Microsoft News & Articles

Oracle has released its Business Intelligence Foundation Suite 11g, and among the dozens of changes is a Microsoft Office update that adopts the Oracle Smart View for Office as the single Microsoft Office add in for Oracle BI, Essbase and Hyperion Enterprise Performance Management apps.

Cloud-based infrastructure/application services provider Amazon Web Services (AWS) is significantly reducing the cost of Windows-On-Demand instances for the Amazon EC2 scalable cloud computing service. 

Microsoft recently announced its phased approach for integrating Yammer with SharePoint 2013, so it will be much later this year before we see any meaningful work completed to bring the two platforms together. But in the meantime, users can look forward to easier access to Yammer from within Office 365 and SharePoint Online.

It may have been a holiday weekend in some places, but it was still busy in the document management space. This week we took a look at the paperless office and records management, Accusoft upgraded Content Connect to v7, AvePoint improved governance in SharePoint online, while Zoho integrated new email capabilities with its CRM app.

 Having received modest interest and a total bath on their first tablet products, Surface and PlayBook, various reports suggest Microsoft and BlackBerry will be trying again to compete with the tablet giants soon. 

Both companies are facing press, partner or investor backlash, and user hostility, or worse, indifference. Apple should be looking to win back lost momentum with the next iPhone announcement while Microsoft will be looking to tie computer, mobile devices and TV together via its next Xbox console. 

Windows 8 was a bold move for Microsoft. And whether you are a regular Microsoft or iOS user, businesses looking to build a line of business mobile applications should consider Windows 8 a front runner, specifically if its touch application would augment what you want to do.

 An early build of Windows Blue, the first upgrade for Windows 8, somewhere between a service pack and Windows 9, has leaked online allowing users a peek at what Microsoft plans for its evolved user interface. Will it make any difference to the depressed PC market in a mobile-obsessed world?

Mobile apps have a new weapon in the battle for customer eyeballs, a fight often lost because a company is too focused on getting new customers instead of nurturing current ones. UserVoice, a customer support vendor, has released a tool meant to increase customer engagement, and generate richer feedback right inside the app itself.

Perceptive Interact for Microsoft Dynamics CRM allows users to access and capture all customer or account-related data from any form within the customer relationship management solution, when and where it is needed.

Last month I wrote an article that stated SharePoint, as a brand, would soon disappear. It seems with Microsoft's recent announcement regarding its plans for Yammer, I have been proved correct.

One of the big questions around Yammer after it was snapped up last June was what would, or could, Microsoft do with the social software? And what would it do with Yammer and SharePoint? Previously, it has said it would integrate them in three phases: basic integration, deeper connections and connected experiences. At Convergence yesterday, it gave more details about the integration roadmap.

 While business focuses on big data, the consumer-connected Internet is aiming smaller and smaller, with data presented on smart watches supposed to be the next big thing. But where could we see true innovation, and not just cloning of phone features?

Microsoft’s Convergence conference got into full swing today in New Orleans, and with it came news of a number of releases and upgrades that are on their way for the coming year. But before the releases, the first key note speech from Business Solutions President Kirill Tatarinov, who outlined where Microsoft sees the Dynamics product going.

Microsoft has announced several Windows Azure updates this week including a Hadoop distribution preview called HDInsight.