On the Record · Microsoft
Microsoft competitors, on the record
The companies Microsoft names as competitors in its annual reports, 2023 to 2026, and the companies that name Microsoft, each with the sentence and the filing.
Who Microsoft names
| Company | Named in |
|---|---|
| Adobe | 2023, 2024 |
| Amazon | 2023, 2024 |
| Apple | 2023, 2024 |
| BMC | 2023, 2024 |
| Cisco Systems | 2023, 2024 |
| 2023, 2024 | |
| Hewlett-Packard | 2023, 2024 |
| IBM | 2023, 2024 |
| Meta | 2023, 2024 |
| Nintendo | 2023, 2024 |
| Oracle | 2023, 2024 |
| Proofpoint | 2023, 2024 |
| Salesforce | 2023, 2024 |
| SAP | 2023, 2024 |
| Slack | 2023, 2024 |
| Snowflake | 2023, 2024 |
| Sony | 2023, 2024 |
| Symantec | 2023, 2024 |
| Tencent | 2023, 2024 |
| Zoom | 2023, 2024 |
| Anthropic | 2024 |
| Broadcom | 2024 |
| CA Technologies | 2023 |
| CrowdStrike | 2024 |
| Databricks | 2024 |
| Okta | 2023 |
| OpenAI | 2024 |
| Palo Alto Networks | 2024 |
| Service Now | 2024 |
| UI Path | 2024 |
| VMware | 2023 |
| WorkDay | 2024 |
In its own words
Adobe
Word for word“Our products for software developers compete against offerings from Adobe, IBM, Oracle, and other companies, and also against open source projects, including Eclipse (sponsored by IBM, Oracle, and SAP), PHP, and Ruby on Rails.” 10-K for 2024
Amazon, IBM, Broadcom
Word for word“Azure faces diverse competition from companies such as Amazon, Broadcom, Google, IBM, Oracle, and open source offerings.” 10-K for 2024
Apple, Cisco Systems, Google, Meta, Proofpoint, Slack, Symantec, Zoom
Word for word“Competitors to Office include software and global application vendors, such as Apple, Cisco Systems, Google, Meta, Proofpoint, Slack, Symantec, Zoom, and numerous web-based and mobile application competitors as well as local application developers.” 10-K for 2024
BMC
Word for word“Our system management solutions compete with server management and server virtualization platform providers, such as BMC, Broadcom, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM.” 10-K for 2024
Hewlett-Packard
Word for word“Vertically integrated computer manufacturers such as Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Oracle offer their own versions of the Unix operating system preinstalled on server hardware and nearly all computer manufacturers offer server hardware for the Linux operating system.” 10-K for 2024
Nintendo, Sony
Word for word“Our gaming platform competes with console platforms from Nintendo and Sony, both of which have a large, established base of customers.” 10-K for 2024
Oracle, Salesforce, SAP, Service Now, UI Path, WorkDay
Word for word“Dynamics competes with cloud-based and on-premises business solution providers such as Oracle, Salesforce, SAP, Service Now, UI Path, and WorkDay.” 10-K for 2024
Snowflake, Databricks
Word for word“Our database, business intelligence, and data warehousing solutions offerings compete with products from Databricks, IBM, Oracle, SAP, Snowflake, and other companies.” 10-K for 2024
Tencent
Word for word“Xbox and our cloud gaming services face competition from various online gaming ecosystems and game streaming services, including those operated by Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Tencent.” 10-K for 2024
Anthropic, OpenAI
Word for word“Our AI offerings compete with AI products from hyperscalers such as Amazon and Google, as well as products from other emerging competitors, including Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta, and other open source offerings, many of which are also current or potential partners.” 10-K for 2024
CA Technologies
Word for word“Commercial competitors for our server applications for PC-based distributed client-server environments include CA Technologies, IBM, and Oracle.” 10-K for 2023
CrowdStrike
Word for word“Windows faces competition from various software products and from alternative platforms and devices, mainly from Apple and Google, and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint competes with CrowdStrike on endpoint security solutions.” 10-K for 2024
Okta
Word for word“Competitors to Office include software and global application vendors, such as Apple, Cisco Systems, Meta, Google, Okta, Proofpoint, Slack, Symantec, Zoom, and numerous web-based and mobile application competitors as well as local application developers.” 10-K for 2023
Palo Alto Networks
Word for word“Our Azure Security offerings include our cloud security solution and security information and event management solution, which compete with companies such as Palo Alto Networks and Cisco.” 10-K for 2024
VMware
Word for word“Azure faces diverse competition from companies such as Amazon, Google, IBM, Oracle, VMware, and open source offerings.” 10-K for 2023
Who names Microsoft
Companies whose own annual reports name Microsoft as a competitor.
