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Microsoft Reveals its Xbox Scarlett Project at the Briefing Prior to E3 2019

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One day to go for the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2019, and Microsoft has already given some hints on the products, it is going to showcase at the event, especially, its latest Xbox console. This time one of its biggest rivals, Sony, is not even appearing at the event, which has made the company even more excited. But Sony is not the only rival for the company this time, and Google‘s Stadia is also here to give Microsoft a great competition.

Microsoft Xbox
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This year’s E3 event is quite special for the company as it will be introducing a next-generation Xbox video game console by the codename, Project Scarlett, at the event. The game is forty times better at performance than its previous versions and has been developed by the same team which developed Xbox One.

This new Xbox machine possesses newly developed custom Zen 2-based processor CPU and will have real-time ray tracing for more genuine graphics. The machine will render the variable refresh rates as high as 120 frames per second. It is also incorporated with GDDR6 memory as well as GPU (Navi graphics processing unit) from Advanced Micro Devices. There will also be an SSD in the machine that will reduce the screen loading time.

Since the company has brought the cloud to the gaming, Scarlett will provide the support for multiplayer gaming through streaming and will also support the other gaming platforms. Also, it will continue to support thousands of Xbox games from previous generations through the cloud.

During the briefing prior to E3 event, Phil Spencer, head of Microsoft’s Xbox, said, “Project Scarlett is the foundation of our future in consoles and the formation of our future in the cloud. Consoles should be designed, built and optimised for one thing and one thing only: gaming.”

According to Microsoft, the company will be launching the new Scarlett Xbox during the holidays of 2020.

Along with Scarlett, Microsoft’s streaming service has also been much awaited. The company has revealed that it will release the streaming service in coming October. The streaming service will allow the players to connect their consoles to the Xbox Cloud and explore thousands of games through it. The console can be connected to the Xbox Cloud from any place and through any internet connection.

At its two hours conference, Microsoft also announced 60 new games, among which 14 are from its own Xbox Studio team.

Microsoft and Oracle Partners to Interconnect their Cloud Services

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Microsoft is up to something big, and that has become quite obvious, as it has been getting into collaboration with its enterprise peers for quite some time now. Recently it joined hands with Sony, and before that, it had partnered with companies like Adobe and SAP for different projects. And now, Microsoft will be getting together with the biggest database company Oracle to share their cloud services with each other.

Microsoft and Oracle
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The two companies announced today that they have reached an agreement, where they will connect their clouds such that the users will be able to use both the services to migrate and run mission-critical enterprise workloads across Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud. This way, both the companies will be able to share data, and the load with each other, seamlessly.

The alliance between the two companies is not a mere that matter of connecting both the clouds, but will provide a variety of useful facilities to both companies as well as its users. With the partnership, Microsoft can better focus on carrying out the workloads, and Oracle will be able to emerge as a dominant player in the cloud computing industry, as it has not been able to make a mark like its rivals Amazon, Google and Microsoft, have.

With this partnership between Microsoft and Oracle, the Oracle users will be able to run its applications, including JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, Oracle Retail and Hyperion on Azure. The users will also be able to run the different Oracle database such as RAC and Exadata on the Azure cloud.

“With this alliance, our joint customers can migrate their entire set of existing applications to the cloud without having to re-architect anything, preserving the large investments they have already made,” the executive vice president of Oracle’s cloud infrastructure unit, Don Johnson, said in a statement.

The service has been made available in Azure US East and Oracle’s Ashburn data centre, starting from today. And, the companies plan to expand it to other regions as well.

Microsoft Office Brings New Features and Bug Fixes for Insiders

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Microsoft Office is not only the favourite of the Windows users but also the iOS devices users, due to the updates it keeps providing to its users. Now again Microsoft has come with new updates for the Windows insiders that include the new features, bug fixes and performance improvements. The Office Insider Build for Windows 10, officially tagged with the name 11727.20034, has already been released, which the users can check on their PCs.

The features included in the new build are the ability to scribble in e-mail messages and the option to choose where and how the links must open in MS Office programs.

Yes, now the users will be able to write directly into the emails, with the help of a digital pen, stylus and even with a finger. This new feature is called the ‘Ink Input’, which also allow the users to draw freehand sketches into an image. The feature also includes many inbuilt effects, like rainbow pen and the galaxy pen, that can be used to improvise the email communication, drawings and show much more of creativity.

The other feature will provide the users with the option to choose where to open the links. For example, if the user wants to open the URL in a browser or within the app.

Other than the new features, the company has released many bug fixes such that to improve the performance of the Office software. To provide the new features and the bug fixes to its users, Microsoft has opted for machine learning and Artificial Intelligence.

The insider users who want to get the new updates need to go their Office suite’s File menu and select the Account option, in which they need to opt for Update Options and then click on Update Now.

Microsoft and Sony Joins Hands on Cloud-based Streaming for Games and Other Content

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Microsoft and Sony have been the biggest rivals with their major consumer interactive entertainment franchises – Xbox and PlayStation. But for the surprise of all, the game lovers and the other rivals and even the partner companies of the two, Microsoft and Sony have partnered with each other for sharing a few of each other’s services to get benefits from them.

