Category Archives: Microsoft

21Vianet, AWS, IBM, Josh Chen, Microsoft, Ralph Haupter

21Vianet, Microsoft renew vows on Chinese public cloud services

21Vianet and Microsoft have extended a partnership to sell Azure-based services in China

21Vianet and Microsoft have extended a partnership to sell Azure-based services in China

Microsoft and 21Vianet have announced the two companies have renewed their partnership to jointly sell Microsoft’s cloud services in China.

The partnership, which now extends until the end of 2018 and will now include Office 365, will see 21Vianet continue to be the exclusive provider of Microsoft’s Azure-based services within China.

“As China’s premier infrastructure provider and cloud enabler, we are extremely excited to extend this important partnership with Microsoft. Since 2012, teams from Microsoft and 21Vianet have worked diligently and seamlessly in the preparation, public preview and commercial launch of both Windows Azure and Office 365 services in China,” said Josh Chen, chairman and chief executive officer of 21Vianet.

“As the growth momentum for cloud services remains exceptionally strong, we believe this partnership extension marks another significant step in solidifying the cooperation between 21Vianet and Microsoft as well as strengthening our leadership role in China’s cloud computing services market,” Chen said.

Microsoft and 21Vianet originally announced their partnership in 2012. Given the stringent data management measures applied to service providers by the Chinese government as well as local business rules, international companies like Microsoft are required to partner with a local service providers if they are to sell their services on the Mainland. 21Vianet also works with AWS and IBM to rollout their cloud services in China.

“We are very pleased to have extended a successful relationship with 21Vianet, following more than 2 years of close collaboration in bringing Microsoft public cloud services to the Chinese market. Both Azure and Office 365 have strong momentum in the market with broad adoption by both local Chinese companies and multinational corporations,” said Ralph Haupter, corporate vice president and chief executive officer of Microsoft Greater China.

“Customers value Azure and Office 365′s enterprise-grade benefits such as security, flexibility, reliability, scalability, openness, cost efficiency and deployment speed. We remain firmly committed to the Chinese cloud market, and we believe this extended partnership with 21Vianet will serve as a strong foundation for both companies to further contribute to the development of the cloud computing ecosystem throughout China.”

According to CCID Consulting, an IT consultancy catering to Chinese businesses, China’s cloud market is on track to reach $6bn by 2017.

Evan Grim, Josh Alexander, Microsoft, multifactor authentication, News & Analysis, PingIdentity, RSA, Salesforce, Toopher

Salesforce buys mobile authentication startup

MFA is becoming more prominent among enterprises

MFA is becoming more prominent among enterprises

Salesforce has acquired Toopher, a Texas-based mobile authentication startup, for an undisclosed sum.

The company, which offers multifactor authentication (MFA) for mobile platforms, was acquired by the CRM giant less than a month after it secured $200k in new investment.

“Today it is with great excitement that we can unveil our ability to super-charge our superpower—because we are being acquired by Salesforce,” the company’s founders Josh Alexander and Evan Grim wrote in a statement on the Toopher website.

“While we will no longer sell our current products, we are thrilled to join Salesforce, where we’ll work on delivering the Toopher vision on a much larger scale as part of the world’s #1 Cloud Platform. We can’t imagine a better team, technology and set of values with which to align.”

Toopher said it will continue to support existing customers.

Salesforce is aligning itself with a number of enterprise IT vendors including Microsoft, PingIdentity and RSA, which have over the past few years moved to acquire MFA vendors in order to bolster the security posture of their offerings.

Given the rise in MFA adoption among enterprises (a recent SafeNet survey suggests 37 per cent of organisations used MFA in 2014, up from 30 per cent the previous year), the performance improvements associated with tight technical integration between MFA and the services they protect, and the fact these enterprises are becoming more and more mobile, it’s not surprising to see some vendors swoop in to acquire the technology outright.

April Fools, April Fools' Day, Microsoft, Parallels Desktop, Parallels Desktop 10, Parallels Desktop for Mac, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 9

Windows 9 Users Outraged They Won’t Get Windows 10 For Free

Featured image courtesy of Daze Info. Despite the positive reaction so far to Windows 10, Microsoft isn’t out of the gate just yet—by announcing that the free upgrade to Windows 10 will only be available to Windows 7 and 8 users, they’ve frustrated all of their users who took a risk on Windows 9. Here […]

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Amazon Cloud Storage, Box, Microsoft, News & Analysis, Storage as a Service

Amazon follows Box, Microsoft in removing cloud storage caps

Amazon, Box and Microsoft are also offering unlimited cloud storage plans now

Amazon, Box and Microsoft are also offering unlimited cloud storage plans now

Following a move to give unlimited cloud storage to Amazon Prime customers the company has now announced unlimited cloud storage plans for its Amazon Cloud Drive service. The move comes some time after a number of the company’s competitors in the cloud storage space made similar moves.

The company announced two new cloud storage plans – Unlimited Photos Plan, which allows users to store an unlimited number of photos and includes 5GB for other file types, and an Unlimited Everything Plan, which includes unlimited storage for any file type.

The Unlimited Everything Plan costs $60 per year; the Unlimited Photos Plan, $12 per year.

