Amazon announced the launch of Amazon Luna, the company’s new cloud gaming service. With a play anywhere offering, on devices you already own, there’s every reason to expect Amazon Luna’s invitation for early access will be eagerly snapped up. One of my favorite things about this offering is the Twitch integration that’s purportedly coming to Luna, allowing gamers to broadcast while gaming. This integration will also allow Twitch viewers (who subscribe to Luna) to go from watching a game streaming on Twitch to playing on Luna. Microsoft xCloud, NVIDIA GeForce Now, and Google Stadia are all officially on notice that there’s a new player in the cloud gaming space in town.
Microsoft Ignite 2020 Means Big Updates for Power Platform and D365
At Microsoft Ignite 2020, the company announced a series of important enhancements to its D365 and Power Platform offerings.
Microsoft Wins Department of Defense JEDI Contract Award Again – For Now Anyway
In a decision handed down Friday, Microsoft was again awarded the Department of Defense JEDI contract. Sort of. Amazon’s AWS has pledged to continue its fight against the fairness of the selection and evaluation process and the claim of undue political influence. What’s ahead? More waiting.
Salesforce Extends Its Work From Home Policy: Gives Parents 6 More Weeks Vacation
Salesforce has joined the ranks of other big tech companies who have extended their work from home policies till the end of next summer. The company is also giving parents an extra 6 weeks of vacation.
Escalating App Store War Between Apple and Developers Likely to Bleed into Antitrust Probes in US and EU
Apple removes Fortnite, Epic Games’ popular battle royale game, from its App Store, and blocks “rival” game streaming platforms from iOS. Fortnite pretty much immediately filed suit, but there’s much more to unpack in this quest for a piece of the mobile game revenue pie. Note that last year 2.5 billion people played mobile games, propelling mobile game revenues to amount to nearly 75% of all in-app spending. 30% of that revenue is what Apple (and Google) are fighting to capture, at the expense, some would argue, of game developers.
Microsoft Outperforms For Its Fiscal Q4 Showing Tech Resiliency
Microsoft reported its first full quarter since the COVID-19 pandemic and the company overall delivered a solid performance once again.
Microsoft Inspire: Microsoft Makes New Investments to Drive Organizational Resiliency for Partners
At Microsoft’s Inspire event the company highlighted its Return to Workplace offering, with investments intended to help clients and partners build and enable resilient organizations around the world as we collectively shift to a digital first mindset. Already a significant player in the enterprise workforce, the continued strengthening of its various offerings, all designed to seamlessly work together, serve the myriad needs across the enterprise, as well as in the partner ecosystem, means that organizations don’t have to look outside the Microsoft solution set to do what it is they need to do. I would guess this makes other SaaS providers nervous, and rightfully so.
Allscripts and Microsoft Extend Cloud-based Health IT Partnership
Allscripts and Microsoft Corp. announces a five-year extension to their strategic alliance to enable the expanded development and delivery of cloud-based health IT solutions.
Microsoft Updates Dynamics 365 and Power Platform at Inspire
At this year’s Microsoft partner event, Inspire, the company announced a series of important updates to dynamics 365 and the Power Platform.
Google Announces Digital Job Training Program to Help with Economic Recovery
Grow with Google is designed to help jumpstart the economy by helping workers learn skills that will make them more appealing to employers (college degrees not required), and also to help employers fill what is often a gigantic skills gap. As part of this initiative, Google is offering grants, offering apprenticeship positions at Google, expanding its IT Certificate Employer Consortium and more. The future of work continues to be about an always-learning mindset, individually and in the business world, and this is another way Big Tech is stepping up to make that possible.