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Mobile-first, cloud-first makes Microsoft a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Mobile Application Development Platforms
In the few months since Microsoft acquired Xamarin, Scott Guthrie and I have laid out our roadmap that builds on the complementary strengths in mobile development and cloud services that made our companies great partners for years. I’m excited to report that Visual Studio with Xamarin plus Azure is working. We’ve already seen a massive upswing in developer participation, and we’re receiving validation from outside the developer community, as well.
Yesterday, Gartner recognized Microsoft as a Leader in its 2016 Magic Quadrant for Mobile Application Development Platforms. The designation reflects the fact that Microsoft’s Mobile Application Development Platform vision has expanded dramatically, evidenced by the Xamarin integration, enhancements to Azure App Service, and improved mobile DevOps capabilities.
Over the past year we’ve made incredible progress toward our vision of “Any developer, any app, any platform.” Developers need to balance the efficiency of a full-stack solution with the flexibility to use the languages, tools and services they know and work best for their situation. We’re pleased to see the growing industry recognition of our unique approach to mobility: Microsoft is truly the only company with a complete solution for every app, every developer and every platform, but we still allow you the flexibility to let you work your way.
We’re working to fundamentally transform the way developers build and maintain apps. And while the journey is far from over, we’re honored by Gartner’s validation of what we’ve done so far, and I’d like to call out some of the reasons we think they did so:
The best development tools in a single package
It all starts with the IDE, and Visual Studio is regarded as the most complete set of mobile development tools on the market.
Xamarin continues to be the fastest, most efficient way to build uncompromising native apps for multiple platforms – bar none – and it’s now available at no additional charge to every Visual Studio developer. For your back end, Azure is the world’s most sophisticated, flexible, developer-friendly cloud platform, with easy access to services that help bring mobile apps to life. App Service makes time-consuming procedures like authentication and push notifications trivial, scales applications on-demand, and allows you to access Azure-only options like our Cognitive APIs to add real intelligence to your apps, or Hybrid Connections for secure access to on-premise data.
On their own, each is best-in-class, but we’re able to bring them together through Visual Studio to make building great mobile experiences even more efficient with a single IDE and a common language you can use across all your services, up and down the stack.
Sophisticated mobile DevOps
Delivering high-quality, high-performance, secure mobile apps at scale is challenging. Fast release cycles are required to keep up with constantly changing device operating systems, users have high expectations, and developers need to know that the mobile apps they’re deploying are secure and compliant. This means that apps need to look, behave and perform well on thousands of combinations of form factors, operating systems and manufacturers, and they need to be easy to manage and monitor once they’re in the field. The combined Microsoft + Xamarin product lineup makes it possible to plan, track, develop, test, secure and monitor mobile apps using a complete, end-to-end mobile DevOps solution.
Putting developers first
Open-sourcing the Xamarin SDKs for iOS, Android and Mac to the .NET Foundation is a promise to developers that we’re here for them, that we want to be transparent, and that we want them to be involved in what we’re building. Developers have always come first at Microsoft, and they always will.
Our mantra is “Any Developer. Any App. Any Platform,” and we mean it. C# or Cordova, iOS or Android, Mac or Windows — Microsoft has the best platform for building great mobile experiences quickly. I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished and happy to say we have a lot more to come.
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Europe eyes new rules for online platforms
By Natasha Lomas as written on techcrunch.com
The European Union’s executive body has today set out a series of proposals for new rules that would apply to a broad range of online platforms, from the likes of YouTube to Google to eBay, as part of ongoing efforts to boost competitiveness in the region under its Digital Single Market Strategy.
The proposals follow a year long assessment by the European Commission of online platforms, after which it says it has concluded that a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach is not appropriate to maximize consumer benefits while ensuring effective regulation across all the different types of platforms — so it says it will rather look at each area where it can act “from telecoms to copyright rules, to address any specific problems in a future-proof way for all market players”.
Among the proposed changes is a new set of audiovisual rules — with the stated aim of achieving a better balance between rules that apply to traditional broadcasters vs online video-on-demand providers and video-sharing platforms like YouTube. Key among the EC’s concerns here is safeguarding minors.
It says it wants video-sharing platforms to help come up with a code of conduct for the industry relating to protecting minors online. For the most harmful content (gratuitous violence and pornography) it wants to strict control measures applied to online platforms, such as age verification or pin codes.
Under the proposals there would also be a stronger role for audiovisual regulators.