Word for word“The principal competitors in this segment include: Alphabet (Google), Amazon, BMC, Broadcom, Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, SAP and Splunk, a CISCO Company.” 10-K for 2025
Word for word“Our enterprise cloud, software and hardware offerings compete directly with certain offerings from some of the largest and most competitive companies in the world, including Adobe Systems Incorporated, Alphabet Inc., Amazon.com, Inc., Cisco Systems, Inc., Intel Corporation, International Business Machines Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, Salesforce, Inc. and SAP SE, as well as other companies like Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and Workday, Inc.” 10-K for 2026
Word for word“For example, Microsoft Corporation, Alphabet Inc., Apple Inc., Meta Platforms, Inc. and others are offering alternative means for messaging and making wireless voice calls that, in certain cases, can be used in lieu of the wireless providers' voice service, as well as alternative means of accessing video content.” 10-K for 2024
Word for word“large cloud services companies with internal teams designing hardware and software that incorporate accelerated or AI computing functionality as part of their internal solutions or platforms, such as Alibaba Group, Alphabet Inc., Amazon, Inc., or Amazon, Baidu, Inc., Huawei, and Microsoft Corporation, or Microsoft;” 10-K for 2026
Word for word“In addition to third-party software competitors, integrated video game console hardware and software companies, such as Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo, compete directly with us in the development of software titles for their respective platforms, while at the same time acting as key distribution channels and payment gateways for our products and services through their digital storefronts.” 10-K for 2022
Word for word“UCC premise and cloud: Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, Atos Unify, Cisco, 8x8, GoTo, Huawei, Microsoft, Mitel, NEC, RingCentral and Zoom.” 10-K for 2022
Word for word“Competition may also increase from large technology companies, such as Apple, Amazon (which acquired One Medical in February 2023), Facebook, Verizon, or Microsoft, who may wish to develop or expand their own telehealth solutions or partner with our other competitors, as well as from large retailers like Kroger, CVS Health Corporation (which signed a definitive agreement to acquire Oak Street Health in February 2023), Walgreens or Walmart.” 10-K for 2022
Word for word“U.S.-based internet search providers and online marketing platforms, such as Microsoft, Google and Facebook, have a strong global presence, well established brand names, more users and customers and significantly greater financial resources than we do.” 20-F for 2025
Word for word“• General business software vendors , such as Microsoft, Oracle and Salesforce.com, compete with us in certain areas of our business.” 10-K for 2025
Word for word“In the content management market, our primary competitors include, but are not limited to, Microsoft (SharePoint) and OpenText (Documentum).” 10-K for 2026
Check Point Software Technologies
Word for word“We also compete with several other companies, including Zscaler, Inc., Trellix, Trend Micro Inc., NortonLifeLock Inc., Lookout, Inc., Zimperium, Inc, CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc., SentinelOne, Inc., Sophos Group plc, Proofpoint, Inc., Broadcom, Inc., Mimecast Limited, Microsoft Corp., Netskope, Inc. and Abnormal Security Corp., with respect to specific products that we offer.” 20-F for 2025
Word for word“Our competitors (in each case relative to only some of our products or services) include: Amazon Web Services LLC; Arista Networks, Inc.; Broadcom Inc.; Ciena Corporation; CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc.; Datadog Inc.; Dell Technologies Inc.; Dynatrace Inc.; Fortinet, Inc.; Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Company; Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.; Microsoft Corporation; Nokia Corporation; Nvidia Corporation; Palo Alto Networks, Inc.; RingCentral, Inc.; Zoom Video Communications, Inc.; and Zscaler, Inc.; among others.” 10-K for 2026
Word for word“Our primary competitors for various components of and services delivered through our Workspace offering include VMware, Okta, Box, Dropbox, Amazon Web Services, or AWS, Nutanix, Ivanti, Asana, Atlassian, Monday.com, Adobe, Smartsheet, Google Cloud and Microsoft.” 10-K for 2021
Word for word“Microsoft and other cloud platform providers may furthermore introduce functionality that competes with our products and services, as a result of an acquisition or their own development.” 10-K for 2026
