Author: Microsoft Stories

Provident Housing, a subsidiary of real estate major Puravankara Projects, has managed to increase the conversion rate of business leads it gets by around 30 per cent with the use of Microsoft’s customer relationship management (CRM) solution to support its sales, marketing and customer management functions.

Microsoft has released a firmware update to tackle touchscreen issues of Lumia 535 and the update is currently rolling out to selected countries. Apart from the fixes, the firmware update brings Cortana to a number of new countries and comes with stability and performance improvements as well.

The Indian government is exploring the use of third-party cloud data centres with companies such as Microsoft to form the backbone of its Digital India initiative, as it increasingly adopts cloud technology for faster delivery and looks to reduce hardware procurement costs. “There are some state-owned enterprises that are quite open to having a dialogue on using Office 365 on the public cloud,” said Sanjay Manchanda, Director, Office 365, Microsoft.

Microsoft’s Lumia Denim update for Windows Phone 8.1 made its way to India where it’s hitting the Lumia 520 and Lumia 525 units. According to the company, the update will bring a faster and more intuitive Lumia Camera app, which will shorten the time needed between shots. Denim will combine apps into folders, merge messages for forwarding and replies in the messages app and improvements such as a Store Live Tile and a consumer VPN function.

Microsoft Mobile Devices has invited young people across the country to capture the essence of India as part of its new campaign, ‘Romancing India with Lumia 535’. “Equipped with a 5MP wide-angle front camera, the Lumia 535 is the perfect companion to translate iconic spots across the country into picture perfect stories through selfies,” said Raghuvesh Sarup, Director – Marketing, Nokia India Sales. Actor Nargis Fakhri launched the campaign by taking the first selfie in New Delhi.

Microsoft’s search engine Bing has predicted which people, products and trends will win in 2015. Microsoft compiled its predictions across eight categories that include awards, designers, fashion, food, football, technology, travel, and wearables and in each, Bing picked the top ten winners, some of which varied by geographical regions. Bing had earlier predicted the winners of the 2014 World Cup correctly.

Microsoft’s Xim photo-sharing app, which was launched in October this year for Android, iOS and Windows Phone, has now been updated with new sharing features. Getting bumped up to version 1.3 from 1.0, the Xim app now includes the ability to share photos on big screens, such as televisions, via a variety of streaming media devices that include Chromecast, Apple TV, Xbox One and Amazon Fire TV.

Iron.io is pleased to offer IronWorker as an Application Service within the Azure Marketplace, providing a key infrastructure component that gives developers immediate access to highly scalable event-driven computing services. “Through our expansive ecosystem, we are providing customers with the solutions they need to deploy their critical applications seamlessly in the cloud and create hybrid connections with on-premises,” said Corey Sanders, Director, Program Management, Microsoft Azure.

Pricol, an auto component manufacturer for leading automobile brands, has deployed Microsoft Office 365 to secure its IP and sensitive data. Pravin Kumar Sadavisam, Group Chief Information Technology Officer (CITO), Pricol said: “Office 365 has addressed our concerns around reliability and security of our critical IP.” Tyler Bryson, General Manager- Marketing & Operations, Microsoft India explains: “By encrypting and applying intelligent policies, Office 365 secures data at all points – on-premise, in the cloud or in transit.”

Cloud computing has ushered in a new era of computing. They allow users to access data and programs over the Internet, through a cloud-based application platform. Among the many offerings out there, Microsoft’s Azure platform boasts of many excellent features.