In response to an article in the Guardian on July 11, Microsoft issued the following statement:

“We have clear principles which guide the response across our entire company to government demands for customer information for both law enforcement and national security issues. 

First , we take our commitments to our customers and to compliance with applicable law very seriously, so we provide customer data only in response to legal processes.  Second, our compliance team examines all demands very closely, and we reject them if we believe they aren’t valid.  Third, we only ever comply with orders about specific accounts or identifiers, and we would not respond to the kind of blanket orders discussed in the press over the past few weeks, as the volumes documented in our most recent disclosure clearly illustrate . To be clear, Microsoft does not provide any government with blanket or direct access to SkyDrive , Outlook.com, Skype or any Microsoft product.

Finally when we upgrade or update products legal obligations may in some circumstances require that we maintain the ability to provide information in response to a law enforcement or national security request . There are aspects of this debate that we wish we were able to discuss more freely.  That’s why we’ve argued for additional transparency that would help everyone understand and debate these important issues.”

From: Steve Ballmer
To: Microsoft - All Employees
Date: July 11, 2013, 6 a.m.
Subject: One Microsoft

Today, we are announcing a far-reaching realignment of the company that will enable us to innovate with greater speed, efficiency and capability in a fast changing world.

Today’s announcement will enable us to execute even better on our strategy to deliver a family of devices and services that best empower people for the activities they value most and the enterprise extensions and services that are most valuable to business.

This company has always had a big vision — to help people realize their full potential. In the earliest days, it was by putting a PC on every desk and in every home. We’ve come farther than we could have imagined. The impact we have collectively made on the world is undeniable, and I am inspired when talented new hires say they chose Microsoft because they want to change the world — that’s what we do today, and that’s what we’ll do tomorrow.

Sharpening Our Strategy

About a year ago, we embarked on a new strategy to realize our vision, opening the devices and services chapter for Microsoft. We made important strides — launching Windows 8 and Surface, moving to continuous product cycles, bringing a consistent user interface to PCs, tablets, phones and Xbox — but we have much more to do.

Going forward, our strategy will focus on creating a family of devices and services for individuals and businesses that empower people around the globe at home, at work and on the go, for the activities they value most.

We will do this by leveraging our strengths. We have powered devices for many years through Windows PCs and Xbox. We have delivered high-value experiences through Office and other apps. And, we have enabled enterprise value through products like Windows Server and Exchange. The form of delivery shifts to a broader set of devices and services versus packaged software. The frontier of high-value scenarios we enable will march outward, but we have strengths and proven capabilities on which we will draw.

This memo shows you how far we have developed our thinking on our strategy for high- value activities based on devices and services delivery.

Driving Our Success

It is also clear to me and our leadership that we must do an extraordinary job to succeed in this modern world. We have delivered many great products and had much success in market, but we all want more. That means better execution from product conceptualization and innovation right through to marketing and sales. It also means operational excellence in cloud services, datacenter operations, and manufacturing and supply chain that are essential in a devices and services world. To advance our strategy and execute more quickly, more efficiently, and with greater excellence we need to transform how we organize, how we plan and how we work.

Improving our performance has three big dimensions: focusing the whole company on a single strategy, improving our capability in all disciplines and engineering/technology areas, and working together with more collaboration and agility around our common goals.

This is a big undertaking. It touches nearly every piece of what we do and how we work. It changes our org structure, the way we collaborate, how we allocate resources, how we best empower our engineers and how we market.

One Strategy, One Microsoft

We are rallying behind a single strategy as one company — not a collection of divisional strategies. Although we will deliver multiple devices and services to execute and monetize the strategy, the single core strategy will drive us to set shared goals for everything we do. We will see our product line holistically, not as a set of islands. We will allocate resources and build devices and services that provide compelling, integrated experiences across the many screens in our lives, with maximum return to shareholders. All parts of the company will share and contribute to the success of core offerings, like Windows, Windows Phone, Xbox, Surface, Office 365 and our EA offer, Bing, Skype, Dynamics, Azure and our servers. All parts of the company will contribute to activating high-value experiences for our customers.

We will reshape how we interact with our customers, developers and key innovation partners, delivering a more coherent message and family of product offerings. The evangelism and business development team will drive partners across our integrated strategy and its execution. Our marketing, advertising and all our customer interaction will be designed to reflect one company with integrated approaches to our consumer and business marketplaces.

