Microsoft has announced the launch of Microsoft IoT Central, a software as a service (SaaS) offering which aims to reduce the complexity of Internet of Things solutions for customers.

The new launch goes hand in hand with Microsoft’s current platform as a service (PaaS), Azure IoT Suite, built on the Azure cloud, with the latter enabling deep customisation and control of implementations. IoT Central ‘has the potential to dramatically increase the speed at which manufacturers can innovate and bring...

The cloud skills gap is widening and almost 40% of businesses are now struggling to find the qualified employees they need, according to Microsoft’s recent Cloud Skills Report. This is an incredible opportunity for professionals who can prove their cloud knowledge.

Determined professionals validate their knowledge and set themselves apart from the competition with training and certifications. The same report from Microsoft also found that tech leaders believe professionals with formal qualifications in cloud...

More than one in three companies admit it has been either ‘difficult’ or ‘very difficult’ to find specific cloud skills for their organisation, according to a new study from Microsoft.

The dreaded ‘cloud skills gap’ has been long reported by this publication – ‘the trend will continue further through 2013’, this reporter once warned – but in the Microsoft...

An ‘enormous’ opportunity is afoot for cloud companies as more organisations move towards implementing hybrid cloud and managed services, according to a new study from Microsoft.

The report – which was conducted in association with 451 Research and which comes in at a whopping 127 pages – polled more than 1700 respondents in 10 geographies, and found that almost two thirds (62%) of overall cloud and hosting infrastructure spend comes bundled with value-added services. When it came to...

Adobe and Microsoft have announced the first set of joint solutions to ‘help enterprises transform their customer experiences’, with Adobe’s Experience Cloud combining alongside Microsoft Azure, Dynamics 365 and Power BI products.

Those with good memories will recall an announcement made last September which confirmed Azure would become the preferred cloud platform for Adobe’s...

Even though software as a service (SaaS) is more mature than its infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) brethren – and therefore at a lower growth rate – new figures from Synergy Research show that Microsoft leads the ‘burgeoning’ market ahead of Salesforce, with Oracle and Google having the highest growth rates.

Despite the relatively low growth forecast, Synergy argues that the enterprise SaaS market is expected to double in size over the next three years...

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It continues to gain traction whilst still being significantly behind the market leader; but what underpins this growth? A new study from NetEnrich has found that while Microsoft Azure continues to see impressive usage figures, companies have to rely on channel providers to help them make the most of their implementations.

The survey, which garnered the views of more than 80 IT professionals in large and midmarket companies, found 46% of respondents were running at least half of...

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Microsoft has announced the launch of the Azure IP Advantage program to help protect intellectual property from ‘patent trolls’ in the cloud.

Patent trolls, defined by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) as companies or people who ‘use patents as legal weapons, instead of actually creating any new products or coming up with new ideas’, are becoming an increasing problem with code and products hosted on cloud servers.

As a result, Microsoft is making 10,000...

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It’s that time again; another quarter passes by and with it comes a variety of financial reports from the big hitters. Alphabet, the parent company of Google, IBM, and Microsoft have all filed within the past week – so what do the figures all mean?

Top line highlights:

• IBM’s cloud revenue was at $13.7 billion for the full year of 2016, up 35%, while fourth quarter cloud revenues increased 33% to $4.2bn
• Microsoft’s commercial cloud annualised revenue run rate hit $14 billion, with Azure revenue up 95% in constant currency...

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Enterprises prefer Microsoft Azure as their primary cloud provider while smaller businesses are more likely to be Google houses, according to the latest research from B2B analysis firm Clutch.

The findings, which polled almost 250 users of AWS, Google and Microsoft, appear in the firm’s latest report, found almost 40% of Azure users polled identify as enterprises, compared to only 25% for SMBs...

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Goldman Sachs has upgraded its rating on Microsoft from ‘neutral’ to ‘buy’ after praising the company’s Azure growth.

According to a report from StreetInsider, Goldman Sachs’ Heather Bellini raised the price target from $60 to $68 noting Azure’s continued growth; 100% or greater, year over year, in eight of the...

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Microsoft has announced it will be increasing its prices for customers buying its enterprise software and cloud services in British pounds by up to 22% from January to “harmonise” within the EU and EFTA (European Free Trade Association) regions.

The company said on-premise enterprise software will increase by 13% to align closer to the Euro, while “most” enterprise cloud prices will rise by almost a quarter, adding that after the adjustment customers will...

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Microsoft has launched a cloud services due diligence checklist aimed at providing organisations with more standardised procedures for their potential cloud push.

The checklist is based on the emerging ISO/IEC 19086 standard which focuses on cloud service level agreements, and gives structure to organisations of all sizes and sectors to identify their objectives and requirements, before comparing the offerings of different cloud service providers.

“Cloud adoption is no longer simply a...

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Microsoft and Adobe have announced partnership plans to make Azure the preferred cloud platform for Adobe’s marketing, creative, and document clouds, and Adobe’s Marketing Cloud the preferred option for Dynamics 365 Enterprise.

The partnership, announced in the Microsoft Ignite keynote session today, aims to help enterprise companies ‘embrace digital transformation and deliver compelling, personalised experiences through every phase of their customer...

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Microsoft has announced its new German Azure data centres are being managed by a subsidiary of telco giant Deutsche Telekom in what is being claimed as a ‘first of its kind’ European business model.

The German data centre regions, in Magdeburg and Frankfurt, were announced at the end of 2015 and opened earlier this year. Yet being under the control of a ‘data trustee’, T-Systems International, enables customers with additional controls on their data, as well...

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451 Research’s latest study of cloud computing adoption in the enterprise, The Voice of the Enterprise: Cloud Transformation – Workloads and Key Projects provides insights into how enterprises are changing their adoption of public, private and hybrid...

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Microsoft has announced its UK data centres are open for business for both Azure and Office 365, with the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the South London & Maudsley NHS Trust among the first customers.

The move was first mooted in November last year, alongside expansions in the Netherlands and Ireland. At the time Microsoft promised the UK regions, in London, Durham, and Cardiff, would arrive by late...

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When it comes to infrastructure as a service (IaaS), some organisations struggle between the choice of Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services. They’re both solid IaaS platforms that give organisations access to vast computing resources around the world, but deciding which one is best for you depends on many factors.

At a quick glance, both offerings might look similar on paper, but there are key differences between them that you might not discover until you try them out or talk...

(c)iStock.com/RonBailey

Microsoft has overtaken Salesforce to become the leading software as a service (SaaS) vendor despite a fragmented market, according to the latest note from Synergy Research.

The analyst firm, which extensively covers cloud software and infrastructure markets, argues that with the latest Q2 data to hand, the global enterprise SaaS market grew by 33% year on year to hit more than $11 billion (£8.3bn) in quarterly revenues.

The space is divided up by Synergy into several buckets....

Picture credit: Rackspace Afterparty TechStars Boulder 2011, by Andrew Hyde, used under