2011, the year full of high technology spirit has reached to the ending shores and the time has come to review the complete year which has been very eventful for the Microsoft.

We saw many big, successful and heartfelt events in 2011 year, from Microsoft’s partnership with Nokia to the purchase of Skype and the first peek at Windows 8.

Many breath-taking events also hit the tech world and one, which took the complete tech world into the tears of sorrow, as one of the great living legend left us this very year. Yes, I’m talking about the Steve Jobs, the great mankind soul that laid the foundation for the success of i, which is today popular as Apple. Blessing his soul to Rest in Peace, our entire team today with a heavy heart, remember the great innovations that Steve Jobs bestowed upon the tech world, and showed the entire universe the true spirit of innovation, making his soul alive in our hearts we welcome the New Year with great aspirations and reviews the 2011 year for Microsoft.

Here’s Microsoft’s year, from A to Z.

A= Azure. On February 1, Microsoft celebrated the first anniversary of its Windows Azure cloud platform that allows developers and companies to build software and distribute their products and services. The new customers that initiatively joined are Toyota and T-Mobile USA.

B= Bing. Since, Google captures 65 percent of the search engine market share; Bing has only 15 percent in its share according to comScore stats of November. Perhaps, it is rising on slowly.

C= Cloud. Microsoft, the high command says again and again that the company is “all in” to the cloud platform. So let’s dig out what did that entails in 2011? Besides celebrating Azure’s anniversary, this year Microsoft launched Windows Intune, Office 365, Dynamics CRM Online 2011, and Dynamics AX 2012 — all cloud products. Moreover, the software giant also introduced iPhone and Windows phone mobile apps for SkyDrive, its personal cloud service. Since, the financial numbers have not been revealed out by the Microsoft for the various cloud offerings, so it’s difficult to analyze how well they are doing financially.

D= Developers! Developers! The year 2011 seems to be very crucial for the Developer, as the maximum events were organized keeping an eye on the developers. At the Mix conference in April, Corporate Vice President Joe Belfiore flaunted a Windows Phone 7 ringtone highlighting Ballmer chanting: “Developers! Developers! Then at the Build conference in September, Ballmer told developers “Let’s seize the opportunity for developers, developers, developers!”

E= Einhorn, David. The high-prestigious hedge fund investor said Ballmer needs to be replaced and that the reason for Microsoft’s poor stock performance is the CEO. Einhorn’s fund however has now increased shares in Microsoft.

F= Facebook. Among the various partnerships deal, one of the very essential partnerships of Microsoft was with Facebook with the intent to build a social search in Bing. However, Microsoft has managed to add some more Facebook features to Bing, including the Facebook “Likes” button on the specific pages inside popular websites. Moreover, in 2011 we also got to see Skype enabling video chats with friends from within Facebook and Facebook-to-Facebook calls from within Skype.

G= Google. The competition was at the peak this year on various different fronts, like search, mobile, patents, office productivity and the cloud. Though the most entertaining was, a inflating patent spat over Google’s Android mobile operating system headed to an exchange between the two in which Google categorized Microsoft’s patent-licensing program as extortion and a Microsoft spokesman tweeted he had just one word for Google: “Waaaah.”

H= Hadoop. In October, Microsoft introduced a version of this open-source, large-scale data-processing system to Windows Server and Azure, assimilating it with SQL Server.

I= Internet Explorer. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 is the most used browser worldwide on Windows 7. Even if we compare it with its all other IE versions, it will stand tall among all of them as the most used browser. Though, it is the most used browser worldwide but, IE’s share has been steadily declining: to 41%, down from 48% a year ago, according to the stat counter, one of the well-known Web analytics tracking firm. Perhaps, it seems as if the Google Chrome is rising.

J= Julie Larson-Green. Microsoft’s corporate vice president of program management for Windows gave a key demo of Windows 8 at the build conference. She was also named as one of Glamour magazine’s list of women in tech who is very soon expected to become the next great tech legend.

K= Kinect. Microsoft celebrated Kinect’s one-year anniversary in the fall by hyping what it dubbed the “Kinect Effect” — folks using the voice- and motion-sensor for more than Xbox games. In 2011, Microsoft provided scholars a software-development kit for Kinect applications, and looks forward to do so for businesses next year.