How we organize our engineering efforts will also change to reflect this strategy. We will pull together disparate engineering efforts today into a coherent set of our high-value activities. This will enable us to deliver the most capability — and be most efficient in development and operations — with the greatest coherence to all our key customers. We will plan across the company, so we can better deliver compelling integrated devices and services for the high-value experiences and core technologies around which we organize. This new planning approach will look at both the short-term deliverables and long-term initiatives needed to meet the shipment cadences of both Microsoft and third-party devices and our services.

This means we will organize the company by function: Engineering (including supply chain and datacenters), Marketing, Business Development and Evangelism, Advanced Strategy and Research, Finance, HR, Legal, and COO (including field, support, commercial operations and IT). Each discipline will help drive our overall strategy. Each discipline will also be charged with improving our core capabilities in its area. We must improve in all aspects of the business.

There will be four engineering areas: OS, Apps, Cloud, and Devices. We will keep Dynamics separate as it continues to need special focus and represents significant opportunity. We will consolidate our technologies coherently into these groups pulling together some things that have been spread out in our current BG structure like cloud infrastructure, operating systems, mail, and identity, to name a few. Some of these changes will involve putting things together and others will involve repartitioning the work, but in all instances we will be more coherent for our users and developers. We have resolved many details of this org, but we still will have more work to do. Undoubtedly, as we involve more people there will be new issues and changes to our current thinking as well. Completing this process will take through the end of the calendar year as we figure things out and as we keep existing teams focused on current deliverables like Windows 8.1, Xbox One, Windows Phone, etc.

To improve engineering pace and quality, we will increase focus on our engineering systems, processes, and tools to improve the productivity of every engineer and to facilitate engineering collaboration and contribution across the company. Our engineering culture and new structure will enable more cross- group contribution, while maintaining confidentiality of some projects as needed. We will improve the approach we use to get MSR involved in product development, building on and enhancing our significant strengths there.

Organizing for Speed and Strategic Alignment

Specifically, our teams and their leaders will be these:

• Operating Systems Engineering Group. Terry Myerson will lead this group, and it will span all our OS work for console, to mobile device, to PC, to back-end systems. The core cloud services for the operating system will be in this group.

• Devices and Studios Engineering Group. Julie Larson-Green will lead this group and will have all hardware development and supply chain from the smallest to the largest devices we build. Julie will also take responsibility for our studios experiences including all games, music, video and other entertainment.

• Applications and Services Engineering Group. Qi Lu will lead broad applications and services core technologies in productivity, communication, search and other information categories.

• Cloud and Enterprise Engineering Group. Satya Nadella will lead development of our back-end technologies like datacenter, database and our specific technologies for enterprise IT scenarios and development tools. He will lead datacenter development, construction and operation.

• Dynamics. Kirill Tatarinov will continue to run Dynamics as is, but his product leaders will dotted line report to Qi Lu, his marketing leader will dotted line report to Tami Reller and his sales leader will dotted line report to the COO group.

• Advanced Strategy and Research Group. Eric Rudder will lead Research, Trustworthy Computing, teams focused on the intersection of technology and policy, and will drive our cross-company looks at key new technology trends.

• Marketing Group. Tami Reller will lead all marketing with the field relationship as is today. Mark Penn will take a broad view of marketing strategy and will lead with Tami the newly centralized advertising and media functions.

• COO. Kevin Turner will continue leading our worldwide sales, field marketing, services, support, and stores as well as IT, licensing and commercial operations.

• Business Development and Evangelism Group. Tony Bates will focus on key partnerships especially our innovation partners (OEMs, silicon vendors, key developers, Yahoo, Nokia, etc.) and our broad work on evangelism and developer outreach. DPE, Corporate Strategy and the business development efforts formerly in the BGs will become part of this new group. OEM will remain in SMSG with Kevin Turner with a dotted line to Tony who will work closely with Nick Parker on key OEM relationships.

• Finance Group. Amy Hood will centralize all product group finance organizations. SMSG finance, which is geographically diffuse, will report to Kevin Turner with a dotted line to Amy.

• Legal and Corporate Affairs Group. Brad Smith will continue as General Counsel with responsibility for the company's legal and corporate affairs and will map his team to the new organization.

