From work on improved databases for the Department of Homeland Security to the development of prototype operating systems that can exploit multi-core processors, Microsoft Research is quietly prepping a host of cutting-edge technologies likely to find their way in one form or another into the company's products in the near future.
"Every single Microsoft product has research technology in it," said Kevin Schofield, Microsoft Research's general manager of strategy and communications. A computer scientist himself—he holds two patents and is on an advisory council at Virginia Polytechnic Institute—Schofield facilitates the company's technology transfer process. That's brought the fruits of his labs' efforts to market in everything from the familiar grammar checker used in Office 97 to the more cutting edge Web-scouring technology applied in MSN Search.
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