L= Lync. Microsoft’s office-communications software first anniversary was in December, demanding nearly 3 million enterprise users rely on it rather than traditional PBX for telephone-related needs.

M= Mango. After the grand success of the Windows Phone 7, Microsoft introduced its latest update, Windows Phone 7.5, code-named “Mango”, this year in September.

N= Nokia. In February, the Finnish phone manufacturer and Microsoft announced about their partnership, with Nokia using primarily Windows Phone as its Smartphone platform. Nokia launched its first Windows Phones, the Lumia 800 and Lumia 710 in October.

O= Office. More than 100 million copies of Office 2010 have been sold since its launch in May 2010. With this sales record, it has helped Microsoft’s Business division reach $5.62 billion in sales in the most recent quarter.

P= Patents. Increasingly Patents are becoming a financial and competitive strategy among tech companies, and Microsoft being right in the thick of things. Generally, the company contends that features in Google’s Android violation on Microsoft patents. It has hunted patent-licensing agreements with different phone makers using Android, or taken them to court. And now by the end of 2011, it had reached licensing agreements with 10 manufacturers, which altogether represent more than 50 percent of Android devices.

Q= Quarterly earnings. No matter for the software giant where its stock price goes, as its quarterly earnings are more than enough to make a profit. Thanks to Windows, Office, and the Server and Tools business. In financial terms, the company has managed to reach $69.9 billion in sales, with $23.2 billion in profit in 2011.

R= Re-imagining. One of the biggest innovations that the tech world has seen in this year is the Windows 8, a concept which goes beyond imagination. “Windows 8 is a re-imagining of Windows, from the chip to the interface,” Julie Larson-Green wrote in June after the first demonstration of the new operating system at the D9 conference. “Windows 8 is a bold re-imagining of what Windows could be,” Windows President Steven Sinofsky said at Build. “If Windows 8 is Windows re-imagined … we’re also in the process of re-imagining Microsoft,” Ballmer declared, also at Build. Just imagine where they are planning to take Microsoft.

S= Skype. We saw Microsoft biding for many deals and one was to acquire the Internet phone company for $8.5 billion, which was its largest purchase ever. Skype is now a business division within Microsoft, which presumably will integrate with its own offerings, including Lync, Outlook and Xbox.

T= Tulalip. The internal code name for what now known as So.cl, Microsoft’s experimental social network and search site for students, revealed in December. The Tulalip Tribes were not happy about it, saying that the name infringed on the tribes’ name. Microsoft made an apology and even dropped the code name.

U= University Village Microsoft Store. In October, the company launched its U-Village retail store – its 12th nationwide and second in the Seattle area. In the closing accounts, the company had 14 Microsoft Stores, with plans to get to 75 in the next coming three years.

V= VMware. The Redmond software giant’s contender was the subject of a Microsoft takeoff video characterizing VMware’s prominence on virtualization as stuck in the past.

W= Windows 8. As we already had the first taste of the re-imagined operating system and now the Windows 8 beta release date is expected in February for a beta test. Windows 8 is Microsoft’s ever Windows version that has been intended from the beginning to work on both Tablets and Pcs. Moreover, it is the only operating system that integrates dual operating interfaces, a Metro UI and the tradition Windows Desktop Interface.

X= Xbox. The extremely successful Xbox 360 (58 million consoles sold so far) got a dashboard update in December, with elongated Kinect voice and gesture controls and the goal of bringing content from dozens of video providers to Xbox.

Y= Y chromosome: Microsoft has the maximum number of men in their worldwide offices. Men made up 76 percent of Microsoft’s global workforce last fiscal year, according to its 2011 Citizenship Report.

Z= Zune. RIP, Zune Player. In the mid of October, there were humps that the Zune HD player is not any more alive, but then Microsoft apologized saying that happened by mistake, Zune is still alive and then again with the confirmed news they finally revealed that now they will no more manufacture the Zune Players. Still, the Zune player spirit is alive in our Zune music and video service in PCs, Xbox, Windows Phone and existing Zune players.

The complete details of the Microsoft 2011 year shows that they did pretty well, but the coming year 2012 seems to be very crucial and essential with lots of hopes to outshine with their ever greatest innovation Windows 8. Wishing all our elite readers a very Happy and Prosperous New Year. Wishing lots of luck for the Microsoft to make ground-breaking entry of Windows 8 with a grand hit of Windows 8 beta in February 2012.