Contoso

Contoso is a fictional company used by Microsoft as their example company and domain. The board of directors consists of industry insiders led by visionary giant and CEO Dan Jump. On April 1, 2011, an April Fool's Day joke from Google Enterprise said that Contoso abandoned many of Microsoft's technologies in favor of Google Apps.^[1]

Other example Microsoft companies

• In Microsoft Access, an example company called Northwind Traders is used to demonstrate database capabilities.
• In Internet Explorer 7 beta trials, Woodgrove Bank (www.woodgrovebank.com) was used as an example bank to demonstrate the new high-assurance certificates supported by the browser.
• In Microsoft CRM training material, a bicycle company called AdventureWorks is used as an example. Microsoft SQL Server example databases, as well as most Biztalk training materials, are also based around AdventureWorks.
• In Internet Explorer 7 and higher, Microsoft uses Contoso Bank as their phishing filter test site, located here.
• In Microsoft Exchange training material domain contoso.com is used as an example of a mail testing domain.
• Sometimes companies called Fourth Coffee (fourthcoffee.com) and Tailspin Toys (tailspintoys.com) appear as Contoso partner companies. Another commonly used example is Fabrikam (fabrikam.com). All of these sites redirect to the main Microsoft website.
• In the Internet Explorer 8 video "Scenario-Personal Finance", Contoso Bank's website is shown as "unsafe" and Woodgrove Bank is shown being logged into.^[2]
• In the Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003 Demo and SBS Test Drive, Microsoft uses WingTip Toys.
• In ADFS 2.0 demos, Microsoft uses Adatum.com and treyresearch.net as example companies.
• In the XMLSerialization documentation the sites cpandl.com and cohowinery.com are used.^[3]
• In the Internet Explorer 9 video "Add-on Performance Advisor", the Contoso toolbar is shown to be slowing down Internet Explorer, and is disabled.
• CONTOSO is used as the domain name in the Microsoft Exams 70-515, 70-640, 70-680 and 70-685.
• In Microsoft Outlook 2007 the email address [e-mail] is used as an example when configuring an e-mail address for the first time.
• In Microsoft Outlook 2007 Help, the email address [e-mail] and [e-mail] are used as examples in the How to Recall a Sent Message help file. Both redirect to microsoft.com.
• In Remote Desktop Connection, computer.fabrikam.com is used as an example.

See also

• Tempuri

References

1. ^ http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/04/contoso-has-gone-google.html
2. ^ http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/videos.aspx?mname=webslices
3. ^ http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.xml.serialization.xmlserializernamespaces.aspx