At this stage the EC is not including social network platforms such as Facebook — where plenty of video-sharing and viewing now takes place of course — in its definition of online platforms but it does say this could change in future. “If a particular social media provider meets all the characteristics of a video-sharing platform, they will be covered as such,” it notes.
These proposals are an update to the existing Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AMSD), which has governed audiovisual media in the region for almost 30 years. The existing directive also includes stipulations to encourage cultural diversity and the free circulation of content within Europe, which the EC wants to see bleeding over to the online platforms that viewers are increasingly turning to in the digital era.
Under current rules, for example, TV broadcasters are obliged to broadcast at least 50 per cent share of European works (including national content) in viewing time. This proportion will remain unchanged under the proposal but VOD services would get more formal obligations — with a proposed requirement that they have at least a 20 per cent share of European content in their catalogues, and give good visibility to European content in any offers.
Elsewhere, the Commission has also been looking at the rules around ad content, and says it wants greater flexibility for online platforms to use product placement and sponsorship — with the caveat that they must keep viewers informed at the start or end of a program. Product placement will still be forbidden in content with a significant children’s audience.
Also today the Commission has set out additional proposals for updating ecommerce rules — with a push to prevent unjustified geoblocking, such as discriminating on price based on nationality or residency, by online platforms.
In moves aimed at boosting trust in ecommerce it also wants search engines to be required to “clearly distinguish” paid placements from organic search results. And the industry to step-up voluntary efforts to tackle fake/misleading online reviews.
Increasing price-transparency and regulatory oversight of cross-border parcel delivery services to boost regional ecommerce is another priority.
The Commission is also focusing on controlling the spread of hate speech on online platforms — an issue which has again bubbled to the fore in Europe in recent times, following the refugee crisis.
A code of conduct the EC has been working on with online platforms is due to be presented in the coming weeks, it said today.
The package of measures are proposals at this stage with European law requiring EU Member States to vote on and agree them, and transpose them into national legislation — a process that can take multiple years.
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Microsoft to buy LinkedIn for $26.2B in cash, makes big move into enterprise social media
By Ingrid Lunden as written on techcrunch.com
Huge news today in the world of M&A in enterprise and social networking services: Microsoft has announced that it is acquiring LinkedIn, the social network for professionals with some 433 million users, for $26.2 billion, or $196 per share, in cash. The transaction has already been approved by both boards, but it must still get regulatory and other approvals.
If for some reason the deal does not go through, LinkedIn will have to pay Microsoft a $725 million termination fee, according to Microsoft’s SEC filing detailing the merger.
The $196 per share offer is a big hike on its closing price from Friday, $131.08. (And in pre-market trading, unsurprisingly, LinkedIn’s stock has nearly crept up 64 percent to reach the share price Microsoft is paying. Microsoft’s price is down 4 percent to $49.66 in pre-market trading.)
LinkedIn is keeping its branding and product, and it will become a part of Microsoft’s productivity and business processes segment. LinkedIn’s CEO Jeff Weiner will report to Satya Nadella.
How Microsoft plans to use LinkedIn
The acquisition is a big one for both sides.
For Microsoft, it’s bringing a key, missing piece into the company’s strategy to build out more services for enterprises, and give it a key way to compete better against the likes of Salesforce (which it also reportedly tried to buy).
Today, Microsoft is focused squarely on software (and some hardware by way of its very downsized phones business). But LinkedIn will give Microsoft a far bigger reach in terms of social networking services and professional content — developing the early signs of enterprise social networking that it kicked off with its acquisition of Yammer for $1.2 billion in 2012.
LinkedIn’s wider social network, pegged as it is to groups of employees and employers, will give Microsoft a sales channel to sell more of its products, and will serve as a complement to those that it already offers for collaboration and communication.
In a section called “Selling to Social Selling” in the deck below, Microsoft details how it plans to use LinkedIn’s social graph as an integrated selling tool alongside its existing CRM products (which are second to Salesforce in the market currently). Users of Microsoft’s Dynamics CRM and other systems, it notes, will want to use LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator “to transform the sales cycle with actionable insights” — essentially lots of background information about users that can help find leads, open conversations and close deals.
There are other elements of LinkedIn’s business that are interesting to consider in light of this acquisition. LinkedIn acquired Lynda.com, for example, to spearhead a move into offering online learning tools to users — expanding on their bigger hope of being the go-to place for overall professional development. Now, with Microsoft, you can see how Lynda might be employed to help sell Microsoft software products, and provide assistance in learning to use them. This is also an area that Microsoft is already highlighting as a positive in the deal:
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There are also other areas where you will see lots of natural integrations, for example with Cortana and providing more professional networking tools to users.