“Most people have a lifetime of birthdays, vacations, holidays, and everyday moments stored across numerous devices. And, they don’t know how many gigabytes of storage they need to back all of them up,” said Josh Petersen, director of Amazon Cloud Drive in prepared remarks.

“With the two new plans we are introducing today, customers don’t need to worry about storage space—they now have an affordable, secure solution to store unlimited amounts of photos, videos, movies, music, and files in one convenient place,” he said.

The move may be a sign Amazon is starting to feel the heat from competitors in the cloud storage space. Box, which recently went public, had last year announced that it would remove storage limits for enterprise users of the popular storage suite, with Microsoft following suit with its Unlimited OneDrive storage offering soon after.

data privacy, data protection, Microsoft, News & Analysis, Public Sector

Microsoft, civil liberties renew calls for Patriot Act reform

Microsoft and close to 50 tech companies and civil liberties assocaitions have renewed calls to reform the US Patriot Act ahead of the expiry of the law's provisions governing bulk data collection

Microsoft and close to 50 tech companies and civil liberties associations have renewed calls to reform the US Patriot Act ahead of the expiry of the law’s provisions governing bulk data collection

Microsoft, along with nearly fifty other technology civil rights associations and technology firms have signed an open letter to senior members of the US government calling for reform of the Patriot Act, a cause célèbre for Microsoft among other cloud firms in recent years.

Microsoft has previously criticised the US government’s bulk data collection practices, and the ability of its authorities to act on warrants beyond US soil (particularly when such acts contradict local laws where those businesses operate).

In an open letter to very senior members of the US government including Michael Rogers, director of the NSA, senate minority leader Harry Reid, and US president Barack Obama, the organisations reaffirm the need to end the US government’s bulk data collection practices, and make government and corporate reporting on any Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court decisions more transparent.

The US Patriot Act Section 215, which currently serves as the legal basis for the NSA’s bulk collection of metadata, is due to expire in June this year.

“We the undersigned represent a wide range of privacy and human rights advocates, technology companies, and trade associations that hold an equally wide range of positions on the issue of surveillance reform. Many of us have differing views on exactly what reforms must be included in any bill reauthorizing USA Patriot Act Section 215,” the letter reads.

“That said, our broad, diverse, and bipartisan coalition believes that the status quo is untenable and that it is urgent that Congress move forward with reform.”

“It has been nearly two years since the first news stories revealed the scope of the United States’ surveillance and bulk collection activities. Now is the time to take on meaningful legislative reforms to the nation’s surveillance programs that maintain national security while preserving privacy, transparency, and accountability.”

Microsoft is among a range of technology companies in support of reforming how American legal entities treat data, both within the context of surveillance activities or general legal proceedings. But US lawmakers have signaled they are prepared to act on longstanding promises to reform the legal landscape. Last month American lawmakers introduced two bipartisan bills that seek to limit the reach of US courts over data stored in cloud services located outside the US, a move welcomed by a broad coalition of technology and telecoms firm – including Microsoft.

Cloud computing, Featured, Microsoft, Windows Server 2003

Upcoming Live Events – Windows Server 2003…Does the Cloud Make Sense for Your Migration?

I just wanted to take a quick minute to let the readers of our blog know that GreenPages is holding a series of live events around migrating Windows Server 2003 Workloads. The events are free and will be held in Cambridge, MA, Portland, ME, Tampa, FL, and Alpharetta, GA. David Barter, our Practice Manager of Microsoft Technologies, will be hosting the events.

We decided to put these events together because of the impact Windows Server 2003 End-of-Life is having on IT professionals across the globe. As you are probably already aware, the End-of-Life date is July 14th. Needless to say, that is coming up pretty quickly. There are perceived, and often real, challenges involved in upgrading applications. However, there are some serious drawbacks if you do not migrate. First, no new updates will be developed or released after end of support. Not migrating could also cause compliance issues for various regulatory and industry standards. Furthermore, staying put will cost more in the end. Maintenance costs for outdated hardware will increase and there will be additional costs for security measures that need to be taken.

On the flip side, benefits of migrating include reducing operational costs and increasing efficiencies, improving employee productivity, the ability to be cloud ready, and increasing business agility. There are different paths you can take, such as migrating to Windows Server 2012, Azure, or Office 365 as an individual product or as a Platform as a Service.

During the events, David will cover:

  • Developing an action plan and ways Azure and Office 365 can be part of it.
  • Potential migration pitfalls
  • Determining which applications will run “as is” on new platforms and which won’t
  • The areas of your infrastructure that will be affected by End of Life.
  • Examples of GreenPages’ customers going to the cloud, including how they approached the decision process and what their experiences were like.

You can register here. If there isn’t an event near you but you’re interested in learning more on the topic, I would highly recommend downloading David’s whitepaper.  These should be great events (plus you get a free lunch and entered to win an Xbox One)! Below is some more information on event locations.

