In the News

Microsoft announced set of updates to its OneDrive for Business product that will make it a more appealing option for companies looking to store files in the cloud. The first big change is a next-generation sync client that’s available as an invite-only beta and brings a bunch of new features users have been waiting for.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is scheduled to make a short trip to India in the first week of November to speak at an event being organised by the American technology company in Mumbai for its customers, partners and developers. Nadella, who will speak at the event titled ‘Future Unleashed’ and meet key Microsoft customers on the sidelines of the event.

Microsoft is moving fast to add new features and services to its Azure cloud platform. At the recently held AzureCon event, the company announced an array of features and enhancements that makes Azure more attractive for enterprises. This includes Azure Security Center, Azure File Storage, and many more.

In a first, Microsoft is now integrating Cortana with LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network. Cortana users can connect their LinkedIn account by simply tapping on connected accounts. Once connected, Cortana can show LinkedIn information while reminding about calendar appointments.

Microsoft has introduced two nifty features to Outlook on the Web – Like and @Mentions. The new tools, inspired from Facebook and Twitter respectively, are meant to increase user participation on email threads and to highlight important mails. Microsoft has already started rolling out the Like feature to Office 365 First Release customers whose Office 365 plan includes Exchange Online.

After announcing the opening of three data centres in India, Microsoft says the time is ripe now for the Indian government to formulate a clear policy for public cloud services. “Till now, government held the view that it will not be on public cloud due to the fact that data goes outside the country. Now that we have local data centres, what is required is a clear policy environment by the government on the use of public cloud by government agencies,” said Karan Bajwa, Managing Director, Microsoft India

Debuted at Microsoft’s AzureCon virtual event, the Azure Container Service, which will be available for preview by the end of the year, is an open source container scheduling and orchestration service that builds on Microsoft’s partnerships with both Docker and Mesosphere. The service leverages Docker and Apache Mesos to deliver an open source environment for running container workloads.”Container technologies are changing the way apps are built, deployed and run,” said Jason Zander, Corporate Vice President for Azure.

The Apple CEO sat down for a fireside chat with Box CEO Aaron Levie at the BoxWorks conference. He said, that Apple can’t go into the enterprise market alone, and that partnerships with enterprise software companies were pivotal. The CEO mentioned Apple’s recent partnerships with IBM, Cisco, Microsoft and Box as ways to tap into the “deep vertical knowledge” and expertise required to make business-specific apps for different industries. “Apple and Microsoft still compete, but we can partner on more things than we compete on. And that’s what customers want.”

Tata Communications said it has teamed up with Microsoft Corporation to boost employee productivity and streamline business processes with cloud- based communication and collaboration. The telecommunications and internet service provider arm of the Tata Group said the partnership aims to connect businesses to ‘Office 365’, a group of software plus services subscriptions by Microsoft that provides productivity software and related services to its subscribers.

Microsoft Corp joined Amazon.com Inc and Intel Corp in tweaking the way it reports results, a move that will help the software giant show off its growing cloud and mobile businesses. Microsoft said it will report revenue and operating income based on three businesses – Productivity and Business Processes, Intelligent Cloud, and More Personal Computing starting this quarter.“This reporting structure aligns the company’s goals with the way they will report it to the Street,” FBR & Co analyst Daniel Ives said.