Jonathan Eustace SMC lead at Microsoft is a technology enthusiast, who leads the Small Midmarket & Corporate team at Microsoft. He has 15 years of experience in business operations, channel sales management, enterprise software sales and cloud computing. He is focused on helping customers and partners drive innovation and impact with the Microsoft Cloud and help them unlock the potential business value that the era of AI represents.
Microsoft came to Ireland in 1985, like many other companies Microsoft has evolved significantly during that time. Microsoft would have started out in Ireland as a manufacturing business years ago, but now have a co-location of operations, sales, product engineering, product development as well as data-centre footprint.
This makes Microsoft Ireland a unique location for the company outside of the US. This is an indication of the confidence that Microsoft has in the Irish ecosystem, both in terms of the suppliers that feed into that and the talent that is here. Microsoft now has over 3,500 employees in Ireland, a figure that has grown significantly over the last 10-15 years and hopefully will continue to go from strength to strength.
Microsoft has become a company that provides a platform for their customers to drive innovation. Microsoft’s mission statement is ‘to empower every person and organisation on the planet to achieve more’. It’s really giving people the tools they need to achieve more, whether in their personal life or in their professional life. That builds on the earlier mission statement of having a ‘PC on every desk and in every home’.
Community Investment
Historically, Microsoft employees in Ireland would have been involved with globalisation services. Nowadays there are teams of employees working on security and AI (Co-pilot).
'Skilling’ is a big area Microsoft has invested in to provide people with the skills they need in the workforce. ‘Dreamspace’ is Microsoft's flagship offering in the STEM space which started when they invested in a new building to be a physical presence where they could bring students in and give them that first experience of STEM skills. Over 130,000 students have now engaged with that programme and in October 2022 Microsoft announced investment of a further €3m to try to reach all the 1 million students who will be on stream in the coming years.
Microsoft also does a lot in the community by supporting charities such as Laura Lynn, Microsoft has raised over €1 million for Laura Lynn over the past decade. Another partnership is with Simon Community. Throughout the year employees contribute donations and provide hundreds of hours of volunteering to help support the work undertaken by the Simon Community.
Commitment to Sustainability
In the area of sustainability, Microsoft, has committed to be carbon negative, zero waste and water positive by 2030. By 2050 they plan to remove all the carbon that Microsoft has produced through electrical consumption since it was founded.
By 2030 it is estimated that 80% of Ireland’s electricity will be generated by various types of renewable energy so there is a good commonality there between that level of renewable energy produced nationally and Microsofts ambitions.
What it means to be a member of Guaranteed Irish
Microsoft has always been very invested in Ireland and has tried to provide support to a lot of Irish businesses, our membership of Guaranteed Irish is an extension of that. We are very proud of our footprint in Ireland and we work very closely with a number of members of the Irish Guaranteed Irish network. Membership has been a very positive thing for us.