In the News

Microsoft’s Bing now shows users a list of bestselling books when they use certain search terms. The books shown in the carousel added on top of search results are picked up from the New York Times Best Sellers list, and comprise business books, fiction, non-fiction, and children’s books. Users can search for terms like ‘best-selling fiction’, ‘nonfiction best-sellers’, ‘best-selling kids’ books’, and ‘current times best business books’ for the results to show.

Microsoft’s White Space tech may not sound fancy like Google’s Internet beaming balloons or Facebook’s Internet Drones but certainly has the potential to pave way for wider and affordable Internet connectivity, ultimately help realize Digital India goal. “Low frequency spectrum which is also known as TV White Space –found between spectrum bands used for TV transmission – is a natural resource available to the Government. Microsoft Research has developed a technology to utilize this largely unutilized spectrum to provide cheap connectivity,” says Bhaskar Pramanik, Chairman, Microsoft Corporate India Pvt.

The wide-angle 5MP front-facing camera of the Lumia 730 will give about-to-be married couple the best frames, angles to capture all their wedding frenzy and moments of their special day captured in selfies, giving them the perfect #selfieshaadi. Couples from all over India can send photo entries and after registering on the Microsoft Wedmegood page.

Microsoft will soon enter the state’s classrooms to spread awareness about one-horned rhinos among teachers and students.The global IT giant has selected “My Horn My Life”, a project prepared by Kendriya Vidyalaya art teacher Anutosh Deb, among 30 projects from the country for the Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert (MIEE) programme-2015. The MIEE programme aims at encouraging teachers to use information and communications technology (ICT) tools to create projects for global classroom transactions.

ING Bank is a global financial services brand offering a range of banking and insurance services in over fifty countries. They chose Microsoft Dynamics CRM to give their sales, marketing and branch personnel a holistic view of their customer interactions enabling them to take advantage of cross-selling and upselling opportunities.

Microsoft announced the release Sway, an app that lets users make interactive and easily shareable projects, in India and several other nations where English is an official language. Sway is an online presentation tool that helps people create web-based canvas to jot down ideas ad share them with friends with the least amount of effort. Sway was initially rolled out in New Zealand, but is now rolling out in countries like India, Australia, Canada and many others. Sway is available for only iPhones as of now.

Microsoft has a cloud version of Office, called Office 365, that you pay for on subscription either monthly or annually.Office 365 is a little unusual in that it is cloud software and you install it on your PC, to give you the best of all worlds. Also, Microsoft automatically adds cool new features. Here are some cool features of Office 365 that you may not know about.

ICICI Lombard outlined the need to meet peak loads without increasing the data center footprint or budget. It also predicted that the public cloud would become commonplace. To test this out, in the first phase, it migrated its test and development environment for 17 key applications to Microsoft Azure. By this move, the company has been able to decommission 35 UAT (User Acceptance Testing) servers and get ready for the public cloud.

Being a people-driven enterprise, YES Bank wanted to provide a highly efficient customer service platform and also facilitate its employees with real-time business intelligence. To make this happen, the bank needed to automate its processes and create a single, user-friendly and collaborative platform. Post the deployment of SharePoint, YES Bank has increased process efficiency through automation, gained visibility into different processes for improved and faster decision making, which in-turn reduce the turnaround time.

Mobile banking, Internet banking, online relationship manager, 24/7 banking, virtual branches and conferencing meet-ups are terms that are hastening the change into that future.This Change is being driven by technology giants like Microsoft. The company has been working with scores of financial institutions to help innovate and evolve its offerings and retain customers, drive business insight, manage enterprise risk, and streamline operations. Additionally, Windows based devices is being used by banks to expand their customer base in unbanked rural areas.