• HR Group. Lisa Brummel will lead Human Resources and map her team to the new organization.

As part of these changes, Kurt DelBene will be retiring from Microsoft. Kurt has been a huge part of our success in evolving Office to be a great cloud service, and is a key member of my leadership team. I can’t express enough gratitude for the work he’s done for the company, and I will truly miss him. Kurt is a truly amazing leader and a special person. His contributions to Microsoft over 20+ years can inspire us all.

Craig Mundie will be stepping off the SLT to devote 100% of his time to a special project for me through the end of this calendar year. Beginning in 2014, Craig will continue as a consultant through his previously agreed upon departure date at the end of calendar 2014.

Also at this time, Rick Rashid will step away from running Microsoft Research and move into a new role driving core OS innovation in our operating systems group. Rick created MSR, the most amazing computer science research institution in the world. We owe him so much for that. He has a great team to assume the mantle, and it is exciting to have Rick return to his roots in OS to help propel us forward.

How We Work

The final piece of the puzzle is how we work together and what characteristics this new Microsoft must embody. There is a process element and a culture element to discuss.

Process wise, each major initiative of the company (product or high-value scenario) will have a team that spans groups to ensure we succeed against our goals. Our strategy will drive what initiatives we agree and commit to at my staff meetings. Most disciplines and product groups will have a core that delivers key technology or services and then a piece that lines up with the initiatives. Each major initiative will have a champion who will be a direct report to me or one of my direct reports. The champion will organize to drive a cross-company team for success, but my whole staff will have commitment to the initiative’s success. We will also have outgrowths on those major initiatives that may involve only a single product group. Certainly, succeeding with mobile devices, Windows, Office 365 and Azure will be foundational. Xbox and Bing will also be key future contributors to financial success. Our focus on high-value activities — serious fun, meetings, tasks, research, information assurance and IT/Dev workloads — also will get top-level championship.

Culturally, our core values don’t change, but how we express them and act day to day must evolve so we work together to win. The keys are the following:

Nimble

In a world of continuous services, the timeframe for product releases, customer interaction and competitive response is dramatically shorter. As a company, we need to make the right decisions, and make them more quickly, balancing all the customer and business imperatives. Each employee must be able to solve problems more quickly and with more real-time data than in the past.

Communicative

In the new, rapid-turn world, we need to communicate in ways that don’t just exchange information but drive agility, action, ownership and accountability.

Collaborative

Collaborative doesn’t just mean “easy to get along with.” Collaboration means the ability to coordinate effectively, within and among teams, to get results, build better products faster, and drive customer and shareholder value.

Decisive

As a global company with literally billions of diverse customers in an accelerating business environment, we must have a clear strategic direction but also empower employees closest to the customer to make decisions in service of the larger mission. This is tricky in a big company, but it is the key to higher levels of productivity, growth and customer satisfaction.

Motivated

In our industry, every day brings more challenges and more opportunities than the day before. But we have a unique chance to make the lives of billions of people better in fundamental ways. This should inspire all of us — those who love making products and services, those who love engaging with customers, and those who love planning and running our company in the most effective way possible. We want people who get up each morning excited to make Microsoft better — that’s how we come closer to fulfilling the potential of all people around the globe.

Our leadership team has discussed these cultural aspects a lot and is committed. In my own staff meetings, we are modeling these new characteristics yet also find ourselves occasionally slipping back. One strategy, united together, with great communication, decisiveness and positive energy is the only way to fly.

Seizing Our Unique Opportunity

Together, we have created great products and great success, but we all want more. That means a strategy to deliver a family of devices and services that best enable people for the activities they value most and the enterprise extensions and services that are most valuable to business. A new structure to bring these to market faster. Stronger centralized services so we can be more efficient and effective. Priority focus areas, short and long term. New characteristics of how we work together. In other words, better execution and innovation through strategy and goal and discipline and engineering coherence. One Microsoft all the time.

