In the News

In 2005, Varun Srinivasan bagged the Microsoft Imagine Cup, a contest which aims to help resolve some of the world’s toughest challenges. He even worked with Microsoft for three years. In June 2013, he moved to Silicon Valley and started SoundFocus, along with his erstwhile friend at Microsoft, Alex Selig. SoundFocus was started with the goal of building revolutionary audio processing technologies that empower people to hear better.

Microsoft wants to play a big role in taking high-speed broadband connections to the ‘last mile’ – the remote and inaccessible parts of India. The US software giant, headed by Hyderabad-born Satya Nadella, has proposed to the telecom department the deployment of its TV White-Space technology for a pilot project in Bangalore. The technology functions like Wi-Fi, but on a bigger scale – it provides wireless connectivity across a 10 km radius at speeds up to 16 Mbps, eight times faster than what is generally available in most parts of India.

In an attempt to bridge the industry-academia gap and improve the productivity of students in state-run polytechnics, Karnataka’s Department of Technical Education has decided to tie up with Microsoft India. HU Talwar, Director, Department of Technical Education, said Microsoft has shown a keen interest in lending their expertise to tone up technical skills of students. He said Microsoft would provide soft skills for final year diploma students of government polytechnics across the state.

Microsoft added three new Big Data services to its Azure cloud platform to make it ready to tackle the Internet of Things (IoT). “Every day, IoT is fueling vast amounts of data from millions of endpoints streaming at high velocity in the cloud,” said Joseph Sirosh, corporate vice president of Machine Learning at Microsoft. “In this new and fast-moving world of cloud and devices, businesses can no longer wait months or weeks for insights generated from data.”

Online classified company Quikr joined hands with Microsoft to launch the Quikr app on the Windows Phone Store. “Mobile internet has enabled the growth of e-commerce at a phenomenal rate in India. Quikr has been at the forefront of this growth and the new Windows Phone app will further simplify the process of online trading for customers on the go, offering them a great experience,” said Navdeep Manaktala, Head, Applications & Developer Ecosystem, Microsoft India.

Lenovo expanded its Yoga range of devices with the launch of the 13.3-inch Yoga Tablet 2 with Windows 8.1, priced at $699 (Rs. 43,000 approximately) and available from November. The tablet will come bundled with a keyboard cover and a 1-month trial of Microsoft Office 365. It also comes with a kickstand that can rotate up to 180 degrees and offers four different modes – hold, stand, tilt, and hang.

Microsoft wants to move monitoring and analytics to the cloud, automate management and take over high- performance computing work with its latest Azure products. The company announced Azure Operational Insights, which extends the Azure hosted analytics, monitoring and management tools to on-premises equipment, simply by installing an agent on servers. “It’s really straightforward to get that data up [to Azure] and the amount of insight you can unlock is really powerful,” said Jason Zander, corporate vice president of Microsoft Azure.

Aiming to further enhance consumer experience on its latest flagship smartphone, the Lumia 830, Microsoft Devices has announced a host of offers for its Indian users. Indian consumers purchasing the Lumia 830 smartphone will enjoy the best shopping and entertainment experiences on their device. All users will get a minimum of Rs. 6,000 off while shopping on the Snapdeal app and a 60-day free subscription to the Box TV app on Windows Phone, while Vodafone subscribers will get 2GB data free per month for 2 months.

Microsoft Corp unveiled an activity-tracking wristband and related Internet-based service that can track and analyse health, fitness and sleep data – jumping into the crowded wearable-computer market. The $199 Microsoft Band works with the company’s free Health application, which uses machine learning to interpret data and can run on its Windows system, Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android, said Yusuf Mehdi, vice president of devices and studios.

Microsoft is planning to embed mobile device management technology from its Intune product into Office 365, giving enterprises a way to secure and keep track of employees’ smart phones and tablets from within the friendly confines of its cloud productivity suite. Microsoft will integrate a subset of Intune MDM into Office 365 in the first calendar quarter of next year, Brad Anderson, Corporate Vice President, Windows Server and System Center products, Microsoft, said in a blog post.