Microsoft Corporation is an multinational technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington, that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports and sells computer software, consumer electronics and personal computers and services. Its best known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, Microsoft Office office suite, and Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface tablet lineup. As of 2011, it was the world's largest software maker by revenue, and one of the world's most valuable companies.

Symantec Corporation (commonly known as Symantec) is an American technology company headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States. The company produces software for security, storage, backup and availability - and offers professional services to support its software. Netcraft assesses Symantec (including subsidiaries) as the most-used certification authority. Symantec is a Fortune 500 company and a member of the S&P 500 stock-market index. The company also has development centers in Pune, Chennai and Bengaluru (India). On October 9, 2014, Symantec declared it would split into two independent publicly traded companies by the end of 2015. One company would focus on security, the other on information management. On January 29, 2016, the information-management business was spun-off as Veritas Technologies and sold to The Carlyle Group. The name Symantec represents a combination of the words "syntax", "semantics" and "technology".