Across Microsoft, we are facing incredible new opportunities. As devices become further integrated into everyday life, we will have to create new and extraordinary experiences for our customers on these devices. We are going to focus on completely reinventing experiences like creating or viewing a creative document and what it means to communicate socially at home or in meetings at work. We are going to immerse people in deep entertainment experiences that let them have serious fun in ways so intense and delightful that they will blur the line between reality and fantasy. And as we develop these new experiences, we will also support our developers with the simplest ways to develop apps or cloud services and integrate with our products. We will help businesses that find themselves in a new world of ever-mounting information to manage that information through greater enterprise information assurance. We will make these high-value activities priorities in our strategy.

Lots of change. But in all of this, many key things remains the same. Our incredible people, our spirit, our commitment, our belief in the transformative power of technology — our Microsoft technology — to make the world a better place for billions of people and millions of businesses around the world. It’s why I come to work inspired every day. It’s why we’ve evolved before, and why we’re evolving now. Because we’re not done.

Let’s go.

Steve

REDMOND, Wash. — July 11, 2013 — Microsoft will hold a conference call to discuss the company’s announcement today.

What:
Microsoft Corp. conference call

When:
Thursday, July 11, 2013, 12:30 p.m.

Who:
Steve Ballmer, Chief Executive Officer, and Microsoft’s leadership team

Conference Call

Dial-In: Interested parties should call 888-459-9165 (toll free) or 773-799-3324 and enter passcode Microsoft.

The session will also be streamed live at www.microsoft.com/investor

Reporters, editors and analysts can check www.microsoft.com/news for all additional press materials.

Replay Information: A playback of the conference will also be available approximately one hour after the conclusion of the call at 888-325-4184 (toll free) or 402-998-1249. The webcast will be available for replay at http://www.microsoft.com/investor/Events/default.aspx through the close of business on July 11th, 2014.

For more information, press only:

Rapid Response Team, Waggener Edstrom Worldwide, (503) 443-7070, rrt@waggeneredstrom.com

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/news/contactpr.mspx.

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — July 11, 2013 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the winners of the 11th annual Microsoft Imagine Cup, the world’s premier competition for student technologists, developers and aspiring entrepreneurs to create innovative projects and ultimately bring those ideas to market. Winning projects were announced for the three major Competition categories — Innovation, Games and World Citizenship — as well as three product-specific Challenges and eight special awards from Imagine Cup sponsors.

The winners were announced at the Imagine Cup Awards Ceremony, held at the historic Alexandrinsky Theater and attended by more than 800 students, judges, awards Partners, Russian dignitaries and members of the media from around the world. The ceremony was the culmination of a four-day competition and celebration of bringing ideas to life through technology and teamwork.

United Kingdom Students Win First Place and $50,000 at Microsoft’s Imagine Cup Competition July 10, 2013 A group of students from the United Kingdom won $50,000 as the first-place winners of the Microsoft Imagine Cup Innovation Competition with their mobile phone application “soundSYNK,” which creates impromptu social networks that allow people to stream music simultaneously through a group of phones, effectively creating a symphony of speakers.

Downloads: Web

Eighty-seven student teams from 71 countries competed in the Worldwide Finals after winning local and online competitions around the world. Microsoft has awarded cash and other prizes valued at more than $1 million throughout the yearlong Imagine Cup competition, including awards for the winning teams at the Worldwide Finals event this week.

“For the past 11 years, Imagine Cup has been a place of inspiration and innovation for students around the world,” said Steve Guggenheimer, corporate vice president and chief evangelist at Microsoft. “The students participating in this competition demonstrate the very best in innovation from their home countries and together are creating new apps, innovations and services that will change the way the world works, interacts and learns. We are incredibly proud of the finalists who competed in Imagine Cup this year and stand in awe of the projects and technology they brought forth during this exciting week.”

Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals winners

“Imagine Cup is a forum for exceptional students from around the world to channel their passion and creativity into thoughtful, innovative solutions that have the potential for real-world impact,” said Jon Bassett, DFJ Frontier analyst and a judge at this year’s Imagine Cup. “Their commitment to their teams and projects demonstrates these students are finding ways to address everyday problems through technology and to make the world a better place.”

