enable us to offer customers one of the best cloud-based solutions for customer self-service.Bob Stutz — Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Apiphany was a leading API management delivery platform that gave businesses tools to expose APIs reliably, securely, and at scale while selectively gating access to sensitive data and services. Microsoft acquired it to build API management services into Windows Azure and help customers grow their API ecosystems.

InRelease, a product of InCycle Software, was a continuous-deployment and release-management solution for .NET applications that automated the path from development to production and integrated with Visual Studio Team Foundation Server. Microsoft acquired the InRelease business unit to add release management to its Application Lifecycle Management and DevOps offerings.

DevOps is an increasingly important part of ALM and a growing area of interest to chief information officers as businesses are pressured to develop and deploy quality applications at an increasingly faster pace.S. Somasegar — Corporate Vice President, Developer Division, Microsoft

NetBreeze delivered native-language social analytics with data-mining, transactional, and text-analysis capabilities for monitoring social media conversations and sentiment. Microsoft acquired it to embed social monitoring and analytics across Microsoft Dynamics CRM so businesses could gather market intelligence from social channels.

MetricsHub was a cloud-monitoring startup (a participant in the Microsoft Accelerator powered by TechStars) whose Active Cloud Monitoring technology automated cloud performance management, helping customers run their cloud services more efficiently and at lower cost. Microsoft acquired the company and brought its technology into Windows Azure.

Pando Networks developed peer-to-peer content-delivery and media-distribution technology used to distribute large files and media efficiently across the internet. Microsoft acquired the company (its technology and team) as noted on Microsoft's investor acquisition-history page; no product division, terms, or rationale are stated in the reachable official sources.

R2 Studios was a startup working on home-automation and smart-home software, founded by Blake Krikorian (co-founder of Sling Media). Microsoft acquired the company, with its team and patents reported to support Microsoft's entertainment and connected-home efforts. Only the company name and press date appear on Microsoft's investor acquisition-history page.

StorSimple provided cloud-integrated storage arrays that combined primary storage, backup, archiving, and disaster recovery with automatic tiering to cloud storage. Microsoft acquired StorSimple to advance its Cloud OS vision and help enterprises facing rapid data growth adopt hybrid cloud by seamlessly linking on-premises storage with the cloud.

MarketingPilot Software was a provider of integrated marketing-management and marketing-automation software spanning campaign management, budgeting, resource management, and analytics. Microsoft acquired it to add marketing-automation capabilities to Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The original announcement blog post is no longer reachable on Microsoft's domains.

PhoneFactor provided multifactor authentication that used the phone as a second factor and could be deployed rapidly across applications. Microsoft acquired it to bring effective, easy-to-use multifactor authentication to its cloud services and on-premises applications; PhoneFactor already integrated with products such as Outlook Web Access, IIS, and Active Directory.

The acquisition of PhoneFactor will help Microsoft bring effective and easy-to-use multifactor authentication to our cloud services and on-premises applications.Bharat Shah — Corporate Vice President, Server and Tools Division, Microsoft

VideoSurf built back-end computer-vision technology that analyzed video frames to enable fast, accurate content discovery. Microsoft acquired it to enhance search and discovery of entertainment content across its platform, including Xbox LIVE, with real-time content tagging and voice-search integration via Kinect.

VideoSurf's content analytics technology will enhance the search and discovery of entertainment content across our platform.Alex Garden — Director of Xbox LIVE, Interactive Entertainment Business, Microsoft

Prodiance developed enterprise spreadsheet-management and governance/compliance software used to control, audit, and manage business-critical Excel spreadsheets. Microsoft acquired it to build spreadsheet compliance and control capabilities into Microsoft Office and Excel. The original Microsoft 'pathways' page is no longer reachable.

Canesta was a developer of 3D time-of-flight sensor chips and depth-sensing camera technology. Microsoft acquired Canesta to advance its natural-user-interface and Kinect motion-sensing efforts. Only the company name and press date appear on Microsoft's investor acquisition-history page.

AVIcode developed .NET application performance monitoring software that diagnosed application-level faults in production environments. Microsoft acquired it to add deep application monitoring to System Center, later shipping the technology as the application-performance-monitoring feature of System Center Operations Manager. The original TechNet announcement post is no longer reachable.

Opalis Software made IT process automation (run-book automation) software used to orchestrate and automate datacenter workflows. Microsoft acquired it to strengthen System Center, later shipping the technology as System Center Orchestrator. The original TechNet announcement post is no longer reachable.