“The LinkedIn team has grown a fantastic business centered on connecting the world’s professionals,” Nadella said in a statement. “Together we can accelerate the growth of LinkedIn, as well as Microsoft Office 365 and Dynamics as we seek to empower every person and organization on the planet.” You can read Nadella’s full memo to staff here.
(And just as a side note, this puts some of Microsoft’s recent cost-cutting through layoffs and sales into some perspective, as well.)
For LinkedIn, it puts to rest questions of how the company would ever compete with companies that are building more software on top of their social graphs that would put it into closer competition against LinkedIn. For a while, it looked like this was the direction that LinkedIn hoped to develop, but more recent problems with user and revenue growth, and a subsequent dropping share price, has put the company on the defensive.
“Just as we have changed the way the world connects to opportunity, this relationship with Microsoft, and the combination of their cloud and LinkedIn‘s network, now gives us a chance to also change the way the world works,” Weiner added in the statement. “For the last 13 years, we’ve been uniquely positioned to connect professionals to make them more productive and successful, and I’m looking forward to leading our team through the next chapter of our story.” Read Weiner’s letter on the deal to LinkedIn staff here.
But this is not at all a story about a failing company getting scooped up on the way down for parts. LinkedIn, even with a share price that is below its 12-month high point of $258 per share, is one of the better-performing tech companies in the public markets.
Microsoft has never been a massively successful company when it comes to social networking — although it smartly invested in Facebook before it went public, and as we have reported before it was apparently interested at one point in trying to make a bid to buy Slack for $8 billion. LinkedIn’s social network will give it a significant foothold in this area.
LinkedIn is active in over 200 countries and has 105 million monthly active users, with 433 million registered overall. The company has some 60 percent of all traffic on mobile, and — thanks to some strong SEO — a crazy 45 billion quarterly page views. It’s also one of the biggest repositories of job listings, with some 7 million active listings currently. While some parts of LinkedIn’s business has stagnated, specifically with MAU growth (which is up only 9 percent on last year) latter is a growing business — up 101 percent on a year ago.
LinkedIn’s core business is based today around recruitment ads and, to a lesser extent, premium subscriptions for users. The recruitment business (termed “Talent Solutions”) accounted for $2 billion of the company’s $3 billion in revenues in 2015.
And as you can see from the photo above, Reid Hoffman, one of the co-founders and current chairman, is behind the deal.
“Today is a re-founding moment for LinkedIn. I see incredible opportunity for our members and customers and look forward to supporting this new and combined business,” said Hoffman in a statement. “I fully support this transaction and the Board’s decision to pursue it, and will vote my shares in accordance with their recommendation on it.”
The companies are hosting a conference call at 8.45 a.m. PT.
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Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft agree to remove hate speech across the EU
By Romain Dillet as written on techcrunch.com
Facebook, Twitter, Google’s YouTube, Microsoft as well as the European Commission unveiled a new code of conduct to remove hate speech according to community guidelines in less than 24 hours across these social media platforms. The EU has ramped up efforts leading to this code of conduct following the recent terrorist attacks in Brussels and Paris.
ISIS has been successfully using social media to recruit fighters over the past few years. In addition to that, the European economic recession has fostered far-right parties, leading to more online antisemitism and xenophobia.
Tech companies probably don’t want to be held responsible for hate speech and are now taking a strong stance against hate speech. This is surprising as many social networks have promoted free expression and have refused to delete content or accounts in the past (except when it comes to copyrighted material).
But it’s been a slow and steady change. Twitter has already suspended 125,000 accounts related to ISIS since mid-2015. Facebook already agreed to work with the German government against hateful speech back in September 2015. Google and Twitter later joined Facebook and the German government in December 2015. Now, four tech companies are making a formal pledge at the European level against hate speech.
“The recent terror attacks have reminded us of the urgent need to address illegal online hate speech,” Vĕra Jourová, EU Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality, wrote in the European Commission press release. “Social media is unfortunately one of the tools that terrorist groups use to radicalise young people and racist use to spread violence and hatred. This agreement is an important step forward to ensure that the internet remains a place of free and democratic expression, where European values and laws are respected.”
Tech companies will have to find the right balance between freedom of expression and hateful content. Based on the code of conduct, they’ll have dedicated teams reviewing flagged items (poor employees who will have to review awful things every day).
