Share via

Weekly #WhyMSFT Round-Up 10/21/2011

  • Article

Each week, we round up industry news and articles you might have missed. Enjoy this week’s selections.

Microsoft Office 365 and SQL Azure Updates: What's on Tap A number of Microsoft’s major service platforms, including Office 365 (and its Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Lync Online components); SQL Azure; and Dynamics CRM Online are set to be rev’d before the end of this calendar year.

Ballmer Says Microsoft is ‘Winning, Winning, Winning’ in Rivalry with Google Apps
“If you look at it, when it comes to enterprises moving to the cloud, the first thing people tend to look at is productivity and communications,” said Ballmer at the Web 2.0 Summit yesterday, when asked about Microsoft’s progress in cloud computing. “We are winning, winning, winning, winning, winning. Doesn’t mean the other guys don’t win a couple, but man, we’re successful.”

Skype Now Officially Property of Microsoft
Instant messaging and IP telephony are only a small part of the picture of Microsoft's acquisition of Skype and its integration with Lync. The main thing now is video. Since early this year, Microsoft has shown its efforts at bringing video chat to everything from Xboxes with Kinect to Office 365 to the iPhone via Bing mobile web app, and today's announcement of the Skype acquisition included an infographic showing all kinds of video calling stats.

5 Ways Skype Buy Helps Microsoft
Microsoft closed its $8.5 billion deal to acquire Skype on Thursday. Now Steve Ballmer and company need to set about integrating the VoIP specialist's products and technology with its own software. Here's a look at how Skype benefits Redmond's existing product lines.

Windows Azure Beats Amazon EC2, Google App Engine in Cloud Speed Test
Microsoft’s Windows Azure has beaten all competitors in a year’s worth of cloud speed tests, coming out ahead of Amazon EC2, Google App Engine, Rackspace and a dozen others.

Microsoft Works to Win Desktop Users Over to the Start Screen
The data and rationale for the Start screen makes a strong case that it really is a faster, more effective way of using the interface. And the underlying change—the greater purity in design, the willingness to not provide every possible option and alternative—should result in a user interface that's more predictable, more consistent, and more efficient.

Vint Cerf on Google's Privacy Practices and How Getting Tagged in a Multitude of Online Media is Disconcerting
Few companies inspire the awe and the dread about privacy concerns that Google does, because of its search engine, Google maps and its Street View imagery, its Gmail e-mail and other cloud-based services.

If you have a blog post or article you want to see in next week’s round-up, tweet a link to us at @whymicrosoft or post it in the comments below.

 

Comments