Teamprise (a division of SourceGear) provided cross-platform development tools—an Eclipse plug-in, a standalone client, and a command-line client—that let developers on Unix, Linux, and Mac OS X connect to Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server. Microsoft acquired the Teamprise assets to give customers a single set of application-lifecycle tools across heterogeneous environments, integrating them into Visual Studio starting with Visual Studio 2010.

We know our customers face daily challenges with management, collaboration and development in heterogeneous environments.S. Somasegar — Senior Vice President, Developer Division, Microsoft

Microsoft Dynamics acquired industry-specific intellectual property from its partners LS Retail (retail solutions) and To-Increase (manufacturing solutions) to embed vertical, industry-focused functionality directly into its ERP products. The move was aimed at accelerating industry innovation for Microsoft Dynamics ERP customers. The referenced press release is no longer reachable on Microsoft's newsroom.

Interactive Supercomputing (ISC) developed Star-P software that let users run familiar desktop applications such as MATLAB and Python against parallel high-performance-computing clusters without rewriting their code. Microsoft acquired ISC's technology assets to advance its high-performance / technical-computing efforts. The original TechNet announcement post is no longer reachable.

BigPark was an interactive online gaming studio founded in 2007 by industry veterans previously at Distinctive Software and Electronic Arts Canada. Microsoft agreed to acquire the studio to bring experienced developers into Microsoft Game Studios for exclusive Xbox 360 game development and to strengthen its gaming innovation.

The team is composed of some of the most experienced and creative minds working in the industry today.Phil Spencer — General Manager, Microsoft Game Studios

Greenfield Online was an online consumer and market-research firm that ran internet survey panels and the Ciao European comparison-shopping portal. Microsoft acquired the company chiefly to fold Ciao into its Live Search commerce and search strategy in Europe, then agreed to sell the separate Internet Survey Solutions (ISS) business to private-equity firm ZM Capital as a non-strategic asset.

The ISS business is not a fit within Microsoft's strategy for our Live Search platform.Tami Reller — Chief Financial Officer, Microsoft Business Division

DATAllegro built large-scale, high-performance data-warehouse appliances handling hundreds of terabytes, running patent-pending software on non-proprietary Dell/EMC hardware for retail, telecom, and manufacturing customers. Microsoft acquired it to extend SQL Server's data-warehousing and business-intelligence capabilities to very large data volumes.

DATAllegro's team and technology will take our data platform to the highest scale of data warehousing.Ted Kummert — Corporate Vice President, Data and Storage Platform Division, Microsoft

Zoomix was an Israeli developer of self-learning, semantic data-quality and data-classification software used to cleanse and match enterprise data. Microsoft acquired the company to strengthen the master-data-management and data-quality capabilities of its SQL Server data platform.

Powerset was a San Francisco natural-language and semantic-search company whose technology aimed to understand the intent and meaning behind search queries and web pages rather than matching keywords alone. Microsoft acquired it—principally for its engineers and computational linguists—to add semantic understanding to Live Search (later Bing).

That shared vision is to take Search to the next level by adding understanding of the intent and meaning behind the words in searches and webpages.Satya Nadella — Senior Vice President, Search, Portal and Advertising, Microsoft

MobiComp was a Portugal-based mobile software company specializing in over-the-air backup, synchronization, and data management for mobile phones. Microsoft acquired it to bolster its mobile-services and device-management capabilities for Windows Mobile.

Navic Networks provided addressable-advertising and interactive-television technology to cable and satellite operators, reaching more than 35 million digital set-top boxes in North America. Microsoft acquired it to extend its advertising platform into television—the largest category of ad spending—and enable targeted, measurable TV advertising.

Television media represents the largest percentage of advertisers and agencies' media budget today.Brian McAndrews — Senior Vice President, Advertiser and Publisher Solutions Group, Microsoft

Farecast was a Seattle-based travel technology company that predicted whether airfares were likely to rise or fall, helping consumers decide when to buy. Microsoft acquired it to power airfare and hotel price-prediction tools within its search business, technology later integrated into Bing Travel.

Komoku was a Maryland-based computer-security company, spun out of University of Maryland research, that developed hardware- and software-based rootkit-detection technology. Microsoft acquired it to strengthen its malware-detection and anti-rootkit security capabilities.

Rapt was a provider of advertising yield-management software for digital-media publishers, covering pricing, forecasting, and provisioning of ad inventory plus advisory services and market intelligence. Microsoft acquired it to strengthen its Atlas Publisher Suite with end-to-end yield-management and planning tools.

