Pedro Hernandez

Microsoft is preparing to significantly increase the number of smartphones supported by its upcoming Windows 10 operating system. In February, Microsoft kicked off a preview of Windows 10 for smartphones, a major guidepost in the company’s journey toward a single OS that encompasses multiple device classes. The downside was that it supported just six Lumia […]

Microsoft today made good on the pledge it made back in October to include mobile device management (MDM) features with Office 365 early this year. “Today, we are pleased to offer the general availability of MDM capabilities for Office 365,” said Shobhit Sahay, technical product manager for Microsoft Office 365, in a March 30 announcement. […]

Microsoft received 31,002 requests for customer data from the world’s governments from July to December 2014, bringing its total for the year to 65,496, down from 72,279 in 2013, the company announced today. In total, more than 111,000 accounts were affected last year. In terms of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) orders and National Security […]

BlackBerry’s software is a bright spot for the embattled smartphone maker as it tries to orchestrate a turnaround. The Canadian device and secure messaging software provider today announced revenue of $660 million for its fiscal 2015 fourth quarter, which ended Feb. 28, missing analyst estimates of $734.5 million. During the quarter, 1.6 million BlackBerry smartphones […]

Microsoft has reached a major milestone in its bid to gather support for the company’s health and fitness tracking wearable, the Band. The company has released the Band SDK (software development kit) preview and sample code for iOS, Apple’s mobile operating system, a month after releasing versions for Android and Windows Phone. The SDK includes […]

Salt, the popular open-source DevOps tool, has come to Microsoft Azure. After demonstrating the technology on Azure during SaltConf15 in Salt Lake City earlier this month, Kundana Palagiri, senior program manager for Microsoft Azure, announced today in a statement that the project “has released a single click solution for deploying SaltStack Enterprise on Azure from […]

Microsoft’s Azure Active Directory (AD) connect tool, currently in preview, has received an update with functionality targeting administrators that plan to take a measured approach to rolling out their own single sign-on environments. As its name suggests, Azure AD Connect is software that links on-premise Windows Server Active Directory with its cloud-based alternative Azure AD, […]

Since Edward Snowden lifted the veil on the U.S. National Security Agency’s (NSA) extensive spying capabilities, Microsoft has emerged as an outspoken critic of the government’s intelligence-gathering tactics. Today, the Redmond, Wash.-based tech titan is once again imploring government leaders to rein in the NSA. “Today, Microsoft and members of the Reform Government Surveillance coalition, […]

Businesses running Office 2013 can now test out the new, security-enhancing Active Directory Authentication Library (ADAL) sign-in features, announced Microsoft. “Office 2013 client modern authentication features have moved from private preview to public preview,” Paul Andrew, technical product manager for Identity Management on the Office 365 team, said in a statement. “This means the program […]

Microsoft is bringing the company’s productivity apps to more Android devices by inking some major new OEM deals, announced the Redmond, Wash., software maker this week. During the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona, Spain, earlier this month, Microsoft announced that Samsung would preinstall OneNote, Skype, and the OneDrive file storage and sync app, […]

Microsoft Translator, the Redmond, Wash.-based software maker’s cloud-based language translation service, welcomed three new languages this week. “We are happy to announce that we have added three new languages—Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian—to our list of supported languages,” announced the Microsoft Translator Team in a March 19 statement. “This brings the total number of languages supported […]

Office 365 ProPlus customers will soon have more control over the productivity suite’s impact on IT operations. ProPlus is similar to other Microsoft Office 365 plans, but differs in how Office applications are deployed. “Office 365 ProPlus uses a technology called Click-to-Run to install Office. It provides a faster installation, so users can be up […]