Author: Microsoft Stories

Microsoft has released the first public preview of its all-new Azure Active Directory Connect tool for beta testers. The updated Azure Active Directory Connect preview is simpler and faster than the Azure AD Connect beta release. It has all the necessary tools to connect Windows Server AD and Azure AD within few minutes.

Corporate lobbyists, news organizations and academics joined forces with Microsoft Corp in the software company’s legal battle with the US government over access to customer data stored overseas. Technology companies including and AT&T Inc and even rival Apple also filed briefs supporting Microsoft’s bid to fend off a government search warrant for emails at a data center in Ireland. Microsoft began fighting the warrant in 2013, saying US prosecutors were overreaching by demanding data held in a foreign country without the assistance of local authorities.

Microsoft has officially opened a store to sell its range of hardware and software products online in India via e-commerce website Amazon. The Microsoft Brand Store on Amazon.in has product categories varying from Windows, Windows Phone, laptops & tablets, to Office, accessories and Xbox. In a statement, Microsoft said, “Consumers buying Microsoft products at the Microsoft Brand Store on Amazon.in would enjoy a number of benefits, including exclusive products across various Microsoft product categories. Consumers will also have access to unique bundles available only at the Microsoft Brand Store.”

Ravi Narayan, Director of Microsoft Ventures in India, is excited about the startup activity in India. For Microsoft Ventures, in Bangalore, there have been 63 startups that have participated in the platform over the last two years and the number is only increasing with the fifth batch graduating in November in 2014. Of the five batches, 67 per cent have raised money, the average being $575,000, and all of them have had access to over 150 mentors.

SAKRI IT Solutions, a Pune based value added distribution company has collaborated with Microsoft and Intel to launch Windows based tablets powered by Intel Processors in India, Malaysia and Bangladesh under the brand name “WINTAB”. Ravi Lakshman, CEO, SAKRI is very upbeat on this new venture. SAKRI will be working exclusively on the Windows platform with Intel Processor based devices and intend to be market leaders in this domain. SAKRI will be augmenting its strengths in the retail, e-commerce and SME segment by working with various ISVs to enhance their offering capabilities to cater retail, BFSI and education sector.

With the Indian Real Estate market in general, and the Bengaluru market specifically, poised for growth, Metadata Technologies, a leading provider of Microsoft Dynamics customer relation management (CRM) solutions and services in India and the Middle East, announced the global launch of its new generation Online Real Estate CRM solution ‘Property-xRM’ built on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform.

Microsoft plans to open-source the framework that helps developers of cloud services such as those behind the popular Halo 4 game. Building cloud services for millions of users means connecting and coordinating thousands of servers, and handling tasks and information across all of them. Project Orleans is a framework built by the eXtreme Computing Group at Microsoft Research using .NET, designed so developers who aren’t distributed systems experts can build cloud services that scale to cope with high demand and still keep high performance.

Microsoft announced a new step toward real-time translation, launching a Spanish-English test program using its Skype messaging service. “Today, we are excited to announce the first phase of the Skype Translator preview program,” said Microsoft’s Gurdeep Pall. “The preview program will kick off with two spoken languages, Spanish and English. Skype Translator will open up endless possibilities for people around the world to connect, communicate and collaborate; people will no longer be hindered by geography and language.”

Microsoft has just pushed a major update to its Azure Cloud Services. The update brings new changes to Azure Premium Storage, Azure SQL Database and Azure Active Directory, and much more. This includes improvement in Azure Active directory and general availability of Azure RemoteApp. Companies can now give corporate resources access to their employees with Azure Active Directory.

Microsoft Ventures India is looking to take its JumpStart start-up helpline to the next level by building it up as an outbound call engine that could be used by entrepreneurs to generate business leads. Rajinish Menon, Director, Startups at Microsoft Ventures India, said, “As a pilot, we will offer startups from the accelerator batches access to the outbound engine. We are open to integrating the service with some of the citizenship services offered by governments where JumpStart professionals can answer entrepreneurship questions.”