Microsoft Research is one of the larger groups inside of
Microsoft whose purpose is to come up with the neat
technology to put into
Windows and into Microsoft products. MS's Research
division, in my
experience, is reasonably well
respected both in
academia and in the
industry for being
cooperative and a good
citizen, unlike many other
conceptions of
Microsoft the
company. I have had the
distinct pleasure of working underneath this large
organization.
The research end of
Microsoft is spread out over four locations:
Beijing,
San Francisco,
Cambridge (
UK), and of course
Redmond. This large organization works with many
academic and
industry groups to form the products that will obviously have a big impact on
technology and the way people use computers in the
future.
Innovations and enhancements that have come out of Microsoft Research recently include:
Microsoft Research has wide and varied
interests, including many items that are not usually associated with a large
corporation, let alone Microsoft. Their listed interests include:
Microsoft Research also houses a division called
University Relations. The purpose of such is to try to connect with schools and form
mutually beneficial research partnerships (many, many companies do this).
UR has even been given
permission to give out part of the heavily guarded
Windows source code to selected
universities with specific
research interests. The
Kerberos project was a good example of such a
collaboration.
The Microsoft Research website can be found under:
http://research.microsoft.com
The Microsoft Research - University Relations website can be found under:
http://university.microsoft.com