Word for word“These enterprises are developing and have released fully-managed data ingestion and data streaming products, such as Azure Event Hubs (Microsoft Corporation), Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka, Amazon Kinesis, and Amazon Managed Service for Apache Flink (AWS), and Google Cloud Pub/Sub, Cloud Managed Service for Apache Kafka, and BigQuery Engine for Apache Flink (Google).” 10-K for 2025
Word for word“Key competitors that offer general purpose cloud computing services as part of a broader, diversified product portfolio include Amazon (AWS), Google (Google Cloud Platform), Microsoft (Azure), and Oracle, a number of which are also our current customers.” 10-K for 2025
Word for word“Our primary competitors in the performance controller market include Microsoft and Logitech.” 10-K for 2025
Word for word“We currently compete with large, well-established companies, such as Amazon, Meta Platforms, Google, and Microsoft, pure play DSPs, such as The Trade Desk, pure play SSPs such as Magnite or PubMatic, and pure play retail SSPs such as Publicis' CitrusAd, that focus on monetizing retailers' media, as well as smaller, privately held companies such as Kevel or Koddi.” 10-K for 2025
Word for word“Accordingly, we may also compete for budget priority, to a certain extent, with other cybersecurity solutions offered by Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks, and CrowdStrike.” 20-F for 2024
Word for word“With respect to on-premise infrastructure monitoring, we compete with diversified technology companies and systems management vendors including IBM, Microsoft Corporation, and SolarWinds Corporation.” 10-K for 2025
Word for word“Certain features of our platform compete in the cloud storage market with products offered by Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Google, and Adobe and in the content collaboration market with products offered by Microsoft, Atlassian, Slack (now part of Salesforce) and Google.” 10-K for 2025
Word for word“Our competitors in this space include Salesforce.com, iPipeline, Redtail, Microsoft, SAP and Oracle.” 10-K for 2022
Word for word“In that regard, we expect to face increased competition from certain cloud computing companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google providing a cloud-based platform of data center compute and networking services for enterprise customers.” 10-K for 2026
Word for word“In addition, Amazon.com, Inc., or Amazon, Twilio Inc., or Twilio, and Microsoft, have introduced solutions aimed at companies who wish to build their own contact centers and/or contact center components with developers.” 10-K for 2025
Word for word“Our competitors include companies such as Check Point, Cisco, CrowdStrike, F5 Networks, HPE, Huawei, Microsoft, Netskope, Palo Alto Networks, SonicWALL, Sophos, and Zscaler.” 10-K for 2025
Word for word“Globally, we also compete with certain vendors, including Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft among others, for direct-to-consumer digital and physical offerings.” 10-K for 2026
Word for word“In addition, the online publishers that we utilize for clients, such as Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft, generally offer their products and services through self-service platforms.” 10-K for 2018
Word for word“Security: Our principal competitors in this segment include Apple, Bitdefender, ESET, F-Secure, Google, Kaspersky, Malwarebytes, McAfee, Microsoft, Trend Micro and Webroot.” 10-K for 2026
Word for word“With respect to both our Core Platform and A&C products and services: Wix, Squarespace, Automattic, Ionos, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Alibaba and Tencent.” 10-K for 2025
Word for word“Our primary competitors are Acer Inc., Apple Inc., ASUSTeK Computer Inc., Dell Inc., Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., Lenovo Group Limited, Logitech International S.A., Microsoft Corporation, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., and Toshiba Corporation.” 10-K for 2025
Word for word“We sometimes compete directly with publisher and manufacturer partners for many of these offerings, including Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Dell, HP Inc. and Adobe Systems.” 10-K for 2025
Word for word“Competition DCAI competitors include AMD, which utilizes the x86 architecture and competes with us across the full spectrum of CPUs, GPUs, accelerators and other products; providers of GPU systems such as NVIDIA, whose GPU systems have experienced the highest demand in the market as AI workloads have become the dominant source of compute demand; companies developing their own custom silicon, including many hyperscalers such as Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft; and both new entrants and incumbents developing ARM- and RISC-V-based products tailored to specific data center and AI workloads.” 10-K for 2025