Portland, Maine

  • March 26th from 10am-11am at the Portland Harbor Hotel

Tampa, Florida

  • April 1st from 10am-2pm at the Microsoft Campus

Alpharetta, Georgia

  • April 2nd from 10am-2pm at the Microsoft Campus

Cambridge, Massachusetts

  • April 7th from 10am-2pm at the Microsoft Campus

 

If you have any specific questions about event logistics, feel free to reach out to Kelsey Barrett, our Marketing and Event Coordinator.

 

By Ben Stephenson, Emerging Media Specialist

 

connected car, Ford Motor Co., Internet of Things, Microsoft, MyFord, News & Analysis, Sanjay Ravi, Vendor

Ford deploys connected car platform on Microsoft’s cloud

Ford plans to roll out the Azure-based service later this year

Ford plans to roll out the Azure-based service later this year

Ford Motor Company and Microsoft have teamed up to create the Ford Service Delivery Network, a cloud-based connected car platform for Ford vehicles the companies said would make it easier and faster to add more in-car digital services.

Microsoft said the service will provide Ford a global platform to enable over-the-air software updates and expand availability of MyFord and MyLincoln Mobile connected services, which ships with features like scheduled remote start, vehicle finder, and vehicle status (fuel or charge level, tire pressure).

The connected car platform will be hosted on Azure-based technology in a combination of Azure and Ford datacentres.

“As consumers shift toward more cloud-based services, the Ford Service Delivery Network architecture is a strategic approach to keep vehicles up-to-date and relevant throughout the vehicle ownership period by making it easy to add or evolve services. Microsoft Azure provides a global common cloud platform that allows Ford to deliver services worldwide and scale quickly to reach its broad customer base,” explained Sanjay Ravi, senior director of worldwide manufacturing at Microsoft.

“This means that Ford can send updates as they become available, ensuring customers will have the latest technology as it becomes available,” Ravi said.

Customer deployment will begin later this year, the companies said.

Microsoft is among a growing fleet of technology firms looking to capitalise on growth of the connected car market. According to global telecoms association the GSMA the size of the market will nearly triple over the next four years to $53bn.

Delve, Internet of Things, IoT, Microsoft, News & Analysis, Office, Satya Nadella, Software as a service, Vendor

Microsoft reveals Office 2016, Skype for Business, Azure IoT services

Microsoft chief exec Satya Nadella previewed a number of new services at Convergence this week

Microsoft chief exec Satya Nadella previewed a number of new services at Convergence this week

Microsoft revealed a slew of new cloud offerings and updates to its productivity offerings at the company’s annual Convergence conference this week, including a developer and enterprise preview of Office 2016, a re-branded Microsoft Lync (Skype for Business), and an Azure-based suite of Internet of Things services.

The company was keen to show off Office 2016, which will be available later this year and ship with a few new services – notably Office Delve, which uses machine learning algorithms to surface corporate Office 265 documents and files that are relevant to specific users in a cloud-based collaboration environment.

“You know how Facebook has a newsfeed? Think of this as your work newsfeed,” said Satya Nadella, chief executive officer of Microsoft. “It’s about enabling anyone in the organisation to find useful information without having corporate hierarchies get in the way.”

Microsoft also announced the general availability of PowerBI, it’s analytics and dashboarding platform, which will come with new connectors for Google Analytics, Microsoft Dynamics Marketing, Zuora, Acumatica and Twilio – with connections for other analytics platforms coming in the near future.

Microsoft Lync, the company’s enterprise collaboration and communications platform, has been re-branded to Skype for Business and been given a noticeable facelift.

The company also unified its Azure-based analytics and machine learning offerings into what Microsoft is calling the Microsoft Azure IoT Suite. The suite combines Azure Stream Analytics and Azure ML (machine learning) and is being aimed at developers creating real-time data services.

“Devices will come and go. But the most interesting thing is the data being collected,” Nadella said, adding that the rapid increase in the volume and velocity of data requires better and more unified tools for developers.

“We’re going to have something like 26 billion internet-connected devices and 44 zettabytes of data in the cloud by 2019,” Nadella said. “How do we make sure that the ability to have access to that data, the ability to act on the insight – those small patterns that, we as humans, recognise in data? The real power comes from our ability to act on those insights.”

Desktop virtualization, Microsoft, Parallels Desktop, Parallels Desktop for Mac, run windows on mac, Virtual machine, Windows, Windows Install, Windows Updates

Things You Can Do While Waiting for Windows Updates to Install

It’s the end of the day. Sighing, you start your daily ritual of closing any programs or tabs on your computer. Finally, you go to shut down your Windows virtual machine on Parallels Desktop—you’ll see the happy little Windows flag again in the morning—when the worst happens: The dreaded Windows updates have struck once again! […]

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Microsoft, Parallels Desktop, Parallels Desktop 10, Parallels Desktop for Mac, run windows on mac, Windows, Windows 1, Windows 10, Windows 2, Windows 2000, Windows 3, Windows 3.1, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows Vista, Windows XP

From Windows 1 to Windows 10 in 30 Years

Featured images courtesy of Microsoft. Believe it or not, it’s been 30 years since Microsoft introduced Windows, arguably the most popular operating system in the world. Since its debut in 1985, a lot has changed in the world of the PC—but a lot has also stayed the same. See for yourself by clicking through our […]

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