Pedro Hernandez

The Internet of things beckons, and Microsoft wants to help businesses realize its game-changing and potentially profit-boosting potential. Gartner predicts that IoT will encompass 26 billion devices by 2020, excluding PCs, tablets and smartphones. Peter Middleton, research director at Gartner, said in a statement that IoT growth “will far exceed that of other connected devices. […]

Microsoft had something big in store for its “small gathering” on May 20. During the press event, instead of unveiling the widely anticipated Surface Mini, the company took the wraps off the Surface Pro 3, an even bigger version of the company’s tablet with PC-based internals. Microsoft’s target: notebook PCs. “Surface Pro 3 is the […]

Microsoft Bills Surface Pro 3 as Business Laptop Replacement by Pedro Hernandez Surface Pro 3: A Big, Dazzling Screen Panos Panay, head of Microsoft’s Surface division, called the Surface Pro 3’s 12-inch, 2,160 by 1,440 touch-screen a “pixel-fee” display. Indeed, individual pixels are tough to discern. The downside: Reading tiny text practically requires a magnifying […]

NEW YORK—Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella took to the stage in an industrial part of lower Manhattan to kick off the launch of the Surface Pro 3. The highly anticipated Surface Mini was a no-show, however. Before offering a glimpse of the new hardware and divulging its technical specifications, Nadella discussed Microsoft’s hardware strategy. Anchored by […]

On the eve of a big Microsoft announcement, the industry is waiting to see if a smaller, more compact iteration of the Surface tablet is part of the company’s new “mobile-first” approach to IT. Tomorrow, the tech press will descend on Lower Manhattan to see what Microsoft has in store for its Surface tablet product […]

Following on the heels of the Desktop Optimization Pack 2014 release, Microsoft has announced a beta of the user settings management component, called User Experience Virtualization (UE-V). Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) is the software giant’s desktop virtualization and management toolset. Mainstream corporate adoption of smartphones and tablets make it less likely that users will […]

Microsoft SQL Server 2014 may have just left the gate, but there are already indications that the technology could have a big impact on the IT operations of the software giant’s customers. SQL Server 2014 has been generally available since April 1. Sporting new features including in-memory online transaction processing (OLTP), solid-state disk (SSD)-based buffer […]

Cortana and Bing aren’t the only products to benefit from Microsoft’s efforts to advance natural language processing. For months, users of the Redmond, Wash.-based tech titan’s Word Online browser-based app have been able to dive into its advanced functionality without digging through menus. Tell Me, a search box that appears in the center of the […]

Businesses waiting for Microsoft’s next big Dynamics CRM Server release may need to start shedding some older versions of Windows Server and SQL. Following this quarter’s release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Service Pack 1 and CRM Online Spring ’14, the company has big changes in store for future versions of its on-premise CRM software. […]

Users of Microsoft’s Outlook.com Web-based email and OneDrive for Business cloud storage service will soon notice some user interface (UI) changes, along with expanded functionality, if they haven’t already. Currently in the process of issuing updates to both offerings, Microsoft is outlining how a bevy of new features and UI tweaks can help power users […]