Recent News

Microsoft has developed a container technology to run on its Windows Server operating system. “We’re finding that interest in containers is very high,” said Mike Schutz, who runs cloud platform product marketing for Microsoft. Twenty percent of Azure users deploy Linux and a significant number of those users run Docker containers, he said.

Intel has come out with its own version running Microsoft Windows 8.1. The Intel Compute Stick can conveniently plug into your TV’s HDMI Output and run Windows 8.1 apps. The device also lets users add a keyboard and mouse for use. Intel aims to capture the ‘Enterprise Market’ through the Compute Stick as it could lead to huge cost savings and increased employee mobility within enterprises.

Microsoft has moved its Work and Play bundle online, allowing those who want to sign up for all of Microsoft’s premier services to save a ton of money while doing so.

Microsoft has a new pilot program to hire people with autism for full-time positions at its Redmond campus. “It’s simple, Microsoft is stronger when we expand opportunity and we have a diverse workforce that represents our customers,” said Microsoft Corporate VP of Worldwide Operations Mary Ellen Smith, who has a teenage son with autism. This pilot program will be run in partnership with Specialisterne, a Danish nonprofit that helps train people with autism for careers in IT.

Government and educational institutions can now buy applications via Microsoft’s Azure Marketplace and deploy them on the company’s cloud platform. The store is also opening to businesses that bought Azure services through Microsoft partners. The expansion broadens access to the cloud app store, through which Microsoft sells its own apps and tools, and those of third parties.

Microsoft has open sourced large parts of its .NET development framework, and launched the open source web programming language TypeScript. Mark Russinovich, Microsoft technical fellow and Azure CTO, told the ChefConf event last week that opening up .NET helps to “get people started on other Microsoft solutions”, adding, “it lifts them up and makes them available for our other offerings, where otherwise they might not be.”

Technology giant Microsoft said it will line up more 4G-compatible devices in India once the infrastructure for the high-speed Internet service is ready in the country. “There are a number of 4G-compatible devices in our portfolio, we are ready with the handsets. Once infrastructure is ready (in India), we will bring more 4G devices in,” Microsoft Mobile Devices Director Marketing Raghuvesh Sarup said.

It will be business as usual for Revolution Analytics, but expect great new R-language-based advanced analytics capabilities from Microsoft SQL Server and the Azure HDInsight and Azure Machine Learning cloud services. “We will build R and Revolution’s technology into our data platform products so companies, developers, and data scientists can use it across on-premises, hybrid cloud and Azure public cloud environments,” said Joseph Sirosh, Corporate VP of Information Management and Machine learning at Microsoft.

Windows 7 powers nearly two-thirds of all personal computers running a version of Microsoft’s OS, according to a survey by an analytics company. Net Applications’ monthly user share tracking – an estimate of the percentage of all systems that rely on a specific operating system – pegged Windows 7 at 63.7% of all Windows PCs in March. That was a 2.6 percentage point jump from February.