In the News

Industry leaders welcomed the launch of initiatives aimed at scaling up skill development activities in the country saying these were crucial to support growth across sectors and the economy, and will help youth obtain vocational training to secure jobs. Bhaskar Pramanik, Chairman of Microsoft India said, “The launch of Skill India Mission today marks a renewed effort to capitalise on India’s demographic dividend and create a large pool of skilled workforce in India.”

Talking about Satya Nadella’s approach to competition in an interview, Microsoft India’s Chairman Bhaskar Pramanik, says, “I’ve worked with Steve Ballmer and Satya Nadella during my four years at Microsoft. I respect both of them and have learnt a lot from each of them. Satya is more like Bill Gates. He understands the power of technology and what the future can be. He has been coming out with innovations at a more rapid pace than we did in the previous regime. He is taking tough decisions.”

Microsoft has fused a number of its new data processing technologies into a single package designed to help organizations get more value from their growing piles of data. The new suite, called Cortana Analytics, is designed to “democratize big data,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, during the opening keynote of the company’s World Wide Partner Conference

With the launch of Skype for Business, Microsoft allows businesses to expand their communications while maintaining enterprise-class controls. Among the many benefits of this iteration is that employees can now more easily connect to internal and external users, while at the same time reduce the administrative efforts required to manage different IM and calling tools.

Microsoft’s Terry Myerson, Executive Vice President of the Windows and Devices Group, while speaking at the company’s Worldwide Partner Conference, said, “Last week we announced a focusing on our Lumia lineup and soon you will see premium new Lumias designed for Windows 10.” Additionally, the Redmond giant has confirmed that it will announce several devices at this year’s IFA.

Microsoft will still kick off a global campaign to convince customers to migrate to the new operating system. The campaign, dubbed “Upgrade Your World,” will run for a year, the same timeline for the free offer to upgrade from Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 to Windows 10, Microsoft said. “Television and online ad campaigns supporting Windows 10 and its upgrade path will debut on July 20 in the U.S., and July 29 globally,” said, Yusuf Mehdi, an Executive in the Windows and Devices Group.

Comparex India Pvt. Ltd, along with 110 awardees, was awarded the prestigious Microsoft Country Partner of the Year Award for 2015 at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference 2015. “As our ‘Gold Cloud Partner’, Comparex is the trusted advisor for its customers and has a track record of a zero compete loss to date,” Microsoft said.

Microsoft has launched the BizSpark Plus programme for startups in India. As part of this programme, it will offer $120,000 per year of free Azure Cloud services to each of the qualified startups. The startups can use $10,000 worth of credits monthly, to invest in Microsoft services to power their business. In addition to Azure services, startups will receive the full suite of development and test software and tools such as Visual Studio, Windows and Office.

Microsoft is putting telephony, security and analytics into a new Office 365 bundle – baking in features typically offered separately or by third-party vendors and IT service providers. The E5 Office 365 Enterprise Suite will be available “before the end of this calendar year”, said John Case, Corporate Vice President of Office Marketing at Microsoft.

Microsoft’s R&D business packs a serious wow factor. The 10 more head-turning Microsoft R&D projects apart from HoloLens include: Project Adam –Microsoft’s deep learning IA project, Hyperlapse, sewage-powered Microsoft data center, AutoCharge, Kinect, Micro:bit platform, 3-D audio development, universal translator and Magic Scarf.