Online publishers have a complex array of needs, and they require more attentive and sophisticated partners to help them solve these challenges.Brian McAndrews — Senior Vice President, Advertiser and Publisher Solutions Group, Microsoft

Kidaro developed desktop-virtualization software that let enterprises deploy and centrally manage virtual PCs while giving users a seamless experience. Microsoft acquired it to enhance the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack, easing application-compatibility issues and accelerating Windows Vista migrations.

Virtual PCs can help businesses address challenges around application compatibility, mobility and business continuity.Shanen Boettcher — General Manager, Windows Product Management, Microsoft

Credentica was a Montreal-based company specializing in cryptographic digital-identity technology, including its U-Prove credential system for privacy-preserving online identity verification. Microsoft acquired it to advance secure, privacy-protecting identity and access-management technologies.

YaData was an Israeli company that applied advanced behavioral-targeting and predictive-analytics technology to online marketing and advertising. Microsoft acquired it to improve audience-targeting capabilities within its adCenter advertising platform.

Caligari was a maker of 3D modeling and animation software, best known for its trueSpace product for creating 3D content. Microsoft acquired it to help users build and publish 3D models for its Virtual Earth mapping platform.

Calista Technologies developed graphics-virtualization technology that delivered high-fidelity 3-D and multimedia experiences to virtualized desktops and applications. Microsoft acquired it to improve the end-user experience of its presentation- and desktop-virtualization products, letting remote workers get a full Windows desktop without high-end hardware.

The addition of Calista's technology to future Microsoft presentation and desktop virtualization products will enable remote workers to receive a full-fidelity Windows desktop experience without the need for high-end desktop hardware.Microsoft (company statement)

Multimap was one of the United Kingdom's largest online mapping services, offering consumer mapping and integrated business location solutions. Microsoft acquired it to strengthen its mapping and location platform and expand its search business, integrating the technology with Virtual Earth, Live Search, Windows Live, MSN, and its advertising platforms.

This acquisition will play a significant role in the future growth of our search business and presents a huge opportunity to expand our platform business.Sharon Baylay — General Manager, Online Services Group, Microsoft

Global Care Solutions built enterprise-class hospital information systems—a fully integrated suite of about 50 clinical and back-office modules running on Microsoft technology. Microsoft acquired its software, intellectual property, and assets to expand the Health Solutions Group's healthcare portfolio internationally.

The international, fully integrated nature of the GCS technology...makes this a great addition to our portfolio.Peter Neupert — Corporate Vice President, Health Solutions Group, Microsoft

Parlano developed MindAlign, a persistent enterprise group-chat application enabling topic-specific, multiparty instant-messaging discussions that persist over time, used across financial services, call centers and technology firms. Microsoft acquired it to fold group-chat capability into its unified communications platform (Office Communications Server and Office Communicator).

Parlano has been successful in meeting the rigorous communications needs of companies in financial services and other vertical markets.Gurdeep Singh Pall — Corporate Vice President, Unified Communications Group, Microsoft

AdECN operated a real-time, auction-based advertising exchange where advertising networks trade display advertising in a neutral marketplace. Microsoft acquired it to build a comprehensive search and display advertising platform, increasing inventory for advertisers and improving yield for publishers.

Both Microsoft and AdECN have a deep commitment to creating the technologies and platforms that enable advertisers and publishers to maximize their ROI.Kevin Johnson — President, Platforms and Services Division, Microsoft

ScreenTonic provided mobile advertising solutions, including display and text ad formats, ad management and reporting for mobile operators and publishers. Microsoft acquired it to combine its digital advertising offerings with ScreenTonic's mobile expertise and operator relationships.

The mobile Internet is an extraordinary vehicle for brands to connect with their target audiences, because devices like cell phones enable interaction to take place virtually anywhere or anytime.Steve Berkowitz — Senior Vice President, Online Services Group, Microsoft

Medstory developed intelligent web-search technology built specifically for health information, delivering prequalified, organized content for consumers and health professionals. Microsoft acquired it to strengthen consumer health search and advance a broader consumer health strategy under its newly formed Health Solutions Group.

Instead of trying to force people to think in terms of the way a computer searches, we're enabling computers to more intuitively conduct searches in the way that people think.Dr. Alain Rappaport — CEO and founder, Medstory

Colloquis provided conversational online business solutions built on natural-language-processing technology for customer service applications. Microsoft acquired it to add conversational capabilities to its products and to offer managed services, with Xbox named as the first internal user.

