Recent News

Microsoft and a group of leading industry players in the US are pledging to restrict the use of information collected on students from elementary to high school. The participating companies assured parents that “no one is going to sell your kids’ data, nobody is going to track your child around the Internet, no one is going to compile a profile that is used against your child when they apply for a job 20 years later.”

Multinational software company Adobe has partnered with Microsoft to make Photoshop, their popular image-editing app, more user-friendly for touch screen devices running on Windows 8. Adobe showcased a feature called Playground, which allows users to swipe through multiple layers and pick specific layers and move them into view. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said this tie-up was only the beginning of a long partnership that demonstrates “what the next-generation of hardware-software combination can be”.

The Microsoft partners in the country are smiling. Satya Nadella’s announcement of setting up three local data centers in India has fueled hopes of cloud services getting bigger with the verticals such as government, BFSI and Hospitals embracing it. Kamal Nath, CEO, Sify Technologies added, “Our bouquet of services for datacenter transformation, cloud and managed IT solutions demand future ready, reliable and highly efficient business solutions. With the early adopter initiative, we look forward to building such solutions, integrating Microsoft Azure platforms and devising hybrid cloud ecosystems for the enterprise customers.”

Microsoft will radically revamp which Windows updates customers receive starting with Windows 10, a move analysts said was the biggest-ever change in the firm’s update practices. “Windows 10 will be delivered in a way that gives more choice and flexibility to businesses,” wrote Jim Alkove, the head of Microsoft’s Windows enterprise program management team, in a Microsoft Windows blog. “As a result, a business can pick the speed of innovation that is right for each group of its users, rather than apply a one size fits all solution.”

Microsoft will offer its commercial cloud services—Azure and Office 365 by the end of 2015 from local data centers in India, where the company sees a $2 trillion business opportunity. “One thing you can be sure of is that for every con¬nected smartphone, you need to have a cloud infrastructure. We want to enable the growing entrepreneurial experience of Indians. There can be no mobile-first without a cloud-first world,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

Microsoft Devices is preparing for the festive season with three new Lumia devices. The Lumia 730, priced at Rs 15,299 and the Lumia 830, priced at Rs 28,799, will attract buyers in the affordable device segment, while the flagship Lumia 930 will have a Rs 38,649 price tag. Ajey Mehta, MD, Nokia lndia Sales, says that the two affordable devices will pack in premium Microsoft services like Skype, OneNote and Cortana, available mostly in high-end Lumia phones—a clear USP for these devices.

NIIT will partner with Microsoft India on its significant ‘Women in Tech’ initiative designed to inspire, attract, and retain one million women in the IT industry. As a learning partner, NIIT will utilize its nationwide network to train and certify girl students and women in the latest Microsoft technologies across 5,000 schools, colleges and centers across 200 cities. “Through this initiative, we aim to double the number of women professionals in the Indian IT industry over the next few years,” said Microsoft India Chairman Bhaskar Pramanik.

‘Microsoft Talent India 2014’ is Microsoft’s latest initiative to help Indian youth succeed in the new digital economy. HRD Minister Smriti Irani and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella jointly addressed a gathering of over 35,000 students during the CEO’s first trip to India after taking over at the helm of the company. Nadella spoke about the importance of doing what you love and looking at every opportunity as a learning experience, while the minister spoke about the importance of IT as a key factor in providing a better tomorrow for India’s youth.

When he was named the chief executive of Microsoft earlier this year, Hyderabad-born Satya Nadella had his work cut out—to ensure that the future of the company would be as secure as its past. One measure of his success is that, since he took over on February 4, the company’s stock has jumped 25.6%. In light of his achievements, he has been awarded the Global Indian Award at the ET Awards 2014. Under Nadella’s leadership, Microsoft has continued to push the Azure platform and maintains the company’s strong culture of innovation.

In the latest addition to the Office productivity suite, Microsoft has launched a free preview of the app Sway. The new app lets users make interactive and easily shareable projects on the Web. It includes a deep integration with Microsoft’s other apps and the powerful Azure servers. Sway’s rich features can help users create anything from resumes to websites with the least amount of effort, on the go.