The winners of the 11th annual Imagine Cup Competitions are the following:

Innovation

• First Place, $50,000 prize: Team Colinked, United Kingdom, Project: SoundSYNK

• Second Place, $10,000 prize: Team DORA, Slovenia, Project: DORA

• Third Place, $5,000 prize: Team MYRA, Thailand, Project: SkyPACS

Games

• First Place, $50,000 prize: Team Zeppelin Studio, Austria, Project: Schein

• Second Place, $10,000 prize: Team Solite Studio, Indonesia, Project: Save the Hamsters

• Third Place, $5,000 prize: Team Banzai Lightning, France, Project: Seed

World Citizenship

• First Place, $50,000 prize: Team for a Better World, Portugal, Project: For a Better World

• Second Place, $10,000 prize: Team Omni-Hearing Solution, Taiwan, Project: Omni-Hearing Solution

• Third Place, $5,000 prize: Team Confufish Royale, Australia, Project: Foodbank Local

Imagine Cup Challenge winners

This year, Imagine Cup offered three exclusively online Challenges to students, providing additional opportunities for learning, prototyping and creating apps using the newest Microsoft technologies. The top three teams in each category were awarded the opportunity to travel to Russia to compete at the finals. The Challenge winners are the following:

Windows Azure Challenge

• First Place, $10,000 Prize: Team Y-Nots, India, Project: Zoik It!

• Second Place, $5,000 Prize: Team nlife, Ukraine, Project: onQuests

• Third Place, $3,000 Prize: Team LetssGo, China, Project: Get & Put

Windows Phone Challenge

• First Place, $10,000 Prize: Team vSoft Studio, Singapore, Project: Speak Reminder

• Second Place, $5,000 Prize: Team WeRule, Poland, Project: Modern Drug Test

• Third Place, $3,000 Prize: Team front, Poland, Project: Cope

Windows 8 Apps Challenge

• First Place, $10,000 Prize: Team TeamNameException, Italy, Project: Ulixes

• Second Place, $5,000 Prize: Team Wordsapp, Germany, Project: Wordsapp

• Third Place, $3,000 Prize: Team Clever Mind, Thailand, Project: Vocable World

Additional Imagine Cup award winners

In addition to the Competitions and Challenges, students competed for the following special awards from Imagine Cup sponsors:

AFT Excellence Award. Five teams will receive AFT (App Fast Track) review by the Windows Team. In recognition of their outstanding Windows 8 Apps projects, the following teams will receive a review process to enhance their projects and deliver great Windows 8 apps:

• Team Banzai Lightning, France

• Team Flying Ship, Brazil

• Team Lumos, Korea

• Team MASKed Ninjas, Egypt

• Team TapBoarders, Poland

AppCampus Award. Team Flying Ship from Brazil won 50,000 euros in funding, airfare and accommodations for its app Callvenient. In recognition of their great project that could be the next big thing on Windows Phone, the team members will fly to Finland for a four-week AppCampus training event.

DreamSpark Learning Award. Team AuThink of Croatia won $5,000 for its project focused on helping autistic children and their parents, which showcases how software creates new ways of learning and teaching.

Facebook Creativity Award. Team AYNi from Ecuador and its volunteering social-network based project took home $25,000 in Facebook advertising credits.

KFC Russia Award. Team Sano from Canada won $10,000 for its health and wellness project. The team’s project will be showcased in KFC Russia’s flagship restaurant in Moscow.

Mail.Ru Group Connected Planet Award. Three teams met Mail.Ru Group’s challenge to develop a project that embraces online communication and entertainment in fun, useful and innovative ways. The following are the winners:

• First Place, $10,000 Prize: Team Y-Nots, India, Project: Zoik It!

• Second Place, $5,000 Prize: Team TeamNameException, Italy, Project: Ulixes

• Third Place, $3,000 Prize: Team LetssGo, China, Project: Get & Put

Samsung Digital Native Award. Team Firebird from Sri Lanka received this $10,000 award that honors the fresh thinking, digital savvy and global perspective of its project.

Women’s Empowerment Award. In partnership with UN Women, this award recognizes two student teams that created projects that best address issues impacting women globally. The following are the winners:

• First Place, $12,000 Prize: Team Code 8, Uganda, Project: Matibabu

• Second Place, $8,000 Prize: Team Omni-Hearing Solution, Taiwan, Project: Omni-Hearing Solution

Boost awards

The following Boost awards also were distributed in recognition of the outstanding achievements of many winning teams:

• The DevExpress Boost. The first-place winning teams in the three Competitions and three Challenges received a DevExpress Universal Subscription that includes a comprehensive and feature-complete software development toolset for .NET developers. The total value per subscription is $8,799.96 per team.

