Recent News

Businesses have doubled adoption of cloud-based office productivity tools over the past year, and in that period Microsoft has knocked Google off as the market leader, according to a comprehensive new study released by Bitglass. 2014’s underdog, Microsoft has surged ahead of Google, more than tripling its adoption from 7.7 percent in 2014 to 25.2 percent in 2015, besting Google’s 22.8 percent, according to the report.

Microsoft’s Applied Sciences Group has developed the tablet keyboard, dubbed DisplayCover that features Kindle-like e-ink display that works alongside the Surface tablet’s 10.6-inch primary screen. The DisplayCover includes a full keyboard and an ultra-thin e-ink display that doubles up as a secondary screen offering 1280X305 resolution, albeit in black and white, which the company says extends the usable screen by up to 8 per cent.

Fuelled by the Internet of Things, mobility, and the growing enterprise customers moving to cloud, the global data business has grown to a whopping $1.6 trillion, said Microsoft Corporation Corporate Vice President (Data Platform, Cloud and Enterprise) T K Rengarajan. “Real companies make real products and real solutions based on data. Microsoft Data Strategy would be to maximise the value derived from all such accessible data. The strategy would be to go cloud first with other things following,” he said.

It hasn’t even been a month since the release of Windows 10, Microsoft’s newest desktop operating system, and more than 75 million devices are already running on it, the company announced on Wednesday. At the sidelines, Yusuf Mehdi, Corporate Vice President of Marketing for Windows and Devices, took to Twitter to offer several other interesting statistics. He noted since launch on Windows 10, Cortana has shared over half a million jokes in response to “tell me a joke” query which apparently people love to ask it.

Music streaming app Saavn expects its user base to touch 25 million by December this year on the back of strong smartphone adoption in the country and launch of its services on the Windows 10 platform. Talking about the new app for the recently launched Windows 10 operating system, Narayanan said Windows leads the market for desktop operating systems with more than a billion PCs running on it today.

Hackathons, or hackfests, are moving beyond generic mainstream technologies such as Android and iOS, to specialised avenues such as design, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things (IoT), hardware, and even marketing, and their goal is not always about innovation or creating a new technology; it could be finding right talent for specific roles. Microsoft Ventures is gearing up for a marketing hackathon along with Venturesity, while Bengaluru-based recruitment platform HackerEarth will host a hackathon on artificial intelligence.

Microsoft Corp.’s Windows 10 has reached more than 75 million devices in almost a month since the operating system was released, according to Yusuf Mehdi, the company’s marketing chief for Windows and devices. More than 90,000 personal-computer and tablet models have upgraded to the new OS, which is running in 192 countries.

Last week was a big one for Microsoft’s Albert Greenberg: The networking expert delivered the keynote address at SIGCOMM 2015 in London AND received the annual SIGCOMM Award, recognizing lifetime contribution to the field of communication networks. Last year, the SIGCOMM Award went to George Varghese, a principal researcher at Microsoft Research whose expertise lies in the area of network algorithmics.