Recent News

Micromax has launched its first range of Windows Phone 8.1 devices in an event in New Delhi, marking the company’s foray into smartphones with Microsoft’s mobile OS. Micromax was one of the partners announced by Microsoft on stage at BUILD this year, when introducing Windows Phone 8.1. We have been awaiting the first range of handsets powered by WP8.1 since then and following’s Xolo’s first Windows device last week, Micromax has launched two new phones.

In order to promote active collaboration, Microsoft India has moved into a new office in Gurgaon. “We wanted to ensure that we work co-opt more, so we requested for all the staff to be located at one office”, says Rohit Thakur, Head, Human Resources, Microsoft India. The new workspace, built along Microsoft’s global Workplace Advantage Program guidelines, is kitted out with 60 meeting rooms of varying sizes and specifications, from telephone rooms for one-on-one conversations, focus rooms that can accommodate four-six people at a time, to meeting rooms for larger consultations.

Micromax which made its presence felt in the Indian smartphone market with devices running on Android OS is now preparing to launch at least one WP device. While the exact specifications and pricing of the two Canvas phones is not known, one of the devices will be priced around Rs 6,000-7,000 and other around Rs 10,000-11,000. The partnership with Micromax along with nine other manufacturers was announced back in April at the BUILD conference. Microsoft is also reported to have waived the license fee for Windows Phone. In a boost to take its OS to the masses and grow the ecosystem, the software major is working closely with a number of locally-strong phone makers in different countries.

After a 6-month long wait, the Xolo Win tablet has finally gone on sale in India and it’s priced at Rs 19,990. The slate is the company’s first to run on Windows and it’s also the first to go on sale in the country with an AMD processor onboard. What’s more, Flipkart is selling the slate exclusively through its online store. The device runs on Windows 8.1 out of the box and is the most affordable smartphone available in the market today. MS Office comes pre-installed as well. Intel’s Atom SOC is found on most slates in this category, but this one comes with the AMD Temash chipset.

Fortinet has announced support for secure access to the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. As per the release making the announcement, customers can immediately benefit from a secure virtual private network (VPN) access to Microsoft’s Azure cloud offering while leveraging Fortinet’s broad and multi-layered security technologies across network, application and content security. Venkat Gattamneni, Senior Product Marketing Manager – Microsoft Azure, Microsoft, said, “Microsoft Azure’s cloud scalability, performance and economic benefits make it a convincing choice for customers wanting to leverage the cloud while continuing to use existing on-premises infrastructure.”

Twitter has been long eyeing Bing’s translation services for providing full-frontal language interpretation support through its services. In a step that makes this fact more evident, the micro-blogging site has infused its official iOS app with the translator tool, while also expanding its offerings in its web version. As far as mobile devices are concerned, this feature was earlier available only for Windows Phone devices. With its arrival for iPhones and iPads, the obvious questions will be regarding when it will be made available for Android devices.

Fortinet has announced support for secure access to the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. The support for Microsoft Azure on top of its existing support for Windows Server with Hyper-V is effective immediately. Venkat Gattamneni, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft, said, “Microsoft Azure’s cloud scalability, performance and economic benefits make it a convincing choice for customers who require secure VPN access from office and branch networks to the cloud”. Rajesh Maurya, Country Manager, India & SAARC, Fortinet, said, “Microsoft Azure is clearly a compelling solution for organizations that are looking to improve and extend availability of their IT services”.

Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft said that US government National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance “reform” is necessary for global companies like Microsoft, Intel and Hewlett-Packard to thrive in the future. “The United States has to take a real approach where we regain that trust,” said Nadella, appearing via satellite in a candid wide-ranging discussion with Meg Whitman, CEO, HP and Brian Krzanich, CEO, Intel, hosted by New York Times Columnist Thomas Friedman at the HP Discover conference in Las Vegas. “If you think about HP, Intel and Microsoft, we are global companies and in order for us to be able to thrive in a global world we need our government to be able to have a policy that in fact creates great trust with its own citizens, but also citizens of the world and other nations.”

Office 365 has become the buzz word today and India’s leading non-profit organizations, education institutes, IT/ITES companies and manufacturing and healthcare organizations including Ascent Yarns , Bakewell Biscuits , BLK Super Speciality Hospital , Godrej Industries and iResearch, have opted for it. Also, Microsoft recently added Office 365 Personal to complement the existing line-up of Office 365 Home Premium, Office 365 University, and Office 365 for businesses, and Office for iPad, aiding mobile scenarios. Office 365 is the fastest growing product in the Microsoft history. The Home Premium edition already has some 3.5 million subscriptions and counting. Ramkumar Pichai, GM – Microsoft Office Division, Microsoft India, said, “We are pleased with the adoption of Office 365 amongst businesses in India and globally, which reinforces our cloud and mobile leadership. Microsoft is focused on delivering the cloud for everyone, on every device. The future lies in people focused cloud productivity that – enables individuals and organizations to achieve more with the devices and services that people love the most.”

Xolo unveiled its first Windows 8.1 based tablet in the country and took the e-commerce route to launch the device. It’s available exclusively on FlipKart.com. The e-commerce giant is offering a bunch of launch day benefits. Targeted at young working professionals, the Xolo Win is powered by a dual-core AMD A4 Elite Mobility processor (Temash generation) clocked at 1.0 GHz and makes use of Radeon HD 8180 GPU for graphics. It has a 10.1-inch display with a resolution of 1366×768 pixels and 2GB of RAM. Internal storage is 32GB EMMC, expandable further via micro SD card slot. Being a Windows tablet, it will have all the apps and games that one expects from a PC.