Business Standard: Microsoft announces new partnerships, cloud start-up initiative

At its first of its kind technology conference, Microsoft announced a string of partnerships, programmes and products claimed to help Indian organisations and governments to explore unchartered business areas and enrich customer and citizen experiences. The tech giant, announced partnerships with three e-commerce players – Justdial, Paytm and Snapdeal – and launched a special cloud initiative for start-ups aligned to smart cities. Justifying the partnerships, Bhaskar Pramanik, chairman, Microsoft India, said: “Cloud and mobile technologies are already galvanising Indian industry. We will demonstrate that technology in the hands of brilliant people can create magic.”

Bloomberg: Halo 5: Guardians – smashes record with biggest Halo launch in history

One week after launching worldwide, “Halo 5: Guardians” has made history as the biggest Halo launch and fastest-selling Xbox One exclusive game to date, with more than $400 million in global sales of “Halo 5: Guardians” games and hardware, pushing the franchise to over $5 billion lifetime. With the highest week one attach rate for a Microsoft first-party title on Xbox One, the game was the most played of any game on Xbox One, as well as the most played on Xbox Live.

Gaming Bolt: Xbox One Elite now out, boots up 20% faster

The Xbox One Elite bundle, which comes with the highly sought after Elite controller, as well as 1TB of on board storage, coming in the form of a solid state hybrid drive (because of which it can boot up 20% faster), is now out. For players still looking to jump in on Microsoft’s vision of the next generation of gaming, this SKU represents the single best variant of the Xbox One that is currently available.

Bloomberg: Red Hat and Microsoft become partners in the cloud

Red Hat and Microsoft have unveiled a partnership that the two companies say will make it easier for customers to accelerate the shift to cloud computing.”We both see our mission as helping customers succeed in today’s cloud-connected world,” Paul Cormier, Red Hat’s president of products and technologies, said. The partnership will provide “greater choice and flexibility” by enabling businesses to deploy Red Hat software on the Microsoft Azure cloud computing platform, according to the companies.

Yahoo: Ravi Shankar Prasad, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to discuss broadband project today

Telecom and information technology minister Ravi Shankar Prasad will meet Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in Mumbai on Thursday to discuss the company’s plan to provide broadband connectivity in villages, sources said. Microsoft has invited the minister to participate in its event to be held in Mumbai titled ‘Microsoft’s Future Unleashed’, the biggest event the technology giant has ever organised in India, where the minister is likely to address the gathering followed by a meeting with Nadella.

Mint: Periodic table of the Indian start-up ecosystem 2014-15

As the second-fastest growing and third-largest start-up ecosystem in the world, India is moving at a frenetic pace. Zooming from 3,100 start-ups in 2014 to an expected 11500 start-ups by 2020, they are estimated to raise $3.5 billion in the first half of 2015 alone and are set to surpass the total number of deals done in 2014, says a report by Microsoft Ventures and Venture Intelligence, which captures this data in the form of a periodic table. Funding raised was the primary parameter and kept at a cut-off of $15-20 million, with a few expectations. Indian unicorns, the report notes, now account for nearly 10% of the global unicorn club and the list is only going to get longer.

Tech 2: Satya Nadella to visit Mumbai tomorrow for Microsoft’s ‘Future Unleashed’ programme

Microsoft chief Satya Nadella will meet industry leaders like Mahindra Group Chairman Anand Mahindra, Axis Bank head Shikha Sharma and Tata Starbucks CEO Avani Davda during his one-day visit to India on November 5. The India-born CEO will also deliver a keynote address at ‘Microsoft’s Future Unleashed’ event here that will bring together 3,000 industry thought leaders, enterprise heads, developers and entrepreneurs.