Recent News

With an array of exciting new apps, Microsoft Devices brings exciting ways to make your Valentine’s Day more special. Whether its quintessential romantic quotes or personalized cards to make your loved one’s day, Windows phones are the perfect companion to make Feb 14 an unforgettable Valentine’s Day.

The release this week of Microsoft’s first truly native Outlook app for Android and iOS has earned the company accolades and could be a sign that its mobile strategy is finally getting on track. “Microsoft is absolutely doing the right thing putting these important and popular applications on Android and iOS,” said IDC analyst Al Hilwa. “An increasing number of users of these products already use multiple devices, and it is valuable for them to be able to move across platforms with the same tools.”

Microsoft has announced a series of improvements to their Azure cloud platform to improve business productivity and security. The new improvements will be seen across SQL Server, Enterprise Mobility and Azure Media Services. With the new features in Azure RMS, organisations will be able to protect documents by creating template policies.

Microsoft India has selected two innovative educators from Gujarat—Bijal Damani and Lakshmanbhai Kuberbhai Chaudhari — for their 2014-15 class of Education Innovators. Microsoft Innovative Educators are experts who integrate progressive pedagogy with advanced technology to advance learning and better prepare students for the jobs of the future. Pratik Mehta, Director – Education at Microsoft India, said, “With half of India’s population below the age of 25, making use of technology to expand the potential of every student, educator and school, is important to India’s growth.”

Ashutosh Karsharma Mishra from Odisha has been selected by Microsoft India to join the 2014-15 class of Education Innovators as the Microsoft Innovative Educator (MIE) Expert. MIEs participate in case studies, speaking engagements and content development and provide advice on using technology in innovative ways to change the learning environment.

Microsoft has launched a new Outlook app for iOS and Android devices. The Outlook app will support Office 365, Exchange, Outlook.com, Yahoo Mail, Gmail, iCloud and other key email services. The app will also help users manage calendar and fetch attachments within the same app. “Our mission is to bring the best mobile email experience across platforms, in a way that is as familiar and functional as Outlook itself,” Javier Soltero, Outlook General Manager and Former CEO of Acompli.

Microsoft Research has developed a streaming analytics engine, named Trill, which is offering advertisers, on Bing’s Web search service, a more timely analysis of their ad campaigns. The engine has also given a performance boost to the Microsoft Azure Stream Analytics service.

Microsoft has announced upgrades for Azure SQL Database with a promise to bring the cloud-based database service at par with on-premises Microsoft SQL Server functionalities. With the latest upgrade, Azure SQL Database will support larger database deployments and higher performance, a much better query performance than its previous version and it will also offer in-memory column store technology which will boost transactional performance.

The implementation methodology for building 100 smart cities proposed by the Union urban development ministry has already been put in practice in Surat. The Surat Smart City project has received a major fillip with software giant Microsoft helping to create smart IT solutions for all public services, intelligent traffic management system, among others.

Microsoft has announced an update for its file-sharing and cloud-storage service OneDrive, with some new image sharing and viewing features and a new search system. The updates will roll out over the next few weeks. As a part of the update, OneDrive will also include Albums, which, unlike other traditional albums, will show larger thumbnails and display images in an edge-to-edge layout.