Author: Microsoft Stories

Announcing its 10th cohort of startups, Microsoft Accelerator that focuses on growth-stage startups has continued its narrative to undertake and accelerate business-to-business (B2B) or enterprise-focused startups for its four-month long accelerator program.

Microsoft launched Visual Studio 2017, an integrated development environment (IDE), supporting developers of all types of applications, for every platform, in nearly every language. “Visual Studio 2017 delivers a great cloud and mobile development experience, boosts DevOps capabilities to drive higher levels of collaboration and productivity for developers,” said Narendra Bhandari, General Manager, DX, Developer experience, Microsoft India.

Microsoft announced Teams back in November, but so far it’s been limited to a fairly small batch of preview users. On March 14, at 8:30AM PT, Microsoft will host an online event marking general availability for Office 365 users, where users can expect the company to show off how to use some of Teams’ best features, and perhaps even some new integrations they haven’t seen yet.

Pluralsight, the technology learning platform, announced it is partnering with Microsoft to upskill Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 developers. “A key part to our vision of ‘Any Developer, Any App, Any Platform’ is helping our Visual Studio subscribers and Dev Essentials members stay on the leading edge of innovations in app development technology,” said Shawn Nandi, Senior Director, Cloud App Dev and Data Marketing for Microsoft Corp.

Acadian Asset Management, the Boston-based quantitative firm that manages $77 billion, struck a deal with Microsoft Corp. to use its Bing Predicts big data technology to inform its investment decisions. Acadian said it’s the first investment firm to use Bing Predicts, a machine-learning project that mines internet search and social-media data for factors to try to forecast events like a corporation’s quarterly results.

Nearly two decades after it launched its first car, the Indica, Tata Motors took a big leap of faith and technology, unveiling a two-seater sports coupe at the Geneva International Motor Show. “Meant for the risk-taking, adventure-loving, digitally native, mobile-first technophiles of India, the RaceMo is also India’s first connected car. It will bring alive connected car features such as advanced navigation, predictive maintenance, remote monitoring and over-the-air updates using Microsoft cloud-based technologies including advanced analytics, Internet of thing and machine learning powered by Microsoft Azure,” the company said in a statement.

Microsoft announced a partnership with Steelcase, a 105-year-old office furniture and design company, to show off its vision of futuristic office spaces where productivity and creativity go hand and hand. Naturally, they’re all powered by Surface devices.

For people who love Windows 10, and some crisp downloads, Microsoft has a good news for you. This comes with Microsoft’s recently announced Unified Update Platform, which has been rolling out to Windows Insiders since November, and will be available to all retail users starting with the release of the Creators Update coming this year.