Word for word“In addition to the competitors listed above, global players such as Amazon Web Services, Inc. and MICROSOFT CORPORATION have been aggressively expanding their business and may put additional business resources into the cloud computing business which may lead to strong competition, including price competition, in Japan.” 20-F for 2018
Word for word“Our current competitors include (among others): • large, well-established technology companies that generally compete in all of our markets, including Amazon, Google, IBM, Intel and Microsoft; • countries such as China, Russia, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and certain countries in the European Union; • less-established public and private companies with competing technology, including companies located outside the United States; and • new or emerging entrants seeking to develop competing technologies.” 10-K for 2025
Word for word“We face competition from players, such as NortonLifelock, Avast/AVG, Kaspersky, Trend Micro, ESET, and Microsoft, which expanded from desktop anti-malware into mobile, security, VPN, and identity protection among others.” 10-K for 2021
Word for word“This group of competitors includes Microsoft Corporation, Google LLC, and Slack.” 10-K for 2017
Word for word“For example, we currently directly compete with several large technology companies whose applications interface with our products, including Google and Microsoft.” 20-F for 2025
Word for word“We primarily compete with established legacy database software providers such as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and other similar companies.” 10-K for 2026
Word for word“We also compete with general purpose cloud computing providers including Amazon (AWS), Google (Google Cloud Platform), Microsoft (Azure), and Oracle.” 20-F for 2025
Word for word“Our principal competitor is Microsoft.” 10-K for 2026
Word for word“We compete with large enterprise technology providers, including International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), Microsoft Corporation (Microsoft), Oracle Corporation (Oracle) and ServiceNow, Inc. (ServiceNow), as well as with specialized software vendors such as Box, Inc., Hyland Software, Inc., Atlassian Corporation, Gen Digital Inc. and Adobe Inc.” 10-K for 2026
Word for word“Competitors vary in size, scope, and breadth of the products and services they offer and include some of the world’s largest companies, including International Business Machines Corporation (“IBM”), Microsoft Corporation, Oracle Corporation, Salesforce, SAP SE, and ServiceNow.” 10-K for 2025
Word for word“For example, Cisco, Amazon, Google and Microsoft, have developed or may develop and offer, their own data integration solutions and some of these partners are currently, and others may in the future become, competitors.” 10-K for 2022
Word for word“We also face competition from large technology companies, such as Broadcom Inc., Cisco Systems, Inc., Google Inc., Micro Focus International plc and Microsoft Corporation.” 10-K for 2020
Word for word“For our SLM products, we compete with enterprise software companies such as Oracle, SAP, IFS AB, Microsoft, and Salesforce, and with companies that offer point solutions.” 10-K for 2025
Word for word“With respect to our operating system offerings, our competitors include Microsoft, which offers a hardware-independent, multi-user operating system that has a larger, more diverse ecosystem of third-party enterprise applications than the Red Hat Enterprise Linux ecosystem.” 10-K for 2019
Word for word“Our competitors include large public companies, such as IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle that offer identity solutions within their product portfolios, and identity centric solution providers, including Palo Alto Networks (CyberArk), Okta, and One Identity.” 10-K for 2026
Word for word“Our competitors include the following: • endpoint security providers, such as CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (CrowdStrike) and Carbon Black (within Broadcom, Inc.); • legacy antivirus providers such as Trellix (formerly McAfee Corp.), Symantec (a subsidiary of Broadcom, Inc.) (Symantec), and Microsoft Corporation (Microsoft); • providers of general network security products and services who offer a broad portfolio of solutions, such as Palo Alto Networks, Inc.” 10-K for 2026
