Recent News

“We will bring the Surface Pro 4 and the Lumia 950 to India in January and December, respectively,” Chief Executive Satya Nadella announced. He added, “At Microsoft, we strive to empower every citizen and every business and government organisation to achieve more. With the newly launched Microsoft Cloud and with Surface Pro 4, our customers have the digital technology they need to seize incredible new growth and opportunity on a global scale.”

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Thursday said that he was looking to build 50 smart villages starting with Arinsal by the end of 2016. ”We are not only looking at building smart cities but smart villages. Our first such project is the Arinsal village where Microsoft will help us. We are looking to build 50 smart villages by the end of 2016,” Fadnavis told Microsoft India chairman Bhaskar Pramanik.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.