Speaking earlier this week on KUOW-FM in Seattle, Microsoft's Frank Shaw addressed ongoing questions about the company's prospects in part by noting that Microsoft in the past decade has expanded its collection of billion-dollar businesses -- product lines bringing in at least $1 billion in annual revenue -- from three to eleven.

"So in 10 years we’ve grown eight new billion-dollar businesses," Shaw said, adding that it "shows what we’re capable of doing."

For the record, the first three billion-dollar businesses were Windows, Office and Windows Server. But what are the eight additions over the past decade? I had a good sense for most of them, but I was stumped on a couple, so I followed up afterward and got the list. Before you continue reading, can you guess what they are?

Here you go ...

Xbox
SQL Server
System Center
Unified Communications (Exchange)
SharePoint
Developer Tools (Visual Studio)
Dynamics (ERP & CRM)
Online Advertising (display & search)

For the record, one I wasn't expecting was System Center, Microsoft's IT infrastructure server management product, which appears to be a relatively new member of Microsoft's billion-dollar club.

I ran the list by Matt Rosoff, an analyst who tracks these sorts of things for independent research firm Directions on Microsoft, who pointed out that the list underscores that Microsoft is still mostly a business-to-business company. Windows and Office include consumer components, of course, but only one other product on the list of eleven, Xbox, is sold directly to consumers. Consumers drive the online advertising business with their eyeballs and clicks, but Microsoft generates revenue from advertisers, a.k.a. businesses.

"This is kind of striking given how much the press focuses on Microsoft's consumer missteps, and shows how misleading the comparisons with Apple and Google are," Rosoff said. "The better comparisons would be with IBM, Oracle, SAP, and the like."

Of course, the list also illustrates how much room for improvement Microsoft has in its consumer businesses, which is one reason the press focuses on those areas.

If tradition holds true, it wouldn't be surprising to hear more on the topic of these billion-dollar businesses as Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and other executives make their annual pitch to Wall Street at the company's July 29 Financial Analyst Meeting, a week after its fourth quarter and fiscal year-end earnings report.