Author: Microsoft Stories

Microsoft is building on its cloud offerings with an expanded Azure Data Lake, arriving with analytics tools designed to simplify big data, and with a new query language. The Azure Data Lake Store, will store structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data without forcing application changes as data scales. Data located in the Data Lake Store can be securely shared. It is also accessible from sensors connected to the Internet of Things.

Microsoft India continued its growth momentum during the fiscal 2015 in the Indian market with a solid 19% growth. Its biggest bet is on Windows 10 which was launched in July 2015. With the changed revenue model for the Windows 10, it aims to garner significant customer interest. According to Gartner, Microsoft maintained its #1 position in software revenues in India, accounting for 25% of the overall sales in 2014. The company earned more than $1 bn from the software business alone.

The company announced that it will bring its Bitlocker encryption and Secure Boot systems to the Windows 10 IoT Core public beta in a push to improve security. Those are the same features that Microsoft uses to protect other systems running Windows 10, and it goes to show one of the advantages of the company’s new operating system: Microsoft can migrate features from one version of Windows 10 to others fairly easily, in addition to allowing developers to build applications across a range of devices using the Windows universal app platform.

Google Capital, Microsoft, Qualcomm and Baidu have taken part in a new $110 million (around 72 million, or AU$156 million) funding round for CloudFlare. First reported by Forbes, the funding round led by Fidelity gives the security startup a range of new strategic partnerships with which to extend its business beyond the 5% of all Internet requests that it processes per month.

Microsoft India today announced three new Xbox One console bundles that will launch on October 2 with pre-orders starting today on Amazon.in.The Xbox One Forza Motorsport 6 Limited Edition Console, the second is Xbox One 1TB EA Sports FIFA 16 bundle and the third is the Xbox One Gears of War: Ultimate Edition bundle. “This year, we’re delivering the greatest games lineup in Xbox history and we’re committed to delivering gamers the experiences and value they can’t find on any other platform.” said Anshu Mor, Director Interactive Entertainment Business, Microsoft India.

Microsoft Academia Accelerator, tailored for tier-I technical institutes in the country, engages both students and faculty and creates a robust environment for them to realise their dream of working with world’s top technology company. Students get to show their creative skills and sell their ideas to their dream destination even while in college due to this new initiative of Microsoft. The annual hackathon – code.fun.do – conducted in all the partner campuses is a platform for all the avid college coders to learn how to build modern, real-world applications that run on the latest Microsoft platforms.

Waste Warriors, a local NGO, launched an environmental education programme in partnership with Microsoft India today. The programme, called ‘Create to Inspire,’ has been designed to give teachers new strategies to engage students in activities related to sustainable consumption and lifestyle. The programme is being launched in eight cities across the country this month. A total of 75 schools in Dehradun have been chosen to participate in the six-month programme.

Ingram Micro Inc. announced its participation in the Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program in India. The program is designed to strengthen customer relationships and expand cloud sales by allowing channel partners to provision, bundle, invoice, manage and support Microsoft cloud offerings including Microsoft Office 365, Windows Intune, Enterprise Mobility Suite, Azure, and CRM online subscriptions with greater ease and efficiency.

Microsoft said that all users who have a subscription of Office 365, which is a cloud-based service, will get the new Office 2016 for free. Other users can purchase the new suite, which is available in 14 Indian languages and 47 languages globally, starting September 23. The Office 2016 suite comes with 1 terabyte of OneDrive cloud storage which will be soon scaled up to unlimited space, according to Alok Lall, director of Microsoft Office Division, India.

In an exclusive interview, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella emphasised on the role that technology can play in development and governance. “World class cloud technology can bring the next level of efficiency,” said Nadella highlighting the importance of cloud computing in the role that technology can play in bringing about the change. Cloud computing is one of Microsoft’s strengths.