Product Case

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Product Case - Microsoft Acquisition

If Microsoft had to acquire one company, what would it be, and why?

01 Outcome

The outcome of this analysis is focused on how to extend Microsoft’s Vision which is “To help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential.”

02 Available Opportunities & Validation

The decision tree framework (depicted below) allows you to map the available opportunities. The opportunities are identified by the creating a set of personas for each major line of business.

Please describe the primary research (customer interview) that you intend to do both qualitative and quantitative that supports the opportunity that you have selected.

03 Alternatives and Assumptions

By focusing on a select few major businesses, this analysis seeks to identify acquisition opportunities that can help Microsoft remain relevant and drive further success.

While other factors—such as team fit and technology strength—are integral considerations in the decision-making process, they are not explicitly accounted for here.

04 Roadmap

The product roadmap describes the set of problems that will be taken up Now, Next and Later and what will be integrated or built.

05 Success Metrics

Describe the success metrics for your Roadmap (defined above)

06 What we are not doing?

Finally, describe any area that you are not going to pursue an acquisition for example a regulated industry or countries or regions that may be banned.

Personas

Develop personas for different lines of business at Microsoft

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Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office

Persona

Fear

Anxieties

Hopes

Dreams

Seamless Sharing

Deals or Ideas do not get across in near real time causing missed business opportunities

Someone who is concerned about seamlessly sharing with a large remote team

Fully integrated fully remote team able to work from anywhere in the world

On the Go Sally

Unable to manage housework and work with complete flexibility

Convenience of accessing their documents from anywhere and on any device

Fully integrated set of productivity and colloboration tools to create, update, share deliverables

Organized Eddie

Hard to search and locate documents, data and information on time

Always have all their information and data organized so that they can find it easily

Easy to use service that allows him to find what he is looking for

Privacy Pam

Sensitive business and personal data is hacked/leaked that comprises business

She is concerned about security of her personal and professional information

Guarantee of security of her data

There are no rows in this table

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Microsoft Azure cloud

Microsoft Azure cloud

Persona

Fears

Hopes

Dreams

Examples/data

Heavy Computators

Causing delays and failures due to existing system not computing the data

Concerned about heavy computations on their systems

Integrate with large servers owned by someone else and access them to compute whenever needed

Working with heavy computations Eg: Aircraft/ Missile systems/ Space systems - NASA

Product Builders

Writing new algorithms/ collecting data may need many resources and may not be effective

Hoping to use other ML/AI Alogrithms/ data in their products

Large set of pre-defined algorithms/data sets which are easy to access and easy to integrate with their system

Eg: Computer vision products - Dash cam, autonomous vehicle products

Data securers

Fear of someone stealing the data or accessing the data may result in privacy concerns with their users

Worried about security of the data stored on their systems

Secure servers where data is end to end encrypted and someone else is fully responsible

Eg: Military/ high secure privacy data

Remote accessors

Fear of missing data/tools needed for running their machines

Worried about connectivity to the servers where there is no interent

Cloud connectivity/cloud access which works even without internet

Eg: Remote ships, Forest IoT devices

Fast retrievers

Waiting time may lead to disasters/ thefts or loss of customers/ customers data

Always have their computation ready or receive data with in seconds

Guaranteed connectivity with super fast computation

Eg: IoT security cameras, Airport baggage items detection

There are no rows in this table

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Customer Journey Map - Azure Cloud

Customer Journey Map - Azure Cloud

Persona

Onboarding

Pricing

Setup experience

Usage experience

Heavy Computators

Specific needs of memory usage and processing power addressed

Monthly payment for memory used provided instead of pay as you go

Required data centers and data are allocated based on the company/customer needs. Provided API’ s to connect to their system

Easy access and fast computation whenever triggered

Product Builders

Access to required model/ data sets

Pay as you go instead of one time

Access to APIs and easy to connect from the system

Easy to edit and change based on the need and system requirements. All the data accessed in order to run the system

Data Securers

Memory, processing, and required connections are addressed. Full end-to-end encryption with extra security based on government or normal needs

Pay for the required model and pay as you go for extra uses

Easy API connection with end-to-end encryption with 2-factor auth provided for the pipeline

Access the data only through some permitted systems and IP's which are secure

There are no rows in this table

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Note: A Customer Journey map allows you to evaluate the candidate company product in greater details

Inputs to a Roadmap

Customer Delight → Jobs to be done (table above)

Metric Movers → Adoption (Features that will drive more adoption early?)

Customer Requests → Customer Support, Twitter

Technical Debt → Infrastructure work that needs to be done

Road Map - Azure Cloud

Road Map - Azure Cloud

NOW

LATER

Personalized recommendation of products based on use

Data center availability at the closest location

Personalised payment options based on use

Edit/ modify connections/data

Providing with required data sets/ models

Two Factor Auth

End to end encryption

There are no rows in this table

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Note: Building a roadmap allows you to evaluate which is the most urgent company to acquire

Describe how did you go about doing product discovery?

Built a beta product or set of clickable mocks and find potential users/customers and get feedback

Find at least 3-5 customers and get feedback and synthesize it

How do you decide what and what not to build?

Follow the RICE framework which stands for Reach, Impact, Confidence and Effort

Prioritization Framework → RICE

Reach → Product Manager

Impact → Product Manager

Confidence → PM / Program Manager / Engineering Manager

Effort → Program Manager / Engineering Manager / Engineer

Details here:

https://www.intercom.com/blog/rice-simple-prioritization-for-product-managers/⁠

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What is your approach on taking feedback from customers?

Get both qualitative feedback in terms of demo’s where you record meetings, take notes

Ask them to try the product for free for a number of days, measure engagement using analytics.

Product Metrics - Azure Cloud

Product Metrics - Azure Cloud

Name

Goals

Signals

Metrics

Happiness

Engagement

Adoption

Retention

Task Success

Lower number of failure in setting up secure and large computing tasks

Tracking time to completion

95% of compute requests completing within 100ms + 97% of requests complete within 500ms and best effort for the rest

There are no rows in this table

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Note: Defining success metrics allows you to establish which product is able to best satisfy customer needs

Acquisition Candidates

Acquisition Candidates

Name

TAM (# of new users x price)

Company #1

Company #2

Score

Privacy Pam

Details of approach to gurantee data security

Details of approach to guranteeing data security

Remote Accessors

Connectivity time and computation without connectivity

Fast Retrievers

Time taken to receive data and complete computation

Seamless Sharing

Feature that allows fully remote team to work seamlessly

Heavy Computators

Reduce failures when I run heavy/large computations on my system

Improve time taken to run large computations on my system

Reduce failures when I run heavy/large computations on my system

Improve time taken to run large computations on my system

Product Builders

Reduce the time required when writing new AI/ML algorithms

Reduce the time required when collecting data sets for the a

Reduce the time required when writing new AI/ML algorithms

Reduce the time required when collecting data sets for the a

Data Securers

Improve security when storing privacy/confidential data

Reduce number of hacks to steal my confidential data

Improve security when storing privacy/confidential data

Reduce number of hacks to steal my confidential data

Total

There are no rows in this table

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