Author: Microsoft Stories

Vodafone Business Services (VBS), the enterprise arm of Vodafone India, has tied up with Microsoft as a cloud service partner. As part of this tie-up, VBS will offer Office 365 to Indian businesses to give them enterprise-grade productivity and collaboration services. “We are excited to have Vodafone Business Services as a Cloud Partner. Our tie-up will give Indian enterprises of all sizes affordable access to Microsoft’s suite of collaboration and productivity services – across devices, anywhere, anytime, and worry-free,” said Microsoft’s Marketing and Operations General Manager Meetul Patel.

Microsoft and Google want to make it clear that their email services, Outlook, Hotmail and Gmail, are safe from U.S. government spies. The two companies issued the following statements to CNBC, following a Reuters report revealing that Internet giant Yahoo secretly scanned customer emails for U.S. intelligence officials, according to reporter Joseph Menn’s sources. “We have never engaged in the secret scanning of email traffic like what has been reported about Yahoo,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in an emailed response to CNBC.

In a new report on the state of the Mexican gaming market, The Competitive Intelligence Unit shared data, revealed that the Xbox brand totally and utterly dominates in the North American nation. Not only that, but it seems as though even Nintendo is a stronger presence in Mexico than PlayStation, with only the Wii U’s poor performance keeping Sony ahead for now. Xbox leads with 57.9% market share in the country, with the lion’s share of this going to Xbox 360, which has 39.8% of the sales in the country. The Wii and the Xbox One both follow with 12% market share each, while the PS3 comes in at 10.5%.

In a bid to develop one of the world’s largest industrial cloud platforms, Swiss engineering giant ABB and Microsoft announced a strategic partnership to help industrial customers create new value with digital solutions. “Together with ABB, we are providing industrial customers with the digital technology and cloud platform to empower every person, team and business system within an organization to glean new insights and drive faster decision-making to seize new growth and opportunities,” said Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft.

India has become one of the fastest growing markets for technology companies. The development is seen as a reflection of both, the country’s good GDP growth (relative to that of other countries) and the increasing desire among Indian businesses and the government to adopt new technologies. Microsoft India Chairman Bhaskar Pramanik said 52 of the top 100 Indian companies listed on the BSE today use the Microsoft cloud. Cloud adopters include HDFC, Bank of Baroda, Axis Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Fortis Healthcare, Apollo Hospitals and Narayana Health. Pramanik said e-commerce pioneers Paytm, JustDial and Snapdeal are using its machine learning technologies and digital assistant Cortana.

Google has been looking at getting corporates to use Gmail, Google Drive, Google Docs, Hangouts and its cloud platform. And the push on Google-Apps-For-Work, rebranded as G-Suite last week, has been particularly strong in India. One look at the worldwide market, and it’s clear that Microsoft is a viable competitor in most markets but definitely in India. The corporate DNA is something established players like Microsoft and IBM are highlighting in their pitch to customers. Analysts say the competitive landscape will likely shift next year, as they expect Apple enter the fray.

Microsoft and Google want to make it clear that their email services, Outlook, Hotmail and Gmail, are safe from U.S. government spies. The two companies issued the following statements to CNBC, following a Reuters report revealing that Internet giant Yahoo secretly scanned customer emails for U.S. intelligence officials, according to reporter Joseph Menn’s sources. “We have never engaged in the secret scanning of email traffic like what has been reported about Yahoo,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in an emailed response to CNBC.

Final Fantasy 15 has been for the PS4 version of the game. The game’s poor performance on Xbox with the Episode Duscae demo release last year, probably prompted fears that the Xbox version of the game may be a far less optimized experience. In a recent Twitchcon stream, the Xbox One version of the game was shown off, and it looks surprisingly great. The game seems to be running on Microsoft’s console with little to no hitches. It doesn’t seem like there was any reason to hide the Xbox One footage at all.

Insomniac Games’ Sunset Overdrive is one of the best Xbox One exclusives available. Thanks to Microsoft being its publisher, it will be staying on the platform for a good long time. Insomniac Games is certainly interested and stated numerous times that it would like to release a PC version. Microsoft likes the game but a spokesperson told GameSpot that it has no news on whether a PC version will happen.