Word for word“As our business expands and the industries in which we operate continue to evolve, we compete with a broad range of solutions and alternative approaches, including: • enterprise application software vendors, both cloud-based and on-premises, such as Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Salesforce and Workday; • new technologies and entrants, including point-solutions and platform solutions, particularly those related to AI; • custom-developed and in-house solutions; • technology consulting firms; • systems integrators; and • software resellers.” 10-K for 2025
Word for word“Principal competitors include Optum, Microsoft (Nuance), Epic, Oracle (Cerner), Waystar, Athena, and a host of start-up technologies actively working to disrupt the areas of revenue cycle management and clinician productivity.” 10-K for 2025
Word for word“Microsoft, Google, Apple and other technology companies also compete with wireless carriers by offering alternative means for making wireless voice calls that, in certain cases, can be used in lieu of the wireless provider’s voice or text services, as well as alternative means of accessing video content.” 10-K for 2019
Word for word“SS&C competes with a range of technology providers including companies such as Microsoft, Pega, UiPath, Appian, and emerging agentic AI providers such as n8n and Lyzr.” 10-K for 2025
Word for word“Our current primary competitors generally fall into the following categories: • large technology companies, including suppliers of traditional business intelligence and data preparation products, and/or cloud-based offerings that provide one or more capabilities that are competitive with our products, such as Amazon.com, Inc., Google, IBM, Microsoft Corporation, Oracle Corporation, salesforce.com, inc. and SAP SE; • business analytics software companies, such as MicroStrategy, Qlik and TIBCO Spotfire (a subsidiary of TIBCO Software Inc.); and • providers of SaaS-based or cloud-based analytics products.” 10-K for 2018
Word for word“We are required to obtain licenses from certain of our competitors, including Sony and Microsoft, to develop and publish titles for their respective hardware platforms.” 10-K for 2026
Word for word“We compete for our audience against a variety of social networking platforms, messaging companies and media companies, some of which have greater financial resources, larger audiences or more established relationships with advertisers, such as Meta (including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp), Alphabet (including Google and YouTube), Microsoft (including LinkedIn), Snapchat, TikTok, Pinterest and Yahoo, or in certain regions WeChat, Kakao and Line.” 10-K for 2021
Word for word“Our Veeva Commercial Cloud, Veeva Development Cloud, and Veeva Quality Cloud applications also compete to replace client server-based legacy solutions offered by companies such as Oracle, Microsoft Corporation, and other smaller application providers.” 10-K for 2026
Word for word“Key competitors include Alvaria, Inc., Calabrio, Inc., Genesys Cloud Services, Inc., NICE Ltd., Pegasystems Inc., Qualtrics International Inc., divisions of larger companies, including Microsoft Corporation, Alphabet Inc. (Google), Amazon.com, Inc., and Salesforce, Inc., as well as many smaller companies adopting AI models to pursue the CX automation opportunity, which vary from region to region globally.” 10-K for 2025
Word for word“Competitors in the end point security space range from established solution providers such as Microsoft and Trend Micro to next-generation endpoint security providers such as CrowdStrike and SentinelOne.” 10-K for 2023
Word for word“Our principal competitors in this industry at the enterprise level include Microsoft, AT&T, Verizon, BT, ShoreTel and Google for hosted services solutions and IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Verizon Business and regional integrated 15 service vendors for professional services.” 10-K for 2016
Word for word“These vendors include, without limitation: Anaplan, Inc., ADP, Coupa Software Inc., Dayforce, Inc., Microsoft, ServiceNow, Inc., and UKG Inc.” 10-K for 2026
Word for word“Some of these competitors include Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, Epic Games, Microsoft, Nintendo, Riot Games, Roblox, SEGA, Sony, Take-Two Interactive and Ubisoft.” 10-K for 2021
Read from Microsoft’s annual reports (10-K for 2026, 10-K for 2025, 10-K for 2024, 10-K for 2023) and the financial data it files with the SEC, as of 2026-07-29. Every quotation is word for word from the filing linked beside it; how these pages are built and checked. The full record is in its company data sheet.