Recent News

In an interview, Bala Girisaballa, Chief Executive, Microsoft accelerator, talks about why it is now crucial for corporate to work with startups. “From being an incubator to an accelerator, we are now focusing on the post-accelerator stage.”

Smartphone GPS systems have been used to navigate city streets quite effectively, but what do you do when there’s no connectivity whatsoever? Well, Microsoft has a solution for that, through an app called Path Guide. The application is meant for indoor navigation without using the GPS on your phone, meaning it will work irrespective of whether you’re reaching the satellites or not.

The GST rollout has led to a surging demand for computers and other hardware accessories, but most importantly has unlocked opportunities for innovative technology startups. One such startup – EasemyGST – has partnered with Microsoft India for a secure, comprehensive and robust GST integration for its business customers.

Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan (KVS) is set to roll out its biggest reforms that aim to change the way learning is organised in these Centre-funded schools. Microsoft will provide messaging apps for administrators, teachers and parents.

Microsoft Azure Stack is officially open for business, with channel partners across Australia and New Zealand already delivering on the promise of hybrid cloud. Following a round of technical previews and testing, Datacom is one provider in the midst of building out local capabilities, with plans now in place to increase go-to-market strategies on both sides of the Tasman. Unveiled during the opening day of Microsoft Inspire in Washington D.C., the tech giant delivered the first release version of Azure Stack to hardware partners, with Dell EMC, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Lenovo already on board, and Cisco and Huawei set to follow.

The team behind Microsoft Outlook announced that the email client’s latest update for Android and iOS brings along redesigned conversations and ability to easily browse the folders and switch between the accounts. Further, the team says that the app will soon get the intelligent search feature, which is powered by the Microsoft Graph. “When you tap on a conversation to read it, Outlook automatically opens to show the first unread message. You can pick up right where you left off without scrolling,” the company said in its blog post.

Microsoft has created a new research lab aimed at creating more general-purpose learning systems based on artificial intelligence. The lab will be located at Microsoft’s Redmond headquarters with a team of over 100 scientists working on AI, from various fields including natural language processing, learning and perception systems. “The group will tackle some of the hardest problems in AI and accelerate the integration of the latest AI advances into products and services that benefit customers and society, Harry Shum, Executive Vice President, Microsoft AI and Research Group wrote in an official blogpost.

India is a great place for innovation and there is a lot of opportunity for Indian firms and start-ups to work with Microsoft and develop cloud-based tools and platforms for a global marketplace, according to a Senior Official of the software giant. Alyssa Fitzpatrick, General Manager of Microsoft’s worldwide channel sales, on the sidelines of the ongoing annual partnership meet of Microsoft ‘Inspire’, said that some of the great things have been happening in the Indian market from an innovation perspective. She said that Microsoft was going to market with solution maps. “That’s gonna give us an opportunity to bring some of the innovation from India into those solution maps and really highlight it for the rest of the world’s consumption,” she said.

The Goods and Services Tax (GST) has forced and hastened technology adoption among SMEs. In a conversation with Economictimes.com, Amit Kumar, General Manager, Small and Mid-Market Solutions and Partners at Microsoft India said the, “opportunity is huge”. There is a huge focus on the entrepreneurial energy in the small and medium businesses. I think the biggest driver for me is the digital transformation. Today, businesses are thinking of how they can use technology to reach out to more customers, to connect and enable customers or to get their team or employees to respond better to customers. They are also looking at how they can reduce the cost of their operations, which means the products that people were selling are becoming different. I think the mindset of people who run businesses is changing – is becoming digital. That is what we see happening across the country,” he further said.

Microsoft has released a free iPhone app that uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to tell the blind what is around them. If the phone is pointed at a park, the camera app, named Seeing AI, can describe how the scene looks like. Similarly, it can tell the amount of your restaurant bill or narrate just about anything it is pointed at.