Microsoft's acquisitions and the VC Summit

Don Dodge on Microsoft's acquisitions and the recent VC Summit:

[...] The acquisitions cover a range of technology areas, and typically fill in holes in our product roadmap. About a third of the companies acquired were not yet VC funded. We are doing our best to identify great engineering teams and unique technology early in the process. We form partnerships, help them get started with Microsoft, introduce them to VCs, and sometimes that results in an early acquisition. That is not the ultimate goal...but sometimes it happens. Onfolio is a good example of an early partnership that resulted in an acquisition.

Acquisitions are typically made for three reasons;

People - acquiring great engineering teams and operating managers
Technology - adding a technology to an existing product set
Time to market - sometimes the market moves faster than Microsoft can release a product. Security is an example. Sometimes legislation changes the market too quickly. Sarbanes-Oxley introduced new requirements for compliance, so acquisitions were made to respond.
New Markets - Great Plains allowed Microsoft to enter a completely new market. Teleo got us deeper into the VoIP space.

Read his full post.

Tags: Microsoft, Business, Acquisitions

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