On April 4th, 2015, Microsoft Corporation turned 40 years old. From an individual at home to a worldwide enterprise, Microsoft has definitely influenced the world since its original release of MS-DOS and its glorious C:/ prompt in the 1970s. In honor of one of our favorite vendors, we took a staff vote internally on what our favorite 3 Microsoft products have been over the last 40 years.
#3 – Microsoft Exchange – Originally released in 1996, Microsoft Exchange server has become the standard communications platform over the years for startups all the way to large global enterprise. Our two favorite releases have been Exchange 2003 and Exchange 2013 from the perspective of the new advancements each of them brought to the table on the day of release. Exchange 2003 brought server-side ActiveSync (mobile phone sync), Outlook Web Access and some preliminary disaster recovery options to the forefront. Exchange 2013 brought a slew of customization options, a web management interface, and support for much larger mailbox sizes – making business owners and folks in the creative industries very happy. With Office 365 hosted exchange making more headway in recent months as well as the next incarnation of Exchange on its way, we are excited to see how this product continues to perform and make our lives easier every day.
#2 – Windows 95 – Some of the older folks at Network Medics remember the first time sitting down at a Windows 95 computer. It was likely running a 486 or Pentium (60MHz) processor, 8 MB of RAM and if you were lucky, a 250MB-1GB hard drive. Mobile phones and tablets are far more powerful today, but reflecting back it was an amazing transformation of the industry and user expectation. Solitaire has never been the same.
#1 – Microsoft Office – No office suite product is more recognized, revered and polarizing for business communication then Microsoft Office. Along with Microsoft Exchange, our favorite releases have been 2003 and 2013 respectively. With the shift to Office365, having all employees consistently on the same version of the software will finally solve one of the longest running frustrations for small businesses and their IT teams.
As Microsoft continues to change with the times, the next 40 years for them should be an interesting journey for everyone. Next up soon is Windows 10. Let’s all hope that doesn’t flop like Windows ME, The MS Office Paper Clip and Windows Vista. Thus far is looks to be a very promising and exciting product.
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