Everyone knows or at least, has heard of the giant tech company Microsoft. But little was known of their processes and software architecture this has been so for a long time. Microsoft has been a black box with their software being proprietary and closed. But recently the tech giant has had a change of heart and decided to spice thing up and open up their software a little and let people know some of the magic that composes their DNA. Among them is the Microsoft Garage, much like your traditional R&D (Research and Development) department in the “progressive companies”. The Microsoft garage was conceived after a hackathon among the Microsoft staff. After the success of the hackathon the Microsoft saw the need to harness the potential of this small ideas by incubating them. Here employees are given a space to test and verify their ideas into products. They take up specific challenges and refine them through methodical experimentation before packaging them and putting them in the general public domain for use.

• Why a garage? Many of the big inventions started off in the garage. Where they were engineered to the masterpieces of technology that drive today's civilization. Microsoft has a store too.
  
  

• Wearable technology is one of the things you can get in their store as well

• From such humble beginnings, it means that this creations must have iterated a number of times for them to truly fit their use cases. This means that they were checked against usability and functionality before being released to the general population.

• Hence, the garage in Microsoft terms is their lab where they intend to bring ideas that are not yet adopted into their mainstream product and test them by fire “literally if you know what I mean”. And you will be impressed to know their mantra as well, “Do epic s—t".

• Seems like it came from the coach’s pep talk during a halftime, really good to get the creative juices running, and give that fun vibe as well.

• Who participates? Well everyone and anyone, literally. Remember the point I said about Microsoft showing us what is under the hood, well there you have it. The Microsoft staff, in their thousands can in their free time access this space and make that own product at their free time.

• This gives them a physical location where the different departments that come together to bring you the windows product, here Microsoft staff can come up and imagine new technology products.

• Another thing that the garage does is come up with various challenges that they can endeavor to tackle as a team. Also here the users views on experimental products can be collected, evaluated and implemented if approved.

• Vision? What is the vision for this Microsoft project? So far we have learnt what they want to deliver. With the open sourcing of some of Microsoft’s products Microsoft will be keen to tap into the power of a community.

• Since Microsoft has a large pool of developers then it is natural for them to start with getting an internal community. Where they can gather thoughts and direction of their next inclusion into their core product line.

• Mandate of the Garage goes beyond the traditional R&D. They are tasked with also coming up with new products that will not only be included in the main Microsoft product, they come up with software that can stand alone without being part of Microsoft Windows OS.

• They create solutions without worrying about the product fit to Microsoft OS. This can be seen by the list of the solutions already released. They range from phone applications to desktop software. Also they are not biased to the windows platform.

• They have some that are cross platform meaning that they can work on other operating systems like Ubuntu, mac operating system and other desktop platforms as well. They are also mobile applications that are created using the android architecture.

• This is to show how Microsoft has gone off its playbook and adopted new stance. This shows that the times are not only changing but so are the policies that governed organizations.

• The new enterprise will rely on collaboration. And user loyalty will be gained by truly understanding them and earning their trust and confidence by incorporating their thoughts as well.

• This is nothing but ingenious for Microsoft to remain relevant in this era. They will have to involve their developers and users more. They need to engage with them from the development to experiment and launch.

• Nowadays people love information and with the advent of open source Microsoft has to decide if they can strike a balance between closed and open system. They will have to let their users know and understand the direction.

• The R&D Garage will not only help them develop new products but evolve quickly with changing needs of the users.