NEWS

Surface and partners: Creating next generation services and support Last September, we launched the Surface Enterprise Initiative – to help the world’s biggest businesses get the most out of Surface devices with strategic partnerships designed to provide unmatched services and support, industry specific application and solutions development, and flexible purchase and deployment methods. We kicked off the Surface Enterprise Initiative with Dell providing Surface customers with global procurement capabilities and the power of Dell’s services and support offering. In July, we added specific application and solutions development partnerships with IBM and Booz Allen Hamilton. In one short year, we grew our purchasing and deployment partner footprint from 200 to more than 10,000 partners worldwide in the channel; created a Multi-National Purchasing Program with resellers like CDW, Insight, SHI and Zones; and created an entirely unique model for purchasing and deploying [ more… ]

New Windows 10 and Office 365 features for the secure productive enterprise Today I am pleased to join Scott Guthrie and Satya Nadella at Ignite, the largest IT conference in the industry with more than 20,000 attendees. It’s an exciting time to be in IT, with the modern workplace creating a major shift in the way people work. Information is abundant, experiences and data must easily move across multiple devices, and collaboration is critical as the workforce becomes more mobile and more global. At the same time, security has never been more challenging as attacks have become more advanced and targeted, with the average data breach costing $12 million and costing an estimated $3 trillion in lost productivity by 2020. To help businesses take advantage of the modern workplace while protecting their greatest assets, Microsoft has invested in enabling the [ more… ]

Crystal Group brings fast fashion to retailers in less than 24 hours using Microsoft technologies You may have noticed that it seems like your favorite retailers are magically stocking store shelves with the latest trends in fashion at record speeds. You can attribute this to “fast fashion,” and it is revolutionizing the garment manufacturing industry. Instead of a clothing manufacturer producing a single style, fashion retailers now expect a single order that consists of hundreds of styles. Windows 10, along with Microsoft cloud services, is enabling Crystal Group to digitally transform its processes to help modernize its workforce and to become more agile with the realities of fast fashion. Before fast fashion, you could wait months for the latest fashion trend to debut on the runways and to reach your hometown. To stay ahead of the “fast fashion” trend, Crystal [ more… ]

The Boss Update & Add-Ons are coming to Minecraft Oct. 18 MINECON is here and we’re excited to bring you more details about the next big update for Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition Beta, Minecraft: Pocket Edition, and Minecraft: Gear VR Edition, releasing on Oct. 18. As we mentioned a few weeks ago, the Boss Update is bringing boss battles to these versions of Minecraft for the first time. Also arriving in the Boss Update will be the first iteration of Add-Ons. With Add-Ons, you’ll be able to experiment with remixing components of entities or characters in the game.  Worlds you create with Add-Ons can be shared with others directly or uploaded to your Realms and accessed anytime, anywhere. For even more details about Add-Ons and a handy FAQ, check here! In addition to new gameplay features and the ability for [ more… ]