In the News

Microsoft India Chairman Bhaskar Pramanik said the company is piloting a similar facility in India as well, with plans to expand in the near future.”I think cybersecurity is going to become very, very critical,” said Pramanik. “We’ve just opened a cybersecurity centre here [in Gurgaon], it’s a pilot, and we will be announcing something much bigger later on. This cybersecurity centre is focused on how do we ensure that we can protect India’s critical infrastructure, enterprises, government organisations from malware and any other kind of security threat.”

Microsoft has reached an understanding with the Andhra Pradesh government to partner in fields of education, citizen services and agriculture after the software giant’s CEO Satya Nadella met chief minister Chandrababu Naidu. Nadella who is on a low-key personal visit to the city is also scheduled to visit startup incubator T-hub, which is an initiative of the Telangana government.

Microsoft is betting big on its cloud offering through localised data centers, hoping to get a large pie from the government’s ambitious Digital India initiative and ecommerce firms. The government has been asking multinational firms to host data locally to ward off security issues. Microsoft India Chairman Bhaskar Pramanik said, “The availability of Microsoft cloud services through local data centres has the potential to make Digital India a reality.”

Microsoft has reached an understanding with the Andhra Pradesh government to partner in fields of education, citizen services and agriculture after the software giant’s CEO Satya Nadella met chief minister Chandrababu Naidu. Nadella who is on a low-key personal visit to the city is also scheduled to visit startup incubator T-hub, which is an initiative of the Telangana government.

Microsoft has revealed that it is taking a tougher stance on ad-supported software that utilize man-in-the-middle (MiTM) techniques to intercept the network communication between the Internet and the PC to inject advertisements and promotions. The company announced that every advertising-based software needs to use the browser’s official supported methods for installation, execution, disabling and removal. Microsoft has pointed out that this can be fixed, if any unofficial route to control and change the browser settings is stopped.

Zayo Group Holdings, Inc., is now providing dedicated, high-performance connectivity to Office 365 through Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute. As an Azure ExpressRoute partner, it enables dedicated bandwidth up to 10G to ExpressRoute ports, with direct connections to Microsoft Azure and Office 365. Zayo’s dedicated ExpressRoute connections provide customers with inherent security, predictable network performance, and the capability to better manage network capacity and costs.

Black Ops 3 will be receiving its first major DLC pack Awakening. The new game comes with four new maps for multiplayer and the first episode of Der Eisendrache, a new Zombies campaign set during World War II and features Richtofen, Nicolai, Takeo, and Dempsey as playable characters. The Awakening DLC is expected to release in March 2016 for Xbox One and Xbox 360 consoles.

Rise of the Tomb Raider, the second chapter in a third-person video game series now has a playable demo for the Xbox One. It is a timed-exclusive on Microsoft’s console systems for the Xbox One and Xbox 360. Rise of the Tomb Raider, released in November 2015 for the Xbox ecosystem, is currently available for Rs. 3,000 owing to Microsoft’s end of the year sale for Xbox.

Snapdeal, in collaboration with Microsoft India, organized a two-day Hackathon that saw engineers jointly identify real-life business needs, develop technology concepts and in-house solutions. Continuous coding led to the development of winning ideas like dynamic machine-based personal assistant for sellers and message-based listing modifiers to ease the online selling process. Mr. Harish Vaidyanathan, ‎Lead – ISV Business at Microsoft India, said, “Technology is changing the face of the ecommerce industry in India. Omni-channel retailing is the new norm in the industry and powered by Cloud technologies, sellers are focusing on delivering differentiated customer experiences.”

Microsoft has acquired Talko, a second startup founded by entrepreneur Ray Ozzie. A mobile messaging app that was launched in fall 2014, Talko will join Skype. Talko’s dozen employees, who are in Boston, Seattle and San Francisco, will join Microsoft’s Skype team, without Ozzie. The idea behind the app, with voice, text and conferencing features, was to make it easier for teams “on-the-go” to communicate effortlessly with each other.