Category: Microsoft
Microsoft to spend 90% of its Research Budget on Cloud computing
Microsoft has announced that it will be spending 90% of its $9.6 billion research budget on improving cloud computing technologies. In a statement by President Jean-Phillipe Courtois, the company outlined its strategic vision to engage with more small and medium-sized enterprises and boost its market share and make gains on its rival providers Salesforce.com, Oracle [...]
US Senate considers changes to Electronic Privacy Law
In 1986, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), with the admonition that “privacy protections must advance with technology, or privacy will gradually erode as technology advances.” The committee again met Wednesday to deliberate over updates to the aging law. Chairman of the committee, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), said that “while [...]
Microsoft and Toyota in Cloud Computing Partnership
Microsoft and Toyota have come together in a joint venture to build in-car services that will run on Windows Azure, Microsoft’s cloud platform. The new features should begin to in Toyota’s electric and plug-in hybrid cars in 2012. Toyota intends to offer a full range of cooud servces to all its automobile customers by 2015. [...]
Close to forty percent of small businesses planning cloud computing – Microsoft.
According to Microsoft, 39 percent of small businesses intend to buy one or more cloud computing services over the next three years. This is a conclusion from Microsoft’s third annual worldwide study into how small and medium businesses plan to use cloud-based resources in the next three years. The study indicates that SME’s will [...]
Microsoft to Increase China Staff to Boost Cloud Computing Presence
In an effort to boost its presence in China’s fast-growing smartphone market and strengthen its cloud computing and Internet search capabilities, Microsoft Corp., has announced plans to increase its research and development staff in China by around 10 percent this year. Ya-Qin Zhang, chairman of Microsoft’s (News - Alert) Asia-Pacific R&D Group, told the Wall [...]
Video:UP2010 Virtual Cloud Conference – Microsoft’s PaaS Solution
Get a tour of the Platform as a Service offering from Microsoft, shared at the Nov 2010 UP2010 virtual cloud event by Niraj Nagrani Director in the SQL Azure team. You will learn of the fundamental building blocks such as compute, non-relational storage, relational storage, identity and access control
Video: UP2010 Virtual Cloud Conference – Windows Azure Security Essentials for Technology Decision Makers
Security is a huge topic in any discussion regarding the public cloud. This session from the Nov 2010 UP2010 virtual cloud event is led by Distinguished Engineer Yousef Khalidi. It provides a terrific walk thru of how to think thru security considerations in general and for the Windows Azure Platform specifically.
Microsoft Moves Against Salesforce
Microsoft’s Dynamics CRM Online, the cloud version of its Dynamics CRM 2011 and a Salesforce competitor, has finally escaped its North American boundaries and is now available worldwide. Well, in at least 40 markets at any rate. Microsoft is apparently expecting a good deal of switching to go on, or it’s hoping so. To egg [...]
Speculation is rampant that Microsoft Server Chief was fired over Cloud Strategy
This is getting interesting to watch. The latest speculation about Microsoft and Azure… Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer may have dismissed Bob Muglia from his role as head of the company’s $15 billion Server and Tools Business unit because he felt Muglia was not the right individual to lead Redmond into the cloud computing age, according [...]
Microsoft Supporting Cloud Open Source Code For Hyper-V
The software giant says its customers don’t necessarily want a single hypervisor cloud, so it’s supporting OpenStack. Cloud computing has progressed on multiple fronts over the past week, and one of the most interesting advances is the fact that Microsoft has decided to support the open source project Open Stack. OpenStack, you may remember, was [...]
Microsoft adds data crunching features to Azure
Big data is the growing field of crunching giant batches of data, such as gene sequencing, interpreting seismic data, streaming 3-D video and financial modeling. People who are trying to build software that makes sense of this data are meeting at the Supercomputing 2010 conference in New Orleans this week. The problem with big data, [...]
Microsoft Finds Cloud Computing Is Good for the Environment
By comparing on-premises business applications to cloud-based equivalents, the researchers found that cloud computing has positive effects on the environment, especially if you are a small company. A Microsoft study bears out what environmentally-conscious companies have hoped for all along: cloud computing has the potential to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions by 30 percent [...]
Minnesota moves e-mail to Microsoft’s cloud
Minnesota said Tuesday that it is moving its messaging and collaboration services to Microsoft’s cloud computing platform in an effort to address multiple issues — including an aging workforce, increasing red ink and a desire for shared services. Approximately 33,000 state workers in Minnesota will be affected by the move, which could be one of [...]
Minnesota moves e-mail to Microsoft's cloud
Minnesota said Tuesday that it is moving its messaging and collaboration services to Microsoft’s cloud computing platform in an effort to address multiple issues — including an aging workforce, increasing red ink and a desire for shared services. Approximately 33,000 state workers in Minnesota will be affected by the move, which could be one of [...]
Cloud Cover Episode 25 – Deploying and Upgrading
Join Ryan and Steve each week as they cover the Microsoft cloud. In this episode: Listen as they talk about how you can deploy and manage the services you have running in Windows Azure Discover the various options, and the caveats, for upgrading your services Learn some tips and tricks on how to run your [...]