Tech companies will also educate their users and tell them that it’s forbidden to post hateful content. They’ll cooperate with each other to share best practice. They’ll encourage flagging of hateful content and they’ll promote counter speech against hateful rhetoric.
It’s good to see that this issue got escalated and the European Commission was able to come up with a code of conduct quite quickly. Instead of making tech companies deal with every single European country, they can agree on rules for the EU as a whole.
Similarly, it’s encouraging to see tech companies working together on a sensitive issue like this one. While it’s a good starting point, there will be new social platforms in the future, and I hope other tech companies will join this code of conduct in the future.
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Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella follows Apple’s Tim Cook to India
By John Ribeiro as written on cio.com
Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella is visiting India, reflecting the growing importance of the country as a market for multinational technology companies.
Nadella’s visit follows the first trip to India by Apple CEO Tim Cook, who visited the country this month to drum up support for the company’s plans to offer refurbished iPhones in the price-sensitive market as well as to get permission to set up its wholly-owned stores in the country. Both deals appear to have been blocked by regulators, according to reports.
While Apple was largely seen as lacking focus on India until recently, when its China revenue fell 11 percent, while iPhone sales in India grew 56 percent year-on-year in the last quarter, Microsoft has been a long-time player in the Indian market.
It announced in September last year the availability of Microsoft Azure services from local datacenter regions in the country, followed by Office 365 and CRM Online services.
The public cloud services market in India is projected to grow 30.4 percent in 2016 to US$1.26 billion, according to Gartner. With the local cloud services offered by Microsoft, regulated industries such as the banking and financial services industries, government departments and state-owned enterprises will be able to keep their data on servers within the country.
During his one-day visit to India, which a Microsoft spokeswoman described as part of a tour of some Asian countries, India-born Nadella will meet with customers, startups and developers, apart from addressing CEOs at an event hosted by industry association, Confederation of Indian Industry.
An issue that is likely to surface during Nadella’s visit, his third since taking charge as CEO, will be Microsoft’s bid to provide connectivity to rural areas on vacated TV spectrum. That move has run into opposition from mobile service providers who want the spectrum to be auctioned.
Besides its sales and marketing operation, Microsoft also does global product development, support and research in the country.
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Recently confirmed Myspace hack could be the largest yet
By Sarah Perez as written on techcrunch.com
You might not have thought of – much less visited – Myspace in years. (Yes, it’s still around. Time, Inc. acquired it and other properties when it bought Viant earlier this year.) But user data never really dies, unfortunately. For Myspace’s new owner, that’s bad news, as the company confirmed just ahead of the Memorial Day holiday weekend in the U.S., that it has been alerted to a large set of stolen Myspace username and password combinations being made available for sale in an online hacker forum.
The data is several years old, however. It appears to be limited to a portion of the overall user base from the old Myspace platform prior to June 11, 2013, at which point the site was relaunched with added security.
Time, Inc. didn’t confirm how many user accounts were included in this data set, but a report from LeakedSource.com says that there are over 360 million accounts involved. Each record contains an email address, a password, and in some cases, a second password. As some accounts have multiple passwords, that means there are over 427 million total passwords available for sale.
Despite the fact that this data breach dates back several years, the size of the data set in question makes it notable. Security researchers at Sophos say that this could be the largest data breach of all time, easily topping the whopping 117 million LinkedIn emails and passwords that recently surfaced online from a 2012 hack.
That estimation seems to hold up – while there are a number of other large-scale data breaches, even some of the biggest were not of this size. The U.S. voter database breach included 191 million records, Anthem’s was 80 million, eBay was 145 million, Target was 70 million, Experian 200 million, Heartland 130 million, and so on.
The issue with these older data breaches is that they’re from an era where security measures were not as strong as today. That means these passwords are easily cracked. LeakedSource notes that the top 50 passwords from those cracked account for over 6 million passwords – or 1.5 percent of the total, to give you a sense of scale.
The passwords were stored as unsalted SHA-1 hashes, as LinkedIn’s were, too.
That allowed Time, Inc. to date the data breach to some extent, as the site was relaunched in June 2013 with strengthened account security, including double-salted hashes to store passwords. It also confirmed that the breach has no effect on any of its other systems, subscriber information, or other media properties, nor did the leaked data include any financial information.
Myspace is notifying users and has already invalidated the passwords of known affected accounts.
The company is also using automated tools to attempt to identify and block any suspicious activity that might occur on Myspace accounts, it says.
