Recent News

In a long-term strategic partnership, Microsoft announced that GoDaddy will be its exclusive email and productivity service for small businesses in India. Microsoft Office 365 offered through GoDaddy will give millions of small businesses access to enterprise-grade productivity solutions at an affordable price, starting at Rs. 149/month. Microsoft Office 365 helps even the smallest of businesses look professional, collaborate with employees and customers, and effectively run their business anywhere, on any mobile device.

Kimberley Bolton is blazing a trail for all young women currently considering a career in IT. The 19-year old from Maidenhead made history last week after becoming the first woman to win a Microsoft Apprentice of the Year award. Kimberley was chosen from 1,000s of apprentices on the Microsoft program to win in the ‘Medium Business Category’. Working as a Junior Support Consultant for Pythagoras, she was nominated by her employers in recognition of her positive attitude and hard work.

In conjunction with Microsoft, HP has announced a new program to enable channel partners to capitalize on the $10 billion opportunity presented to customers as they transition from Windows Server 2003. With Microsoft ending support for Windows Server 2003, customers are turning to HP channel partners for help in assessing, planning and implementing their migration. With the HP Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Migration Program, partners can meet customer needs with reduced risk and cost and increase their return on investment.

A recent study by independent forensic lab, TruthLabs, has revealed that 65 percent of the tested samples of DVDs and PCs with pre-installed software are affected by one or more kind of malware. The study—Piracy and Counterfeit Software: Emerging Risks and Threats to Public Safety and National Security—tested a total of 230 samples consisting of 174 samples on DVDs and 56 pre-installed products in laptops from 10 geographical locations across the country in collaboration with Microsoft India

Nokia Lumia 530, Microsoft’s new entry-level smartphone that runs Windows Phone 8.1 has been launched by Microsoft Mobility. The Lumia 530 will come in single-sim and dual-sim variants and is expected to be priced at approximately Rs 6,900. Nokia Lumia 530 will be available globally, with rollout starting in select markets in August 2014. The phone will come in bright orange, bright green, white and dark grey colors, with changeable shells.

Following through on promises from new CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft continues to add support for non-Microsoft technologies, allowing them to run on the company’s Azure cloud hosting platform. “There are a wide variety of platforms and technologies that developers and IT managers like to use. We’re just trying to assure that regardless of your choice, it will work well on Azure,” said Doug Mahugh, a technology evangelist for Microsoft Open Technologies, a subsidiary that develops software and tools for non-Microsoft platforms.

Microsoft’s net income stood at $4.6 billion for the fourth quarter, according to the company’s earnings report. Sales rose by 18 percent to $23.38 billion in the same period, said the company, based in Redmond, Washington. Expense discipline and success with cloud-based services helped the increase, Microsoft reported. “I’m proud that our aggressive move to the cloud is paying off – our commercial cloud revenue doubled again this year to a $4.4-billion annual run rate,” said CEO Nadella.

In an opinion piece, Microsoft India Chairman Bhaskar Pramanik suggested that India needs to do a lot of catching up in terms of full utilization of cloud technology. While he felt that the Indian Government should be credited for certain policies like “Cloud First” to ensure that all future applications are going to be developed in the cloud, he said that the country still has miles to go in the implementation of this technology.

Srikanth Karnakota, Head, Servers and Cloud Platform, Microsoft India, stated that cloud technology is impacting various facets of government business. The twin issues of privacy and security have hindered the adoption of public cloud in the past, which is why hybrid cloud is truly helping governments and the world. This model allows for control in a data center environment, which is solely run and managed by the user, while also providing all the benefits of the public cloud.

Citing several examples, Prakash Kumar, National Technology Officer, Microsoft India, tried to bust the most common myths surrounding security in the cloud. He stated that the service removes the burden of building and maintaining large computer systems, provides unlimited computing and storage capacity, increases disaster preparedness by building backup and simplifies access. Mr. Kumar also said that half of the US government has migrated to the cloud, while Microsoft alone hosts almost a million servers, providing further proof that the cloud was secure and cost-friendly.