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

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