Author: Microsoft Stories

Microsoft has made the highest number of offers at IIT Kharagpur till December 2, the second day of the ongoing placements season. The American technology company has made about 27 of the total 370 offers made so far at the institute.

Microsoft is offering $75,000 in grants to for-profit businesses that can develop low cost connectivity solutions, cloud based solutions and business models that bring the Internet to underserved markets. As examples of initiatives already live, Microsoft points towards a number of initiatives, including a service in Bhutan which uses white-spaces spectrum to deliver e-Health. Microsoft is looking to partner with Internet access providers and public and private sector entities for enabling this.

Since he took over at the head of Microsoft in 2014, replacing Steve Ballmer, Satya Nadella has shown himself to be a man of change, encouraging creativity and reactivity in all Microsoft’s businesses. Under his leadership, the company has begun innovating again, seeking out new challenges, including offering a multi-platform operating system, getting involved in virtual reality, and manufacturing its very first in-house laptop.

Black Friday sales of the Xbox One were quite impressive, according to Microsoft. The company is pointing to a number of different deals that were offered during the biggest shopping day of the year including some bundles that saw the console fly off the shelves. Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg stated that the Black Friday sales were really strong.

Xiaomi has been showing a lot of interest in the Windows platform since the recently announced Mi Pad 2 that will come both as an Android and Windows 10 versions. The Windows version of the Mi Pad 2 comes only in a 64GB spec and will cost US$ 205 (approximately Rs 13,600). Xiaomi’s Founder and President, Lin Bin posted an image on Weibo suggesting the Windows 10 for Xiaomi Mi4 will be officially launched on December 3rd.

Companies that want almost all of the new features Microsoft is cramming into its Office 365 productivity service can now get them via a new subscription. Office 365 E5 costs $35 per user per month, and includes a smorgasbord of new features. Chief among them are new capabilities in Skype for Business, including the ability to broadcast teleconference meetings to thousands of employees and allow people to call into a group teleconference managed by Microsoft’s software.

Microsoft on Monday unveiled its first two Lumia devices — Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL — with Windows 10 OS. Targeted mostly at working professionals, both devices come with Iris recognition technology, and are priced at Rs 43,699 and Rs 49,399, respectively. Both devices impress, and pose a challenge for its competitors. The Lumia 950 runs on 64-bit Qualcomm 808 SoC with hexagcore CPUs, features a 5-inch quadHD AMOLED display, and is powered by a replaceable 3,000mAH battery (another plus), which Microsoft claims should give 10 hours of 1080p video playback.

The Xbox One Elite Controller which launched on October 27th along with Halo 5: Guardians has been in pretty serious demand lately. According to Xbox division boss Phil Spencer, the company is working on getting more devices into stock. The Xbox One Elite Controller promises a high degree of customization, including changeable analog pads and thumbsticks, button remapping (which is available for all Xbox One controllers with a recent update) and much more.

Microsoft offered a peek at the next Dynamics CRM earlier this month. “As the new leader of Microsoft’s CRM Business Applications group, it is my great honor and privilege to announce that Dynamics CRM 2016 is now available,” wrote Jujhar Singh in a blog post.

Microsoft just unveiled a new beta service on Monday that’s supposed to help ease that tension by allowing anyone to build an app — no software development experience required. PowerApps combines a cloud application backend with easy-to-use tools that make creating a mobile app a drag-and-drop affair. PowerApps applications can pull in information from a variety of data sources including Office 365, Dynamics, Google Drive, Workday and other services. Developers can also build connections for PowerApps in their own services if there isn’t a connector already available.