Microsoft and the War on Cost
Hello to everyone, and our thanks for stopping by our blog. My name is Elliott Morris, and I have the privilege of managing the War on Cost team and working with Brett, Bruce and Erik. Before I start adding posts to our blog, let me tell you a little more about the War on Cost team and what it is we do at Microsoft.
At Microsoft, we are always looking to improve our products. There are many people involved in the process for planning a new product or the next version of a product, however our team is unique for a few reasons:
- We collect significant amounts of operational data from enterprises to understand their costs for deploying, operating and supporting Microsoft software – our product groups do significant research to understand product requirements, but it is our role to understand requirements at a very detailed level to improve operational efficiency;
- Although we are part of the Management and Services Division, we work across Microsoft’s business units to drive improvements in manageability into products that reduce costs for customers, so we are not tied to products from just the Management and Services Division;
- And our responsibility is to improve products organically, by building improvements into the product, or even inorganically, such as by licensing or acquiring technology from other companies.
Why do I tell you this? Partly to help you obtain a deeper understanding of our role within Microsoft, and partly to demonstrate Microsoft’s commitment to help our customers operate Microsoft software as efficiently as possible. I will also add that we hope you are not offended by the use of the word "War" in our team's name. We know this can be a sensitive word, but our reason for using it in our team's name is to connote just how serious Microsoft is about reducing operating costs for its customers. You can learn more about some of our work at the Spotlight on Cost web page.
We hope you are finding our posts useful and look forward to your comments. Please feel free to email me if you would like to respond directly to me on this post.