Recent News

Microsoft continues to put more of its focus into the container space, announcing updates to several platforms serving the market. Those include its Nano Server, Server Core products, and increased support for Linux. The next release of its Nano Server platform will reduce images by more than 50 percent. The move is expected to reduce container startup times and increase density. The service will be available only as a container-based operating system image that must run as a container in a container host. Troubleshooting will be run through Docker.

Microsoft Corp. has signed an agreement to acquire Hexadite, a company delivering agentless, automatic incident investigation and remediation solutions. “Our vision is to deliver a new generation of security capabilities that helps our customers protect, detect and respond to the constantly evolving and ever-changing cyberthreat landscape,” said Terry Myerson, Executive Vice President, Windows and Devices Group, Microsoft. “Hexadite’s technology and talent will augment our existing capabilities and enable our ability to add new tools and services to Microsoft’s robust enterprise security offerings,” he added.

Cortana, Microsoft personal voice assistant can now be set as the default assistant on Android devices, as per the latest update. The app can override Google’s native Google Assistant to be the default on the phone or tablet. The newly updated app is already available on the Google Play store and once the current version is updated, the user can go to the Settings and set Cortana as the default app.

Accenture Plc and Microsoft Corp team up to build a digital ID network using blockchain technology, as part of a United Nations-supported project to provide legal identification to 1.1 billion people worldwide with no official documents. One of the main advantages of blockchain is that it allows systems of different organizations to communicate with each other.

Microsoft announced at E3 2017 that several current Xbox One titles would be receiving free 4K updates for improved visual fidelity on Xbox One X. Gears of War 4 is a good example. The Coalition’s 2016 shooter was up and running on Xbox One X within a day according to The Coalition’s technical Director, Mike Rayner.

Microsoft has unveiled its Modern Keyboard that features a hidden fingerprint sensor located between the Alt and Ctrl keys to make typing hassle-free. It has also unveiled a Modern Mouse at $50 with nearly invisible buttons and a metal scroll wheel.

Microsoft, chip-maker NVIDIA and Intel have made the investment for a Canadian artificial intelligence (AI) start-up “Element AI”. Element AI, that came on the scene eight months ago, is a platform to help companies of all sizes build AI into their businesses and it has raised $102 million. Element AI will use the funding to hire more employees, invest in big AI projects and acquire start-ups in the space.

Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass is a great concept, but if it is to catch on, then it needs more clarity about its future plans. During Xbox Daily: Live @ E3, Microsoft shared some more information on the Netflix like service, which should hopefully serve to allay some doubts or questions that people have about it.

Microsoft announced the Imagine Cup World Finalist teams, a trio of Championship judges that will pick the next Imagine Cup Champion as well as news that Microsoft Executive Vice President of Cloud and Enterprise Scott Guthrie will host the Championship competition recently. 54 teams from across the globe will compete in the Imagine Cup World Finals in Seattle from July 27.