Microsoft has the resources to not only unlock that potential, but to leverage its expansive customer base to create truly innovative real-world uses.Stephen Klein — Chief Executive Officer, Colloquis

Azyxxi was health-intelligence software that captured, integrated and displayed patient data from many sources — EKGs, scanned documents, imaging (X-ray, CT, MRI, PET) and ultrasound — giving clinicians instant access to comprehensive patient information at the point of care. Microsoft acquired it to deepen its healthcare presence and make a proven clinical solution more widely available.

Azyxxi has demonstrated strong and clear benefits to physicians and other clinicians. We're excited to work with the original architects...Peter Neupert — Corporate Vice President, Health Solutions Group, Microsoft

Winternals Software LP supplied Windows-based enterprises with systems-recovery and data-protection tools and operated the Sysinternals freeware site. Microsoft acquired it to lower customers' total cost of ownership on Windows and bring deep kernel-level expertise (co-founders Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell) to future Windows versions.

I've had my eye on Mark for some time. The work he and Bryce have completed in system recovery and data protection illustrates the depth of thinking and skill they will bring to future versions of Windows.Jim Allchin — Co-President, Platforms & Services Division, Microsoft

Whale Communications provided secure-access products — SSL VPN, web application firewalls, endpoint security and its Intelligent Application Gateway — enabling remote access with deep content inspection and granular access control. Microsoft acquired it to complement its Windows Server and ISA Server secure-access offerings.

We built our company and technologies around the key customer requirement of secure, anywhere, anytime remote access to business applications.Roger Pilc — CEO, Whale Communications

Lionhead Studios was a leading video-game developer known for the Fable franchise and titles such as Black & White, Black & White 2 and The Movies, led by industry figure Peter Molyneux. Microsoft acquired it to secure creative talent and exclusive content for Xbox 360 and Windows.

Peter Molyneux is one of the few true visionaries in our industry, and his joining us is incredibly important to the future of both interactive entertainment and MGS.Shane Kim — General Manager, Microsoft Game Studios

ProClarity developed advanced analysis and visualization technology for business intelligence, including ProClarity Analytics Server, which augmented Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services and worked with Office Business Scorecard Manager, Excel and SharePoint Portal Server. Microsoft acquired it to accelerate its business-intelligence strategy.

ProClarity has been a valued Microsoft partner for many years, with a strong R&D organization, more than 1,200 mutual customers and a sales force that already works closely with ours.Jeff Raikes — President, Business Division, Microsoft

Apptimum (formerly Eisenworld Inc.) built products that automatically transfer users' applications and data to new computers, best known for the Alohabob PC Relocator line. Microsoft acquired it to simplify application migration for Windows customers and complement Windows Vista's transfer capabilities.

Our customers and partners have been asking for a much easier way to transfer their data and applications from old computers to new ones.Amitabh Srivastava — Corporate Vice President, Windows Core Operating System Development, Microsoft

Onfolio provided internet research and information-management tools that let users save, collect, organize and share web information during online research. Microsoft acquired its assets to enhance Windows Live Toolbar and Windows Live Search.

The Windows Live mission is to harness the power of the Web in a way that lets people easily find the information and pursue the interests that deepen their relationships and enrich their lives.Christopher Payne — Corporate Vice President, Windows Live Search, Microsoft

MotionBridge provided search technology built specifically for mobile operators and the mobile internet, offering clustered results, deep links to downloadable content, device filtering and web-based back-office tools. Microsoft acquired it to advance its Windows Live and MSN Search mobile-search ambitions.

The emerging field of mobile search is strategically important and crucial to delivering on our vision for Windows Live of providing a seamless and rich information experience for individuals and businesses across devices.Christopher Payne — Corporate Vice President, MSN Search, Microsoft

Alacris provided certificate-management and identity-assurance software, specifically digital-certificate and smart-card life-cycle management solutions for deploying and maintaining smart-card-based strong-authentication infrastructure. Microsoft acquired it to strengthen its identity and access management strategy.

Customers have told us that smart cards are becoming an increasingly important part of their authentication and authorization strategy.Mike Nash — Corporate Vice President, Security Technology Unit, Microsoft

FolderShare (owned and operated by ByteTaxi Inc.) offered a file-synchronization and remote-access service that syncs files across multiple devices and provides browser-based access, removing the need to email large files or use physical media. Microsoft acquired it to integrate file synchronization into Windows Live.

I'm thrilled with the acquisition of FolderShare and the opportunity to offer this technology with Windows Live software and services.Blake Irving — Corporate Vice President, MSN Communication Services and Member Platform group, Microsoft