Pedro Hernandez

Microsoft is expanding is data center operations in Iowa. The giant software and cloud services provider has been identified as the company behind the massive “Project Alluvion” on a 154-acre site in West Des Moines. The data center is expected to cost nearly $1.13 billion, according to a report in The Quad-City Times. It will […]

Microsoft will end this week with Nokia’s devices unit officially under its corporate umbrella. “Today we are excited to share that we have completed the steps necessary to finalize Microsoft’s acquisition of the Nokia Devices and Services business,” announced Microsoft’s Brad Smith, general counsel and executive vice president of the software giant’s Legal and Corporate […]

Cortana can speak, listen, decipher text queries and get to know users, courtesy of Microsoft’s search and machine-learning technologies. According to the software giant’s research arm, the company has much bigger plans for Cortana. Drawing parallels from the current state of Cortana to the simplistic, bare-bones experiences provided by early search engines, Microsoft Research Distinguished […]

Microsoft has just passed a major milestone—having shipped 5 million Xbox One gaming consoles. “More than 5 million Xbox One consoles have been sold-in to retailers since our launch,” Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president of Marketing, Strategy and Business at Xbox, announced in an April 17 blog post. The Xbox One first hit store shelves […]

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella took to the stage during a customer event in San Francisco on April 15 to commemorate the launch of SQL Server 2014. While the newest edition of the company’s database has been generally available since April 1, Nadella used the occasion to celebrate its launch and showcase how it fits into […]

As the cloud computing market grows bigger, so do the power requirements to keep it afloat. Tech companies are increasingly turning to renewables and energy-efficient technologies to decrease their reliance on old, power grids that burn fossil fuels to generate electricity. Microsoft announced April 16 that it had partnered with the University of Texas at […]

Currently, only developers can tinker with Cortana, Microsoft’s voice-enabled digital assistant technology for Windows Phone 8.1. But the general public can get a sampling of the personalization features that the company has in store with a new update to Bing. Cortana, named after a major AI character in the “Halo” video game series, is Microsoft’s […]

Microsoft is working on gesture-based computing, bringing the future depicted by the “Minority Report” closer to reality. To help bring about this future, the software giant is banking on two technologies, Kinect for Windows and Perceptive Pixel’s large touch displays. Both are powering attractions at the company’s Envisioning Center in Redmond, Wash., a showcase of […]

Microsoft, on April 15, launched its single-user version of the cloud-friendly productivity software package called Office 365 Personal. First announced last month, the new plan allows users to install Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote) apps on one PC and one tablet. It also includes an extra 20GB of OneDrive cloud storage, 60 minutes […]

Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform can do more than process enterprise workloads and power the company’s wide-ranging online services portfolio. It can also help researchers fish out scientific discoveries from a sea of big data. While Microsoft’s cloud is largely defined by its consumer- and business-friendly capabilities, the company has been reaching out to the scientific […]