• Windows Azure Boost. First-place winners in the three Competitions and in the Windows 8 Apps and Windows Phone challenges whose projects used Azure Cloud Services won an extra $1,000. In addition, projects that included Windows Mobile Service won an extra $1,000, while projects that included both Azure Cloud Services and Windows Mobile Service qualified for the Double Shot bonus of $3,000.

• Windows 8 Boost. First-, second- and third-place winners of the three Competitions and the Windows Azure and Windows Phone challenges whose projects included a Windows 8 Store App received an extra $1,000 through this boost.

Imagine Cup comes home to Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Wash.

In 2014, Imagine Cup is headed to Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Wash. As part of this year’s awards ceremony, Steve Ballmer addressed the audience via a prerecorded video announcing next year’s competition. The video is available on the Microsoft News Center.

About Microsoft Imagine Cup

Microsoft Imagine Cup is the world’s premier technology program and competition for students to learn, build and compete with innovative tools, platform and services. This is the 11th year of Imagine Cup, which was celebrated at the Worldwide Finals in St. Petersburg, Russia, July 8–11. Students are eligible to register and compete in Imagine Cup by visiting http://www.imaginecup.com. A full list of competition categories is available at http://imaginecup.com/main/compete.

In addition to providing a platform for students to demonstrate and share their next great technologies, Imagine Cup has taken on an increased focus in preparing these students to be young entrepreneurs in the global marketplace. All Imagine Cup Worldwide Finalist teams whose projects focus on social good are eligible to apply for Imagine Cup Grants. All Worldwide Finalists teams received grant applications at the finals event in St. Petersburg, and the process will officially close Aug. 16, 2013. In addition, through the Microsoft BizSpark program, Imagine Cup participants can launch startup businesses in their communities and across the Web.

Imagine Cup was made possible by support from key partners that are committed to helping students embrace the full potential of technology. These partners include the Agency for Strategic Initiatives, Avanade Inc., AppCampus, Developer Express Inc., Microsoft DreamSpark, Facebook, KFC Corp., Mail.Ru Group, Samsung, Skolkovo Foundation, UN Women, Windows Azure and Windows.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/news/contactpr.mspx.

REDMOND, Wash. — July 10, 2013 — At the Worldwide Partner Conference today, Microsoft Corp. announced CityNext, a global initiative empowering cities, businesses and citizens to re-imagine their futures and cultivate vibrant communities. Cities are centers of industrial, economic and entrepreneurial activity that fuel the rest of the world’s success. But cities increasingly encounter compelling forces, such as rapid urbanization, modernization mandates, and economic austerity pressures. Microsoft CityNext offers cities a vast and diverse Microsoft Partner Network of more than 430,000 technology experts across the globe to innovate today and create a better tomorrow. Leveraging a broad portfolio of familiar and security-enhanced consumer to business software, devices and services and Microsoft’s history of successful education and social programs, CityNext is a collective effort that enables cities and their people to accomplish what’s next.

“Cities play a vital role in our lives — both now and in the future. Microsoft’s CityNext initiative puts people first and builds on this new era of collaborative technology to engage citizens, business and government leaders in new ways,” said Laura Ipsen, corporate vice president of Microsoft Worldwide Public Sector. “Working with our vast Microsoft Partner Network, we can scale solutions and services to do ‘New with Less,’ enabling cities to better compete in the global marketplace, drive citizen engagement, and foster economic, social and environmental sustainability.”

Transforming operations and infrastructure

CityNext helps leaders make the most of their existing investments to find new ways to overcome challenges and reach their goals. With the new era of innovation, cities can enable new capabilities using flexible cloud services, empower city employees with enterprise-grade devices and apps, and innovate on their terms with modern solutions and big data platforms. This innovation can allow critical information to flow seamlessly between municipal departments and among government, businesses and citizens, driving efficiencies that can let cities put more resources back into the community.

