In the News

Microsoft Lumia 550 smartphones, running the newest Windows 10 Mobile operating system, is now receiving a new software update that seemingly comes with multiple newer aspects. Though the full list of new features is yet to be officially announced by Microsoft, Lumia 550 users can expect feature such as camera enhancements, fixing of issues related to Wi-Fi, voice-calling, GPS and Bluetooth. Also, it seems that the Double Tap to Wake will not come to the Lumia 550 with the latest update.

India is a promising growth destination for all the major cloud vendors, who are looking to leverage the USD 1.26 billion opportunity. The huge business prospects in the Indian market intensified the battle between all the major cloud vendors. With focused cloud strategy and robust channel ecosystem, Microsoft is rapidly surging in the race for leading position in the Cloud space. The software giant is eyeing an aggressive geographical expansion and plans to open new offices at 65 locations covering tier two towns across India by this financial year.

At the recent Microsoft media event that was held in Bangalore, it was cloud tech along with new emerging technologies that took the centre-stage. The event seemed all about the change and how it is no more simply a Windows-centric company. “Clearly things have changed on a different scale in the past two years. Microsoft is the only company offering solutions, strategy and tech pyramid that spans across multiple clouds, be it private, hybrid or public,” said Anil Bhansali, Managing Director, Microsoft India.

For Xbox loyalists, there is a lot to cheer about as a plethora of newer Xbox 360 backwards
compatible titles have now been confirmed to hit Xbox One consoles soon. At this point in time, the most demanded Xbox 360 backwards compatible titles are the Call of Duty increments. Now Phil Spencer, head at Microsoft’s Xbox division, has confirmed that multiple Xbox 360 titles have passed testing as far as offering the backwards compatibility on Xbox One consoles are concerned.

The Dataquest DigiGov Series in Bhopal, in association with Microsoft, carried forward the agenda “Deploying Digital Technologies to Transform Government Services’. Speaking on the occasion, Shivir Chordia, Director Marketing, Microsoft India spoke on the role and growing significance of Microsoft’s One Data Platform for various needs in the government and public sector where the requirement for a unified data platform is becoming inevitable day-by-day. Chordia ran the audience through a number of use cases and showed through his presentation how Microsoft delivers a powerful, scalable, and reliable data platform that is able to run mission critical and data intensive workloads, on premises and in the cloud.

British Telecommunications has announced BT Compute for Microsoft Azure, which is a new service that allows BT customers to order Microsoft Azure alongside BT’s own cloud services through its award winning Compute Management System (CMS) online management tool. “BT is a natural fit to provide managed cloud services on Azure. Through our relationship with BT, we’re able to help customers with their infrastructure management and give them the ability to scale their business in a consistent hybrid cloud environment,” said Aziz Benmalek, Vice President, Worldwide Cloud and Hosting Services, Microsoft.

According to Bhaskar Pramanik, Chairman, Microsoft India, the Goods and Services Tax is going to be a big challenge for a services related company like Microsoft. Changes have to be made to the landmark tax reform, he added.

Microsoft hosted a two-day event in Bengaluru and some of the prominent names present were Bhaskar Pramanik, Chairman, Microsoft India, Anil Bhansali, Managing Director, Microsoft India (R&D) and Sriram Rajamani, Managing Director, Microsoft Research India. The company is looking to create building blocks based on the current trends like the massive explosion of data, intelligence from machine learning and advanced analytics, along with the economies and agility of cloud computing to drive digital transformation in India.

Microsoft is working with device makers in India to make technology accessible to more people to help bridge the digital divide with the use of technology and bringing digital literacy. Alvaro Celis, Global Vice President, Microsoft, says, “Our approach is very much partner-led. We believe in creating the ecosystem and we work with our partners. For a lot of initiatives with the government such as education, we work very closely with our partners.”

As per a report published on Ars Technicia, Microsoft is working on new project codenamed as ‘Skype For Life’. The report, which is yet to be confirmed, claims that Microsoft is working on this project for a new client at its Redmond, Washington headquarters. Currently, there are way too many clients in the market for Skype but the new client, which the company is working with, will get all the existing Skype elements under one umbrella.