Microsoft Corporation
enterpriseTechnology company behind Windows, Microsoft 365, Azure, and the Power Platform.
Microsoft Corporation is a U.S. multinational technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington, founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. It is one of the largest software companies in the world by revenue and the developer of the Windows operating system, the Microsoft 365 productivity suite, the Azure cloud platform, and the Power Platform, which includes the Power Automate workflow tool. Microsoft trades publicly on the Nasdaq under the ticker MSFT.
Our Take
We treat Power Automate as the default automation recommendation for organisations already standardised on Microsoft 365, and a poor-value one for organisations that are not, because the premium-connector licensing erodes the bundled-in advantage. — Rafal Fila, ShadowGen
What Sets Microsoft Corporation Apart
Microsoft is the only automation vendor that ships its workflow product (Power Automate) inside the office suite, operating system, and cloud platform that a large share of the world's organisations already run, which makes distribution rather than features its main advantage.
Key Achievements
About Microsoft Corporation
Microsoft Corporation builds operating systems, productivity software, cloud infrastructure, developer tools, and consumer hardware and services. Founded in 1975, the company defined the personal-computing software market through the 1980s and 1990s with MS-DOS and Windows, and the office-productivity market with Microsoft Office. Under CEO Satya Nadella, who took the role in 2014, Microsoft refocused on cloud computing, and Azure became a primary growth engine alongside the subscription transition of Office into Microsoft 365.
In the automation space, the relevant Microsoft product is the Power Platform, a low-code suite of Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, and Power Pages built on the shared Dataverse data layer. Power Automate is Microsoft's workflow-automation and robotic-process-automation product. Microsoft has also invested heavily in AI, including a multi-year partnership with OpenAI and the Copilot family of assistants embedded across Windows, Microsoft 365, and the Power Platform. Microsoft's automation strategy depends on the breadth of its installed base: organisations already licensed for Microsoft 365 frequently adopt Power Automate as their default automation surface.