Author: Microsoft Stories

Tech giants Amazon.com and Microsoft, as well as other firms that rent out computing power and storage, are rapidly becoming some of the biggest spenders in the corporate world, as they lay down the bases for a future in the cloud. These companies are spending billions in acquiring or leasing the data centers that embody the cloud and employing thousands of engineers that operate the new technology.

Gridstore, the leader in hyper-converged all flash infrastructure, announced its next ‘Fast Track Your VMware Tax Refund’ webinar to explore the myriad challenges faced by IT professionals today. The webinar will be hosted on May 5th, 2016 by industry guru and Microsoft MVP, Dave Kawula, one of the industry’s leading experts on the how to reap the full benefits of migrating from VMware to Hyper-V.

The Cloud Platform Microsoft Partner competency highlights Microsoft’s continuing evolution to a Cloud based company, and its focus on the global Microsoft Azure Cloud Platform. SaaSplaza is currently implementing Microsoft Dynamics solutions using eight Microsoft Azure centers. SaaSplaza has also held the Microsoft Gold Hosting competency for many years. In combination with the new Gold Cloud Platform competency, this demonstrates deep ability and commitment to the Microsoft Cloud ecosystem and delivery of Microsoft Dynamics SaaS (Software-as-a-Service).

Beyondsoft announced its inclusion in Microsoft’s Power BI Red Carpet program. Microsoft designed their Power BI Suite to bring business data to life in order for organizations of all sizes to better understand the patterns and trends in their business operations in real-time. The red carpet program enables selected partners to grow their data practices through an accelerated development of solutions and services based upon Microsoft Power BI.

Mesosphere, the container orchestration company, has issued as open source code its Data Center Operating System (DC/OS). This also marks the formation of an alliance behind DC/OS that includes Microsoft, HP Enterprise, and Cisco, along with 57 other companies. Mark Russinovich, Azure CTO, wrote, “Microsoft selected DC/OS for the Azure Container Service so our customers can easily build, deploy and manage modern applications on…Azure, as well as in private and hybrid cloud environments.”

As many as three Indian-origin persons have been named among 100 highest-paid chief executive officers (CEOs) globally with PepsiCo’s Indra Nooyi and Lyondell-Basell’s Bhavesh Patel making it to the top ten list compiled by Equilar. Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, was ranked 26th on the list of 100 highest-paid CEOs with a total compensation of $18.3 million.

Earlier in the month, Microsoft revealed that it is testing a new wireless chip for the Xbox One for FCC approval. At the time it was speculated that this could be for a slimmed down version of the Xbox One or a new iteration. A report on Thurrot.com lends credence to this discovery, along with another more recent one that states the Xbox One Slim, or Xbox One II as its being nicknamed, has been in mass production since February 2016.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella gave a keynote speech at Hannover Messe, a vital conference for industrial technology, and talked about his vision for the next generation of technology. His vision is that of the Internet of Things, where all kinds of inanimate things become connected and smart. Nadella said, “The very thing that you produce, that you manufacture, for the first time is connected to the web of activity around it. It’s not just the connection with everything, it’s the ability to reason about that activity, that data that’s being generated, continuously.”

Microsoft artificial intelligence guru, Eric Horvitz, has received another award for making computers smarter. Horvitz, Managing Director of Microsoft’s Redmond research lab, received the prestigious ACM — AAAI Allen Newell award for his work building tools that help computers better understand and react to human intent.

Microsoft Corporation and Funai Electric Co. Ltd., announced their successful partnership with the renewal of a patent cross-licensing agreement covering a range of consumer audio-video products. Nick Psyhogeos, President, Microsoft Technology Licensing, said, “Microsoft and Funai Electric will continue to benefit from each other’s innovations in building enhanced experiences for our customers. This cross-licensing agreement is another example of the advantages of an IP-led economy, encouraging product interoperability and accelerating research and development advances across companies.”