In the 10 years since Microsoft Research Cambridge was inaugurated, the lab has made many significant contributions to Microsoft products. A sampling of the most important:

SYSTEMS CENTER CAPACITY PLANNER

Key contributors: Stathis Papaesthathiou, Jonathan Hardwick.

The Microsoft System Center Capacity Planner (SCCP) helps size and plan deployments of Microsoft Exchange Server and System Center Operations Manager using Microsoft Research Cambridge's Indy performance-modeling technology. It provides tools and guidance to deploy efficiently, while enabling planning via "what-if" analyses. SCCP can help with infrastructure planning and optimization, proactive performance planning, and model extensibility.

DIGITAL IMAGE SUITE

EXPRESSION®

Key contributors: Andrew Blake, Michel Gangnet, Vladimir Kolmogorov, Patrick Perez.

PatchWorks,Blender, and GrabCut, technologies from Microsoft Research Cambridge's i3l computer-vision work, are based on computer-vision algorithms for interactive graphics. PatchWorks uses non-parametric texture models to remove objects from images, replacing missing material with texture synthesized from the remainder of the image. Blender adapts the “retinex” theory of color perception to perform seamless cloning, and added material is blended into an image by adding gradients of color that are sufficiently gentle to be largely imperceptible to the human eye. GrabCut uses Markov Random Field optimization to lift objects effortlessly from an image to be pasted into a new environment.

WINDOWS LIVE™ SEARCH

OFFICE 2007 SHAREPOINT®

Key contributors: Nick Craswell, Michael Taylor, Stephen Robertson.

Microsoft Research Cambridge developed the BM25F search relevance-ranking algorithm specifically for SharePoint and helped to develop a series of search features and methods, as well as helping create a test set of queries and relevance judgments. The lab provided the methods used to optimize the free parameters of the ranking algorithm. This was based on the optimizer developed by Microsoft Research Redmond for Windows Live but required development to be suitable for SharePoint. The BM25F algorithm also was incorporated into Windows Live Search, immediately becoming that product's most important feature. Craswell is serving as an applied researcher for the Live Search team, generating a continuing stream of ideas in both directions. Several recent and forthcoming innovations in Live Search arise directly from work initiated in Cambridge.

FORZA MOTORSPORT™

Key contributors:Ralf Herbrich, Michael Tipping, Mark Hatton.

Drivatar™ technology is at the heart of all the computer opponents in Forza Motorsport and is the basis for the novel Train Drivatar feature in the game. The technology behind the Drivatar concept is exploited within the game as an innovative new “learning” game feature that enables a user to create a unique artificial-intelligence-based driver and as the underlying model for all the artificial-intelligence competitors in the Arcade and Career modes.

XBOX LIVE®

Key contributors: Ralf Herbrich, Thore Graepel.

The TrueSkill™ ranking system is an Xbox Live skill-based ranking system developed at Microsoft Research Cambridge. The purpose of a ranking system is to identify and track the skills of gamers in a game in order to match them competitively. TrueSkill uses only the final standings of all teams in a game to update the skill estimates of all participating gamers.

WINDOWS VISTA® NETWORK MAP

Key contributors: Richard Black, Austin Donnelly, Dinan Gunawardena, Cédric Fournet.

The Link Layer Topology Discovery technology, developed by Microsoft Research Cambridge and incorporated in the network map of Windows Vista, provides automatic discovery of all of the computers, switches, and hubs in a network. The network map is designed for home and small-office networks that typically don't have expensive managed network switches.

VISUAL STUDIO®

VISUAL C++®

VISUAL C#®

VISUAL BASIC®

SILVERLIGHT™

LINQ

SQL SERVER™

Key contributors: Don Syme, Andrew Kennedy, Claudio Russo.

Generics, developed by Microsoft Research Cambridge, is an extension to the .NET Common Language Runtime that enables object-oriented code to be annotated with parameters that indicate how the code can be reused in different ways. Generics has been incorporated into several Microsoft products.

WINDOWS VISTA WINDOWS COMMUNICATIONS FOUNDATION

.NET FRAMEWORK WEB SERVICES ENHANCEMENTS

VISUAL STUDIO 2007 WEB SERVICE SOFTWARE FACTORY

Key contributors: Karthik Bhargavan, Cédric Fournet, Andy Gordon, Greg O'Shea.

The Samoa project from Microsoft Research Cambridge developed formal theorem-proving tools for analyzing the security of Web-services specifications, implementations, and deployments. These efforts led to the elimination of various security problems in the Web Services Enhancements (WSE) of the .NET Framework and the Windows Communications Foundation (WCF) of Windows Vista. Based on a formal analysis, the lab devised a set of checks to perform on WSE configuration files to warn about potential vulnerabilities and to suggest countermeasures. Several versions of a tool were developed to run these checks, including one that ships in version 3.0 of WSE. The Patterns and Practice Group ported the Microsoft Research Cambridge rules to run with WCF and included them in the Web Service Software Factory of Visual Studio 2007.

MICROSOFT INK ANALYSIS AND INPUT SUPPLEMENT FOR TABLET PC

Key contributors: Christopher Bishop, Markus Svensén.

Using technology from Microsoft Research Cambridge's Machine Learning and Perception group, ink strokes are passed through an engine to classify them as text, to be sent to a recognizer, or graphics, to be grouped by a subsequent engine for editing.

SOFTWARE QUALTY AND READINESS METRICS

Key contributor: Brendan Murphy.

Murphy and Nachi Nagappan, a researcher from Microsoft Research Redmond, developed a series of processes and metrics to characterize the development of Windows® 2003, Windows XP SP2, Windows 2003 SP1, and Windows Vista. The collected data models were used to identify the areas of code with the greatest risk of future defects, and these were later extended for Vista to predict the product ship date. Other models predicted the areas of code with the highest risk of security vulnerabilities, which the security group used to target security audits. A number of these processes, metrics, and models have been incorporated into Windows development processes, such as the code-churn-counter toolkit based on this research. Other groups have requested similar models to assist in their product development.

It's clear that researchers from Microsoft Research Cambridge attach a high priority in seeing their work transferred into Microsoft products.

“Our researchers have the freedom to pursue their passion and maintain their standing in the wider research community,” says Mitch Goldberg, director of Technology Transfer, Incubation and Licensing. “At the same, the reach of Microsoft products makes it possible for their research to impact millions of users. That really motivates people here, and you can't get that anywhere else.”