“We take the security and privacy of customer data and information extremely seriously—especially in an age when malicious hackers are increasingly sophisticated and breaches across all industries have become all too common,” said Myspace’s CFO Jeff Bairstow, in a statement. “Our information security and privacy teams are doing everything we can to support the Myspace team.”
However, while the hack itself and the resulting data set may be old, there could still be repercussions. Because so many online users simply reuse their same passwords on multiple sites, a hacker who is able to associate a given username or email with a password could crack users’ current accounts on other sites.
Of course, it’s not likely users even remember what password they used on Myspace years ago, which makes protecting your current accounts more difficult. A better option is to always use more complicated passwords, reset them periodically, and take advantage of password management tools like Dashlane or LastPass to help you keep track of your logins.
Myspace also confirmed that the hack is being attributed to the Russian cyberhacker who goes by the name “Peace.” This is the same person responsible for the LinkedIn and Tumblr attacks, too. In Tumblr’s case, some 65 million plus accounts were affected. But these passwords were “salted,” meaning they are harder to crack.
Myspace is working with law enforcement as this case is still under investigation, the company says.
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Windows Holographic on Windows 10
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We just released some exciting news about Windows Holographic – the platform included with Windows 10 – which powers the amazing mixed reality experiences available on Microsoft HoloLens.
Starting soon, Windows Holographic will be coming to devices of all shapes and sizes – from fully immersive virtual reality to fully untethered holographic computing.
Imagine wearing a VR device and seeing your physical hands as you manipulate an object, working on the scanned 3D image of a real object, or bringing the holographic representation of another person into your virtual world so you can collaborate. This is what we mean by mixed reality – where we break down the barriers between virtual and physical reality.
We are dramatically expanding the potential of these mixed reality experiences on Windows 10 by inviting our partners to build PCs, displays, accessories and mixed reality devices with the Windows Holographic platform.
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3 things businesses can learn about email security from the Panama Papers hack
In today’s IT environment, data breaches are a constant threat. According to Gemalto’s 2015 Breach Level Index, last year 1,673 data breaches around the world led to 707 million data records being compromised. And though email has come a long way over the last decade, it’s still one of the greatest threats to data security.
We don’t have to look far to see what kind of damage hackers can do when a business does not ensure secure email. In what’s being called “the biggest leak in whistleblower history,” the Panama Papers hack made international headlines last month. This hack enabled 2.6 TB of data to be stolen through the email servers of Mossack Fonseca, a legal firm based in Panama City.
The stolen data gave information about offshore bank accounts and shell companies used by prominent people worldwide to avoid taxes or conceal their wealth, according to “The New York Times.” The hacker then communicated with a German newspaper regarding the confidential files, expressing his or her interest in exposing the data. Once the newspaper realized how much data was involved, it contacted the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which has coordinated other tax haven mega-leaks in the past. Together, they released the information to the public.
So how did the hacker get access to the legal firm’s email servers in the first place? According to ITPro, security and privacy expert Christopher Soghoian ran a test showing Mossack Fonseca did not follow Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocols for email encryption. Whether you believe the Panama Papers leak was a good or bad thing, a more important question remains: What can IT security professionals learn from this?
Here are three tips for ensuring secure email:
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Encrypt important emails—When email encryption is not part of a business’s security measures, hackers can easily intercept emails and read them. Any information contained in these emails or attachments can help hackers gain further access into a company’s network.
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Create a business culture of security—Be sure that all employees are aware of the risks of lax data security and help them recognize suspicious requests and phishing schemes. Hacks often occur because a hacker finds just one “in” that leaves the network vulnerable. This “in” can be as simple as a stolen email or portal password. Hackers can then send emails from an internal account and make IT requests that sound legitimate. From there, they can potentially breach the email server and obtain access to all incoming and outgoing attachments, burrowing deeper into the network until they’ve reached the information they want to find.
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Choose a secure email service with impressive security features—This means selecting a service that promotes business communication while actively protecting sensitive information. It should have built-in defenses against viruses, spam and phishing attacks. Deep content analysis should identify, monitor and protect data, thereby preventing data loss.
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Don’t let your organization become one of 2016’s data casualties.—Do everything possible to avoid Mossack Fonseca’s fate and protect your, and your customers’, sensitive information through top-notch email security.
Get more out of your email to help grow your business. Tour the new Office 365 capabilities including Advanced Threat Protection, real-time protection for your messaging system against malware, viruses and malicious URLs.
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