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The two tech giants announced on Thursday, that they are seeking to join hands such that Sony will be able to use the Microsoft’s Azure cloud to stream games over it and will participate in the research works along with the latter on Azure, in order to explore its scope for the game and other content streaming. Similarly, the two will be working together in order to develop new image sensors.

“Our mission is to seamlessly evolve this platform as one that continues to deliver the best and most immersive entertainment experiences, together with a cloud environment that ensures the best possible experience, anytime, anywhere. I believe that our joint development of future cloud solutions will contribute greatly to the advancement of interactive content.” Kenichiro Yoshida, President and CEO of Sony, said in a statement.

The partnership between the two can be considered as the prevention for the tough competition, that they may face in the coming future, as Google and Apple both have announced their new game streaming platforms, Stadia and Arcade. Both the game streaming services are expected to be threats for both their contemporaries, Sony and Microsoft. In fact, Apple’s Arcade game streaming service is the world’s first game subscription service for both desktop and mobile, which has already attracted the attention of many and are eagerly waiting for the same.

On the other hand, the other biggest gaming company, Nintendo, has also refurbished its Switch consoles giving a tough competition to the other gaming companies and leaving them behind with their outdated gaming services.

The deal between Sony and Microsoft is still at its early stage, and the two companies, along with developing the image sensors is also planning to work together in the field of semiconductors and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Though the plans look pretty promising, seeing the two rival companies work together will be interesting.

Dell Wants to Bring Automated and Efficient Cloud Infrastructure

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Dell, one of the biggest computer maker company, which started its journey 35 years ago by selling PCs directly to the consumer is now planning to expand its cloud infrastructure to make it more intelligent, automated and efficient.

At the Dell Technologies World 2019 held in Las Vegas, Michael Dell the founder, chairman and CEO of Dell Technologies, revealed about the new Dell Technologies Cloud offering, that will be a combined project of Dell, Azure, Microsoft and VMWare. All those companies have partnered with each other to accelerate the digital transformation for their customers and bring a hybrid cloud solution to them. All the three will be combining their data centres, workplace solutions and cloud technologies to attain the very objective.

“Every business, every organisation, every government, and every healthcare organisation needs to re-imagine itself in this digital age. There are an explosion and tsunami of data that is sweeping us into the digital age. Data is our greatest asset and most important resource. Turning that data into action and progress and outcomes and success is the heart of digital transformation,” said Dell.

According to the company, other companies own their separate clouds, and it becomes tough for them to set up a multi-cloud strategy. So to simplify such complex tasks Dell is planning to bring a hybrid cloud solution, that will also render easy to handle interface. Dell’s cloud approach revolves around VMWare and targets to connect with public cloud service providers like AWS.

“For many organisations, the increasingly diverse cloud landscape is resulting in an enormous amount of IT complexity, and no one is more qualified or capable to help customers solve this challenge than Dell Technologies,” said Jeff Clarke, the vice chairman of products and operations at Dell.

Microsoft Announces New Extended AI and Machine Learning Services to its Azure MI

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Machine Learning is not the next big thing, but the current hot topic, which is the main focus of every tech giant today. Even though this technology is so much in demand, learning and experimenting with this technology needs a lot of expertise. So, to simplify things, Microsoft has announced that it is going to launch three new services to help people try their hands on machine learning and learn it better.

AzureML
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“There is a category of AI practitioners, who are learning machine learning concepts, they want to make their own models, but they are not coders. This could be IT professionals or folks with a background in statistics or mathematics. For those customers, we’re offering experiences to make models visually.” said Microsoft’s director of artificial intelligence Bharat Sandhu.

Those new services will be the enhancements to Azure Machine Learning. The Azure Machine Learning lets the users create AI architectures for cloud-hosted and on-premises apps. With the new services, Azure MI will now make the process of model creation more simpler, providing the users with a simple drag and drop visual MI dashboard, from which they can customize their MI program.

The new services that the company will be launching include an interface, which will be responsible to automate the process of model creation. This way the developers do not have to write even a single line of code. The company has also added new algorithms and optimizations to the platform, that will help in creating more accurate models. These algorithms are transparent to the users, and they can even manually write the codes for the same.

Along with the ML services, the company will also be adding new capabilities for AI, IoT, blockchain and edge computing to the Azure cloud platform. The AI Azure Cognitive Services will enable the application to make decisions, see, hear, translate, and reason. In addition to that, the company will also be including the AI features to the Azure Search.

Microsoft has also announced to add a new SQL engine, i.e. Azure SQL Database Edge, having built-in AI features, to handle the computing and database management tasks, intelligently. On the other hand, the new IoT Plug and Play feature will allow the developers to connect IoT devices directly to the cloud, eliminating the need to write the code for the peripherals.

Along with all these services, Microsoft also announced an Azure Blockchain Service, Unreal Engine, and a HoloLens 2 Developer Bundle. The company has not commented on when those services will be available for use. But since it has made all these announcements ahead of its Build developer conference in Seattle, Washington next week, the company might be planning of announcing the launch date at the event.