Author: Microsoft Stories

Microsoft has launched a new update of its Azure Media Services, an audio and video streaming platform. The new update is in support for live encoding, which is now available in preview. Live encoding gives Azure users the ability to build their own live workflows with live trans-coding for multiple formats, archiving, just-in-time packaging and dynamic encryption.

Kurt DelBene is returning to Microsoft as executive vice president of corporate strategy and planning. “Kurt brings extensive background in business strategy, engineering and customer solutions, as well as a proven track record of delivering strong results in complex environments,” Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft said. “His experience at Microsoft, recent work on Healthcare.gov and work with startups here in Seattle give him a unique perspective for this new role.”

The new Windows 10 build update adds support for the Project Spartan browser, and new versions of several apps: Outlook Mail, Outlook Calendar, Phone, Messaging, People, and Maps. Users can also find an improved basic Camera app, which pulls in some of the functions from the recent Lumia Camera update.

Phones running on Windows Phone 8.1 are getting an update for the video sharing app, Vine. The update is big as it introduces a host of features previously absent on the Windows version of the app. Basic features that were available on the same application in Android and iOS are now making it to the Windows Phone platform.

Microsoft revamped the Bing.com mobile homepage for iPhone and Android smartphones with a number of enhancements. Users on iPhone and Android smartphones will notice a completely new Bing homepage optimised for mobile devices. Users will now see a new image of the day (IOTD) card which, on tapping, will reveal more information about that particular image. Microsoft has also brought the desktop’s news carousel experience to mobile.

In a tete-a-tete with Entrepreneur India, Ravi Narayan, Director, Microsoft Ventures, shares some of the clear pathways entrepreneurs should take to acquire customers. Microsoft Venture works with start-ups at every stage of maturity to provide them required tools, resources, knowledge and expertise they need to succeed. The goal is to help start-ups scale their business, bring innovative services to market, and reach new customers.

Two big announcements by Microsoft and IBM showed the world why India is now being seriously considered as a market for building local datacenters. Commenting on the potential of local datacenters, Tyler Bryson, General Manager–Marketing and Operations, Microsoft India, said, “We believe that there is a huge growth potential for cloud services and local datacenters in India. Aligned with industry predictions, Microsoft, with a diverse range of cloud offerings, is well-positioned to address this market by offering services from local datacenters.”

Office users will now have a choice of services to save their Office Online documents – either to Microsoft’s own OneDrive service, or to Dropbox cloud storage. Likewise, if you open a document within Dropbox’s Web service, you’ll now have the option to edit it within Office Online.

Microsoft has announced a move to bring all of its content into one place. This it plans to offer with its Store integration that will deliver a similar experience across devices allowing Windows 10 users to download all of their content from one place. So, in addition to the current games and apps, Microsoft’s future Store will also host movies, TV shows and music.

Microsoft Corporation and HP have built on their 30-year strategic partnership by teaming up to help organisations quickly deliver differentiated products and create new revenue through mobile, Web and social channels. This partnership enables HP’s Business Process as-a-Service (BPaaS) solutions for Microsoft Dynamics and targets the automotive, public sector and financial services industries.