Microsoft delivers on-premises private-cloud building functionality
When it comes to building private clouds, Microsoft is planning to offer customers two ways to go: One using its Windows Azure cloud operating system on forthcoming pre-configured Windows Azure Appliances; and one assembled of various on-premises components atop Windows Server. On August 15, Microsoft made available the final version of one of the building [...]
Microsoft vs. Salesforce the court case
Packaged software king Microsoft and cloud computing prince Salesforce.com are duelling in US courts, with each accusing the other of violating its patented technology. The legal battle comes as Microsoft strives to adapt to a trend toward programs being offered as services in the internet “cloud” instead of being installed and maintained on people’s computers. [...]
Why Microsoft Windows Azure is a threat to Google
By Charlotte Dunlap Microsoft’s new features announced last week to its cloud computing platform, Azure, gives developers the option to build applications in the cloud via Microsoft’s data centers, rather than in a company’s server. Giving customers this sort of flexibility in IT and software development is important to customers looking for ways to reduce [...]
Microsoft adjusts SQL Azure pricing
From Mary Jo Foley: Microsoft is raising the storage ceiling for SQL Azure to 50 GB (for the Business Edition of its SQL Azure service), as of June 28. The Web edition also get a higher 5 GB ceiling, starting June 28. The business edition will be billed at 10 GB increments, and the Web [...]
Microsoft: Enterprise customer growth accelerates private cloud strategy
From Mary Jo Foley: Microsoft is making a number of announcements around tools and database tweaks for its Azure cloud platform at this week’s TechEd conference. But I’m more interested in some of the more subtle clues I’ve been picking up about the Softies’ future cloud strategies and directions here. First, Microsoft execs are moving [...]
Microsoft Cloud Computing Center opens in Taiwan
Microsoft opened a joint cloud computing center with Taiwan’s economics ministry on Thursday at the Computex electronics show, and announced a plan to work with two local companies on new designs for servers meant specifically for cloud computing, the growing trend towards decentralized, virtualized computing services. When the project was first announced last November, officials [...]
Microsoft reveals CDN pricing for Azure
In November 2009, Microsoft announced its intentions to add a content-delivery network (CDN) capability to its Windows Azure cloud offering. At the end of May, the company announced pricing plans for this functionality. The Azure CDN extends the storage piece of the Windows Azure cloud operating system, allowing developers to deliver high-bandwidth content more quickly [...]
Cloud vs OpenXML: Microsoft has a preference
Microsoft will base support for the final OpenXML standard on customer demand. The market leader at this point prefers to move its clients to cloud computing, said Stephen Elop, president of Microsoft’s Business Division. He considers cloud offerings a good extension of the desktop software that Microsoft currently sells. “OpenXML can be implemented for a [...]
Can Cloud Computing help improve security
Cloud computing adds security challenges, but also provides opportunities to improve security posture, according to Steve Lipner, senior director of security engineering strategy at Microsoft. In addition to traditional threats such as cross-site scripting, code injection and denial of service, cloud computing expands some of those threats and introduces others, he said. “Data privacy issues such [...]
Microsoft betting that India will lead the world in Cloud Computing
NEW DELHI: Microsoft Corp sees India as the global hub for cloud computing, the concept of renting computing power that has taken the technology world by storm and in the words of the NYT, what Silicon Valley cannot seem to get its head out of. “India will not only see a surge in cloud computing [...]
Microsoft wins contract for cloud computing with University of Arizona
The University of Arizona at Tuscon – the state’s flagship university – recently announced that it has awarded Microsoft with its contract to handle the school’s planned shift to cloud computing. Starting next fall, the school’s students and faculty will use Microsoft’s Business Productivity Suite in place of their current email system. Both students and [...]
Conversations with David Chappell about Windows Azure and Cloud Computing
Interesting new Windows Azure related video. David Gristwood engages David Chappell in conversation about Windows Azure and cloud computing, and explore which applications are great candidates for Windows Azure, and, interestingly which ones don’t, as well as discussing the differences between Infrastructure vs Platform as a Service, and the role of private vs public cloud. [...]
11 Things to Know About WPC Sessions
With a little more than a month until the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) in Washington, D.C., session descriptions are beginning to appear in earnest on the Microsoft Partner Network (MPN) Portal. We’ve scoured the available listings for some highlights. Steve Ballmer Keynote. The CEO is confirmed for his usual keynote. Even when Ballmer doesn’t [...]
Makes perfect sense – WordPress and Windows Azure integration
A free and open source plugin developed by Microsoft is the latest example of PHP and Windows Azure interoperability to come from the company, after various other offerings, including a PHP software development kit for the Cloud platform. By leveraging the plugin, customers running WordPress will be able to take advantage of the storage capacity [...]
Microsoft sues Salesforce.com
Microsoft has filed a lawsuit against Salesforce.com for allegedly infringing nine unspecified Microsoft CRM-related patents. Microsoft posted a statement on its Web site acknowledging it had taken legal action on May 18. Here’s an excerpt from that statement from Horacio Gutierrez, corporate vice president and deputy general counsel of Intellectual Property and Licensing: “Microsoft has [...]
