Today’s topics include Microsoft and Citrix’s partnership to deliver a remote network access application for Azure. Cisco’s release of its Meeting Server product that will improve interoperability between Skype for business and other collaboration platforms, Microsoft and MIT’s plan to bring digital tattoos to new markets and AT&T’s discounts for prepaid multiline GoPhone users.
Microsoft is shutting down its cloud-based Azure RemoteApp in 2017. Taking its place is a new collaboration between Microsoft and virtual desktop specialist Citrix called XenApp Express.
The product, currently under development, “combines the simplicity of application remoting and the scalability of Azure with the security, management, and performance benefits of XenApp, to deliver Windows applications to any employee on any device,” wrote Microsoft’s Remote Desktop group in an Aug. 12 blog post.
“We will have much more to share on this offering through the coming months.” To make way for XenApp Express, Microsoft plans to shut down Azure RemoteApp in just over a year, on Aug. 31, 2017. Microsoft will stop taking orders for the service on Oct. 1.
Cisco Systems and Microsoft have for a while been the dominant players in the competitive and rapidly evolving enterprise collaboration space. Now, Cisco officials are offering new technology that will make it easier for Microsoft’s Skype for Business to interoperate with other platforms.
On Aug. 15, the networking company unveiled Cisco Meeting Server, a product that enables Skype for Business users to connect with others who are using conferencing systems from other vendors—including Polycom and Avaya—mobile clients or WebRTC-enabled browsers, all by simply clicking a link.
You could use a smartwatch to control the music coming from your smartphone, zipped inside the bag on your shoulder, but how much less expensive, and more expressive, might it be to instead tap a temporary tattoo?
The intersection of wearable devices and body art is the focus of a collaboration effort between Microsoft Research and the MIT Media Lab. This September, at the International Symposium on Wearable Computers in Heidelberg, Germany, they’ll present a paper on a fabrication process they call DuoSkin.
It uses gold metal leaf as an on-skin conductor for three functions, touch input, wireless communication with other induction-based devices, such as near-field communications and thermo-chromatic displays, which change color to reflect temperature changes.
AT&T has unveiled a new discount program for GoPhone users that provides up to $150 a month in savings for businesses with up to 10 lines and $50 a month in savings for families with up to five GoPhone service lines.
The multiline discounts for 4G LTE GoPhone prepaid, no-contract wireless services were announced Aug. 12 by AT&T as a way for subscribers to save money on multiple GoPhone lines, just as the company offers discounts for its postpaid and contract customers.
The monthly service discounts, which will begin Aug. 19, offer $5 off for the second line, $10 off the third line, $15 off the fourth line and $20 off the fifth line, for a total of $50 in discounts for family users.
Business customers get the same discounts, plus a $20 a month discount on each of the sixth through tenth lines, for a total savings of $150 a month. The discounts are only available for AT&T’s $45 3GB high-speed monthly GoPhone data plan or the $60 6GB monthly GoPhone prepaid service plan.