Adobe and Microsoft partner in the Azure cloud to help businesses transform customer engagement

Microsoft Ignite, Adobe and Microsoft Corp. announced plans for a strategic partnership to help enterprise companies embrace digital transformation and deliver compelling, personalized experiences through every phase of their customer relationships. Together, the two companies will enable businesses to dramatically strengthen their brands through solutions with Microsoft Azure, Adobe Marketing Cloud and Microsoft Dynamics 365.

“Business leaders in every industry are focused on how to better engage their digital customers, wherever they are,” said Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. “Together, Adobe and Microsoft are bringing the most advanced marketing capabilities on the most powerful and intelligent cloud to help companies digitally transform and engage customers in new ways.”

“Customers today expect a well-designed, personalized and consistent experience every time they engage with a brand,” said Shantanu Narayen, president and CEO of Adobe. “Adobe and Microsoft will bring together the cloud horsepower and end-to-end capabilities brands need to design and deliver great digital experiences.”

With this partnership, Adobe will make Microsoft Azure its preferred cloud platform for the Adobe Marketing Cloud, Adobe Creative Cloud and Adobe Document Cloud. Azure provides Adobe with a trusted, global cloud and a powerful data platform for intelligent services, including comprehensive machine learning and cognitive capabilities in Microsoft Cortana Intelligence Suite and SQL Server.

Microsoft will make Adobe Marketing Cloud its preferred marketing service for Dynamics 365 Enterprise edition, giving customers a powerful, comprehensive marketing service for Microsoft’s next generation of intelligent business applications.

The two companies are collaborating to create standardized data models for their marketing and business applications — leveraging artificial intelligence, machine learning and advance analytics — that customers can use to create new data-driven sales and marketing capabilities. Adobe and Microsoft intend to make the data models extensible to enterprise customers, as well as third-party developers and partners, in order to foster innovation and development.

Adobe and Microsoft will jointly work with leading companies to help them envision and implement the integrated solutions. As a result, the companies’ mutual customers will be able to harness their data for critical insights and predictions, connect customer touchpoints across their business, bolster relationships, and drive brand loyalty and growth.

About Adobe Systems

Adobe (Nasdaq “ADBE”) is changing the world through digital experiences. For more information, visit www.adobe.com.

About Microsoft

Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) is the leading platform and productivity company for the mobile-first, cloud-first world, and its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

Courtesy : news.microsoft.com

Microsoft acquires automated meeting scheduling app Genee to make Office 365 smarter

Microsoft has announced that it’s acquired Genee, a productivity app that launched in beta last year and focused on automating the task of scheduling meetings. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Genee allowed users to set up meetings without having to consult a calendar. Once Genee was CCed on an email asking a contact for a meeting, the app would email them with options based on your availability and preferences and add the appointment to your schedule. It’s certainly not the only such service to do this; others like x.ai and Clara offer similar capabilities.

Microsoft noted that the Genee team will join the Office 365 fold to help “further our ambition to bring intelligence into every digital experience.” It seems like the obvious move would be to integrate Genee’s meeting scheduling service into Outlook, but Microsoft hasn’t specified whether that’s on the cards.

The Redmond giant has been doubling down on productivity apps in the past couple of years: Earlier this year it acquired professional social network LinkedIn; in 2015, it bought to-do tool Wunderlist, the popular Sunrise calendar, mobile team chat service Talko and MileIQ, a mileage-tracking app; in 2014, it snapped up email app Acompli.

Genee will shut down its own service on September 1; it will stop sending out reminders, but all existing entries in your calendar created by Genee will remain.

Courtesy : thenextweb.com

Microsoft to release two Windows 10 updates in 2017

Technology giant Microsoft has announced that it would roll out two major updates for Windows 10 next year after releasing a third and final update for 2016.

"Windows 10, version 1607 is our third Windows 10 feature update released. Based on feedback from organisations moving to Windows 10, this will be our last feature update for 2016, with two additional feature updates expected in 2017," the company wrote in a blog on Saturday.

According to Windows Central, while the first major update for 2017 – codenamed Redstone 2 – would release in the early part of 2017, the second one – codenamed Redstone 3 – might be released in 2017 summer.

This update pattern is similar to the one that the Threshold update wave followed.

Much like Threshold 2 was to Threshold 1, Redstone 3 is likely to be a much smaller update compared to Redstone 2.

Microsoft is currently in the middle of Redstone 2 development with the latest internal builds now being compiled around the 14900 range, the report said.

Courtesy : Business-Standard

Sriram Rajamani appointed MD of Microsoft's India lab

Based in Bengaluru, he will spearhead Microsoft India's continued focus on world-class research, innovation and collaboration with the scientific community, the company said in a release.

Microsoft today announced the appointment of Sriram Rajamani as new managing director of its India lab.

Based in Bengaluru, he will spearhead Microsoft India's continued focus on world-class research, innovation and collaboration with the scientific community, the company said in a release.

He replaces Chandu Thekkath, who was managing director of the lab for two years.

Welcoming Sriram, Jeannette Wing, Corporate Vice-President Microsoft Research Labs said "India has one of the fastest growing and most dynamic IT industries, and it's also a unique place in which to do cutting-edge research." Prior to joining the India lab, Rajamani headed the Software Productivity Tools group within Microsoft's Redmond research lab.

Courtesy : Money Control