Microsoft Corporation New Strategic Plans

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Microsoft Corporation New Strategic Plans
Introduction: Company Profile
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational tech firm founded in April 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Its headquarters are in Redmond, Washington. Over time, the firm has grown into a giant technology company best known for developing, manufacturing, licensing, and distributing computer programs, electronics, and computers. The firm also offers several services, including cloud-based solutions and consulting services. It is segmented into Productivity and Business Process, Intelligent Cloud and More Personal Computing ("Microsoft Corporation MSFT.O"). The corporation has continuously formulated and executed strategic plans to gain a competitive edge and retain its market leadership position in the highly dynamic tech industry. This strategy case paper will explore two recent strategic plans or strategic implementation actions that Microsoft Corporation is currently working to accomplish.
1 Microsoft's Plan to Invest Over 1 Billion USD in Israel
The tech giant is seeking to expand its operations in the Middle East Country of Israel by injecting a capital investment of between $1and $1.5 Billion in the country's local branch. The funds will be used to finance the establishment of a new cloud data center and the expansion of its chips research and development projects (Solomon, 2021a). In March this year, CEO Satya Nadella spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the corporation's plans to make new investments in the country. The new data center will offer services to Israeli clientele starting with Azure, and after that, Office 365 shall be operationalized later this year.
The new undertaking comes when Microsoft is facing stiff competition from other tech giants such as Google, Oracle, and Amazon to provide cloud data services worldwide. Solomon (2021b) reports that Google and Amazon recently edged out Microsoft to emerge as the top contenders for a lucrative cloud data tender meant to serve Israeli government entities and the military. Delays in establishing the cloud data center are believed to have been the main obstacle for Microsoft to win the tender.
The company enjoys lower corporate tax rates of 6% on its IP in Israel, a government tax incentive that appears to favour Microsoft compared to smaller tech firms that pay between 7.5% to 12% ("Levi-Weinrib, 2021"). Regarding the new investment, the Netanyahu administration has not made any commitments to offer new incentives to Microsoft. The tech firm did not request any government incentives either. Further details of the planned investment projects led by Microsoft Israel country manager Ronit Atad shall be released soon.
2 Microsoft's Data Science Strategy
As businesses worldwide rush to tap as many data resources as possible and extract financial value out of them, tech companies are taking up the opportunity to provide solutions to help companies exploit the full potential of data resources. Implementatio...