Pedro Hernandez

Cloud computing’s ascent in recent years has provided CIOs and IT managers with yet another security headache to contend with: shadow IT. Microsoft’s new Cloud App Security, officially released today, helps take the mystery out of this vexing problem. Shadow IT generally refers to the unsanctioned use of public software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications and cloud services […]

Windows 10 Anniversary Update, due out this summer, is shaping into a featured-packed refresh of Microsoft’s flagship operating system. During Microsoft’s Build developer conference in San Francisco last week, the company revealed that in addition to a smarter, more capable Cortana and new inking capabilities, it was adding native support for Hyper-V Containers to Windows […]

Microsoft and NetEnrich are working to bridge the gap between small and midsize businesses (SMBs) and the cloud. According to Raju Checkuri, founder and CEO of IT infrastructure management company NetEnrich, the cloud has made enterprise-grade IT capabilities more attainable to SMBs. But aside from email, file storage and a smattering of business software offerings, […]

Microsoft has partnered with the R3 blockchain consortium to help speed up development of distributed ledger platforms for the financial services industry, the Redmond, Wash., software maker announced April 4 during its inaugural Envision conference for business leaders in New Orleans. Blockchain is best known as the technical foundation of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Hailed […]

Microsoft is getting closer to finalizing SQL Server 2016. On April 1, the company announced the availability of the database software’s third release candidate (RC). The software is “nearly feature complete,” said Microsoft’s SQL Server team in an April 1 blog post. “These include real-time operational analytics, rich visualizations on mobile devices, built-in advanced analytics, […]

While the industry is still buzzing about Microsoft bringing Bash to Windows 10, the software giant also unveiled several new Office 365 capabilities at the Build conference this week in San Francisco. Microsoft announced an assortment of new features, application programming interfaces (APIs) and software development kits (SDKs) that are poised to change the way […]

Addressing the security concerns of businesses mulling placing valuable data on the public cloud, Microsoft this week announced a beta of Azure Storage Service Encryption. The no-charge feature enables businesses to safeguard Azure Blob (block, append and page blobs) data at rest, according to Lavanya Kasarabada, a Microsoft Azure Storage program manager. A blob is […]

One of the major themes of this year’s Build developer conference in San Francisco is “Conversations as a Platform.” Microsoft envisions ushering in an era of conversational intelligence, in which devices, software tools and cloud services coalesce to form intelligent “conversational canvases,” as CEO Satya Nadella termed the concept during his keynote presentation yesterday. One […]

Microsoft’s flagship operating system has long supported digital inking, but the upcoming Windows 10 Anniversary Update promises to turn the stylus into a more integral part of the Windows experience. During the opening keynote at Microsoft’s Build developer conference in San Francisco, the software giant announced Windows Ink that extends pen support to more applications […]

AtScale is easing the way for enterprises to run big data business intelligence and analytics directly on their Hadoop clusters. During the Strata + Hadoop World 2016 conference in today, the San Mateo, Calif.-based big data analytics software provider announced the release of AtScale Intelligence Platform 4. This latest version solves one of the biggest […]

Microsoft’s latest transparency reports are out, and the data shows the law enforcement agencies across the globe have stepped up their efforts to obtain user data stored in the Redmond, Wash., tech giant’s cloud and online services. During the second half of 2015, Microsoft fielded 39,083 legal requests affecting more than 64,600 users, compared with […]

During last year’s Strata + Hadoop World conference, Microsoft embraced Linux in its push to lure enterprises onto its growing portfolio of cloud-based big data offerings. This year, Microsoft is banking on extensive support for R, the statistical computing language that’s popular among data scientists and developers for big data application integration and self-service data […]