Pedro Hernandez

Following the late-September debut of Kubernetes 1.4, Microsoft this week announced that its cloud container management offering, Azure Container Service (ACS), now supports the open-source container deployment and orchestration technology. Originating at Google and now a project run by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation at the Linux Foundation, Kubernetes is a container cluster manager that […]

Microsoft has released a new preview build of Skype for Windows 10 PCs and smartphones that enables users to reply to Short Message Service (SMS) and Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) texts. Essentially, the latest Skype client allows Windows 10 PC users to answer texts without needing to grab their phones. “With this feature, you can […]

Soon, smaller companies won’t have to pay extra for Access. Microsoft is bundling its database management system with its Office 365 plans for small and midsize businesses (SMBs). Next month, Microsoft will be rolling out Access, which is presently included with Office 365 ProPlus, E3 and E5 plans, to Business and Business Premium subscribers as […]

Data scientists and organizations considering a cloud-based platform for their big data analytics needs can now evaluate Microsoft’s Data Science Virtual Machine for several hours without paying a dime. “You can launch a VM instance with just a few clicks and explore it fully—no credit cards or Azure subscriptions needed,” wrote Microsoft staffers Paul Shealy, […]

As expected, Microsoft unveiled its answer to Slack at a media event in New York City this week. Currently in beta, the new business team collaboration service, simply called Teams, is only available as part of business Office 365 plans. The move pits Microsoft against a fast-growing startup whose platform quickly became the group collaboration […]

Bletchley v1 is now available in the Azure Marketplace cloud app store, laying the foundation for business blockchains on Microsoft’s cloud. Introduced in June, Project Bletchley is an Ethereum-based technology for creating blockchains quickly, wherein a preselected set of trusted nodes manages the consensus process. In September, Microsoft launched Bletchley v1, cutting the time it […]

Microsoft on Nov. 2 took the wraps off its new team collaboration service for Office 365 called Teams, confirming rumors that the company was preparing its own platform to rival the popular Slack platform. Rumblings of a Slack rival from Redmond, Wash., began to surface earlier this year after Microsoft had reportedly considered buying the […]

Furthering its mission to turn its business email client into a productivity hub, Microsoft released a new add-in for Outlook that integrates Dynamics CRM data and functionality to users’ inboxes. The add-in, dubbed the Dynamics 365 app for Outlook, is part of Microsoft’s newly launched Dynamics 365 ecosystem. Backed by the company’s cloud, the unified […]

Microsoft is taking a new approach to contributing new cloud hardware designs to the Open Compute Project, the company announced this week. Going back to its roots, the company’s new initiative, called Project Olympus, will take a software-like approach to developing new open-source designs for data centers. The company hopes to imbue some of the […]

Dynamics NAV 2017, Microsoft’s ERP software platform is now generally available. In some significant ways, the new release mirrors how cloud-enabled analytics and machine-learning technologies are permeating the company’s business software offerings. This time, instead of delivering those capabilities to corporate customers, Microsoft is aiming them at the market for small- and midsize-business (SMB) software […]