CityNext brings together an ecosystem of partner solutions, devices and services that can connect and transform a variety of city functions, including the following:

• Energy and water

• Buildings, planning and infrastructure

• Transportation

• Public safety and justice

• Tourism, recreation and culture

• Education

• Health and social services

• Government administration

CityNext customer Barcelona, Spain — long recognized as a digital innovator — has successfully harnessed cloud, data and apps to enhance administrative operations, interact with citizens and make information transparent. For example, Microsoft and CityNext partner BISmart worked with the Barcelona City Council to launch OpenData BCN, an initiative to make data accessible to the public. Using the Windows Azure cloud, the OpenData BCN platform aggregates myriad facts about the city — such as population density and total unemployment — into a central hub with enhanced security. Citizens then can download the bigov Better City Indicators app from the Windows Store and monitor fluctuations in real time. Barcelonans now have access to information to make decisions on topics such as where to start a business and where to settle down with their families.

“We’ve been working with Microsoft for many years and have witnessed tremendous innovation across government, enterprise and citizen services through cloud technology and devices. Yet, even more can be done to engage Barcelonans and enhance citizens’ experiences,” said Xavier Trias, mayor of Barcelona. “We will continue to collaborate closely with Microsoft and leverage cutting-edge technology, services and programs that will make Barcelona a better place to live, work, visit and thrive.”

Engaging citizens and businesses

Citizens and businesses expect access to and interaction with city governments through apps and the devices of their choice — anytime, anywhere. With Microsoft’s software, device and services platform, cities can deliver personalized services and apps with a people-centric approach, enable real-time dialogue via social media, and spur app development and economic growth with open data initiatives, resulting in better-served and engaged constituents.

Microsoft CityNext partner Socrata Inc., a cloud software company leading the shift to data-driven government, is working with Microsoft to bring open data technologies to cities worldwide on the Windows Azure cloud platform. For example, Socrata offers governments customizable dashboards. Citizens can access their cities’ dashboards through mobile devices or the Internet and monitor how their leaders are performing in areas such as education, healthcare and job creation. City leaders can engage with citizens in real time, incorporate public demands into their decision-making processes and ensure that they respond to their communities’ most pressing needs. In turn, governments can bring data and citizen feedback into every decision, fostering greater transparency and community participation.

“The forward-looking CityNext initiative addresses a once-in-a-generation global shift currently taking place in government: opening up government data and using it to enhance citizen services,” said Kevin Merritt, CEO and founder at Socrata. “Through simple, familiar apps and devices, governments can now engage everyone, everywhere. We are already seeing incredible progress and, in partnership with Microsoft, will enable global leaders to make sound decisions, drive efficiencies and help them meet citizen demands for ubiquitous access to information.”

Accelerating innovation and opportunity

Cities will not only realize full transformation through technology but also through nurturing the creativity of their most important resource — human capital. Microsoft and partners offer a variety of skills-based programs that educate students and teachers, foster business development, and empower citizens to join a competitive workforce. Around the world, these programs have helped millions of city residents cultivate a brighter future for themselves and their cities. For example, Microsoft programs YouthSpark, BizSpark and IT Academy encourage youth to join a growing workforce, support entrepreneurs’ bold ideas and create skilled workers that help cities compete in the global marketplace.

Visionary cities

Cities are already on their journey toward modernizing today. In fact, several visionary cities have stepped forward to embark with Microsoft and CityNext partners on this journey to identify and create what is next for their communities. Led by motivated, forward-looking leaders, these cities are taking an important step to better serve citizens and realize the potential of tomorrow through cross-functional collaboration that increases efficiencies, reduces costs and fosters a more sustainable environment.

• Auckland, New Zealand

• Barcelona, Spain

• Buenos Aires, Argentina

• Hainan Province, People’s Republic of China

• Hamburg, Germany

• Manchester, England

• Moscow, Russia

• Philadelphia, United States of America

• Zhengzhou, People’s Republic of China

“Today’s cities know they must tackle urban challenges through coordinated and focused investments that enable collaboration across departments and agencies, leverage existing assets, engage citizens and stakeholders, and tackle long-standing problems,” said Ruthbea Yesner Clarke, director of the Smart Cities Strategies program at IDC. “According to IDC’s Smart City Maturity Model, many cities are now in the first stages of implementing smart technology solutions as part of a 10- to 15-year path to realizing full transformation potential. The result of ‘smart city’ initiatives will ultimately enable cities to attract businesses and citizens to build more vibrant city landscapes and competitive economies.”

More information about CityNext is available at http://www.microsoft.com/citynext/.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/news/contactpr.mspx.