In the News

Microsoft continues to bulk up its Azure cloud platform, adding a secure key vault for protecting cloud workloads as well as a new set of larger virtual machines and an easier way to deploy Docker-based workloads. Collectively, the new services could “enable simple and affordable solutions while still offering cloud-scale capabilities,” said Corey Sanders, Microsoft partner director of Azure program management.

The Indian government has announced a list of 15 NRIs who will be conferred the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman awards for 2015. The list includes Microsoft CEO Satyanarayana Nadella.

Microsoft has opened up the beta versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint apps in the Google Play store for Android tablet users. In a blog, the company said it wanted to get feedback from a broader set of users to ensure that the Office apps work well on a range of Android tablets before officially launching the apps.

Microsoft said its new Azure G-Series VMs are the largest currently available from any public cloud vendor in terms of the amount of memory, processing power and local solid state drive storage they include. Azure G-Series VMs come with up to 32 vCPUs using Intel’s Xeon E5 v3 processors, as well as 448 GB of memory and 6.59 TB of local SSD space.

Embee Software said Microsoft’s cloud-based technology and service is gaining pace in the eastern region. “Embee, one of Microsoft’s solutions partner in India, has registered 22 per cent year-on-year growth in its business, riding on high adoption of Microsoft Office 365 and Azure amongst customers,” said Sudhir Kothari, Managing Director, Embee.

HP has launched a low-cost Windows alternative to Chromebox, the HP Stream Mini PC, at approximately Rs. 11,500 at CES 2015. HP has also introduced the Pavilion Mini PCs, which starts at approximately Rs. 20,000, with the Intel Pentium CPU. For the Pavilion mini, HP has offered 200GB of Microsoft OneDrive storage for two years and a gift card that can be used at the Windows Store to buy apps, music and Xbox One games.

The Asus Transformer Book T90 and Asus Transformer Book T100 are priced at $300 (roughly Rs. 19,000) and $400 (roughly Rs. 25,300) respectively, the most notable of the three tablets, the Asus Transformer Book T300, is priced at $699 (roughly Rs. 44,300) and $799 (roughly Rs. 50,600) based on the screen resolution. All the three tablets run on Windows 8.1 and true to the Transformer series feature bundled keyboard docks.

Microsoft has announced that it is expanding the Office for Android tablet preview. The company is removing the need to possess an access code in order to use the productivity suite, allowing anyone to download Word, Excel, and PowerPoint preview apps directly from the Google Play Store.

Teachers and educators all over the world are using Microsoft Office 365 for learning, teaching and helping to make their administration more streamlined and efficient. Office 365 can be a great tool for education and for enhancing learning and teaching. This guide will give you 50 short ideas to try.

At the Consumer Electronics Show, Ranjit Atwal, Research Director, Gartner, said, “From 2015, we expect Windows to grow faster than iOS, as the PC market stabilizes and the challenge for the next iPhone to find significant growth becomes greater, narrowing the gap between the two operating systems.”