Today’s topics include a new mobile plan from Sprint, details on Apple’s new music streaming service, a change in Microsoft’s Dynamics product development teams and more on the fallout from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management data breach.
Sprint rolled out a new mobile phone plan, called All-In, which gives customers one monthly $80 price for a smartphone as well as unlimited text, talk and high-speed data, except for taxes and certain fees.
The All-In phone plans are meant to provide clearer pricing for consumers who presently have to price their smartphone payments, data plans and basic monthly mobile service plans individually, which makes it harder to figure total costs in a straight-forward manner, according to Sprint.
Apple Music, the new streaming music service Apple is introducing June 30, will allow users to integrate their existing iTunes collections and learn about new artists or music from expert curators.
The services will also let subscribers select their favorite and least-favorite types of music so Apple music can share suggestions based on user preferences.
The service, priced at $9.99 per month, will initially be available to Mac, iPhone, iPad and iPod users once they upgrade to the latest iOS 8.4 operating system. It will be available to Apple TV and Android users by the fall.
In a June 17 email to employees, Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, announced the company is moving the development teams that create Dynamics products to C+E [Cloud and Enterprise] division, which will allow them to accelerate the company’s ERP and CRM work and mainstream them as part of Microsoft’s core engineering and innovation efforts.
Headed by Executive Vice President Scott Guthrie, Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise division is responsible for the company’s expansive Azure cloud software and services slate, as well as its server products.
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) continues to deal with the consequences of a massive breach of the agency’s IT systems that was first publicly disclosed on June 4.
On June 29, the OPM announced that it is shutting down its Web-based e-QIP system for doing background checks on potential employees.
The shutdown of the e-QIP system is a result of a vulnerability that was identified by the OPM after it began a comprehensive security review of its computer systems. The OPM stated that it has no conclusive evidence that the vulnerability in the e-QIP system has been exploited.