SANTA CLARA, CA - NVIDIA today announced that it has named David Shannon, who serves as general counsel and executive vice president of Human Resources, to the newly created role of chief administrative officer.

NEW YORK — Jan. 13 , 2014 — At the National Retail Federation (NRF)’s Annual Convention on Monday, Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq “MSFT”) showcased the latest release of Microsoft Dynamics for Retail. The release features innovation in modern, mobile commerce, catalog and call center sales, as well as advanced operations for warehousing and transportation and logistics management. Managed by a true omni-channel commerce engine, these new capabilities further enhance the unique end-to-end value proposition of Microsoft Dynamics for Retail to help businesses such as Ashley Furniture Industries Inc., Delta Air Lines Inc. and Jean Coutu Group Inc. deliver amazing experiences that make happy customers.

Building on its commitment to deliver complete shopping experiences, Microsoft announced new alliances with Vantiv Inc. and Sitecore, as well as an expanded relationship with IBM. In addition, the company highlighted solution innovations on Windows Mobile devices and Microsoft Surface 2, reinforcing the company’s unique position as a retailer and developer of enterprise hardware and business applications. All of this helps ensure that customers get industry-leading solutions that help them reduce costs and complexity and enable them to always be ready for what’s next.

“Success in a retail environment that is modern, mobile, global and ‘always on’ requires businesses to create the personal and highly differentiated customer interactions,” said Kirill Tatarinov, executive vice president, Microsoft Business Solutions. “Microsoft is committed to helping businesses deliver amazing retail experiences today. It is at the core of our vision for the retail industry to help businesses connect without compromise across channels, on any device, anywhere.”

Industry-leading mobile commerce options and complete end-to-e nd e - c ommerce solution

As part of Microsoft’s alliance with Vantiv, a leading provider of payment processing services and related technology solutions, Microsoft Dynamics for Retail will deliver a new range of solutions for mobile POS and cloud-connected payments that can help businesses maximize their customer reach at any scale, end-to-end. From simple mobile payment collection in the field and individual direct-sales transactions to retail store operations and more, the combination of Microsoft’s technology with Vantiv’s scalable, integrated payment processing services and technology will make it easy for businesses to take advantage of their most important asset, people, to offer seamless, best-in-class experiences.

“Our alliance with Microsoft is a great example of how Vantiv is extending payment and POS innovation to our merchant partners,” said Elizabeth Rector, senior vice president of e-commerce and mobile at Vantiv. “Microsoft Dynamic’s POS leadership and reseller network combined with Vantiv’s omni-channel payments platform and vast distribution channels enable an entirely new scale of mobile payment solutions, delivering a true 360-degree experience to mid-market and enterprise merchants across any vertical.”

Offering customers the first end-to-end, enterprise e-commerce solution based entirely on Microsoft technology, the company also announced an alliance with Sitecore, a global leader in customer experience management software, to integrate its leading customer experience platform with the leading omni-channel commerce capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics. This combined solution will give businesses the ability to design completely connected online experiences optimized for the behaviors, devices and preferences of visitors with complete, real-time, omni-channel order management.

“This alliance is a game-changer for the retail industry. The integration of Sitecore’s best-in-class experience platform with Microsoft’s powerful, proven commerce solution will allow organizations to harness the power of real-time data insights to personalize and deliver compelling, consistent brand experiences — online, in-store and across any channel,” said Darren Guarnaccia, chief strategy officer for Sitecore. “Sitecore and Microsoft both offer trusted enterprise solutions globally and have a strong foundation of exceptional technology and joint customer success to build from.”

Microsoft and IBM team to deliver innovation and value to retailers

Microsoft also announced an expanded relationship with IBM, combining the powerful capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 in retail and distribution with IBM’s proven global leadership in delivering integrated, enterprise retail solutions. The relationship also includes plans for IBM to develop and deploy differentiated intellectual property to offer unique, enhanced value to customers around world.

“IBM’s expanded collaboration with Microsoft will deliver innovative technology solutions that will help retailers seamlessly connect to their customers while delivering an exceptional brand experience,” said Brian Minnix, partner, Worldwide Retail Competency Center Lead, IBM. “We look forward to teaming with Microsoft to design differentiated retail solutions and services for today’s connected customers.”

More information on the new capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics for Retail can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics/retail.aspx.

About Microsoft Dynamics

At the heart of every successful business are the people who make things happen. Microsoft Dynamics designs modern business solutions that empower individuals with intuitive tools that allow them to do their best work. Our proactive, easy-to-use business applications adapt to the way people and systems work, enabling businesses to rapidly deploy and be forward-looking in an ever-changing world.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/news/contactpr.mspx.

REDMOND, Wash. , and SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Jan. 13, 2014 — GoDaddy , the Web’s top platform for small business, and Microsoft Corp. announced on Monday a long-term strategic partnership to offer Office 365 as GoDaddy’s exclusive core business-class email and productivity service to its small-business customers. This partnership supports GoDaddy’s ongoing push to deliver premium small-business management solutions. Serving 12 million customers worldwide, GoDaddy has created a simple experience for small businesses with industry-leading productivity tools backed by best-in-class customer support at an affordable price.

“Combining our small-business expertise together with Microsoft’s productivity offerings opens new doors for small businesses to easily get the tools they need to get more done in their day,” said Steven Aldrich, senior vice president of Business Applications, GoDaddy. “We’ve created a simple way to attach Office 365 to a domain name, helping small-business owners look professional and work anywhere, making the business of running their business easier.”

The strategic agreement between Microsoft and GoDaddy provides small businesses with seamless access to professional email connected to their domain names, cloud storage and a full suite of Microsoft productivity solutions. Plus, with GoDaddy, users receive around-the-clock live customer service, helping save time best spent focusing on their business. Also as part of the agreement, Microsoft created a unique offering of domain-based email and storage especially built with GoDaddy’s very small businesses in mind.

Office 365 offers business-class email, shared calendars, instant messaging, online conferencing and access to the most up-to-date documents. These capabilities are delivered as a cloud service available to users wherever they are, online or offline and across a variety of devices, offering access to the most up-to-date versions of the files and tools they need to get things done. Unlike some offerings designed for consumers or small businesses, Office 365 includes built-in security features that help deflect malware, spam, phishing attacks and other threats.

“We’re excited that GoDaddy has chosen to exclusively offer Office 365 to its small- business customers, giving them easy and supported access to productivity tools being used by some of the most successful businesses in the world,” said John Case, corporate vice president, Microsoft Office. “GoDaddy’s relationship with small businesses combined with Office 365, the fastest-growing Microsoft product in history, will help bring the benefits of Office 365 and modern cloud services to even more companies, whether they’re seeking to modernize how they do business or simply starting up.”

There are an estimated 28 million small businesses in the U.S. alone[1] and 125 million worldwide.[2] Of those 28 million, 92 percent of businesses have fewer than four employees. According to a Boston Consulting Group global study commissioned by Microsoft, if more small and medium-sized businesses adopted the latest in IT tools, it could potentially boost their revenues by a combined $770 billion and create more than 6 million jobs.[2]

Office 365 from GoDaddy is currently available in the U.S. and Canada and will expand globally within the next three months.

About GoDaddy

GoDaddy now serves more than 12 million paying customers worldwide and is the largest Web hosting and domain name registrar on the planet. GoDaddy leverages its award-winning talent and personalized approach to help small business owners create their digital identity, build websites and grow online. To learn more about the company, visit GoDaddy.com/PR.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

[1] GoDaddy research; U.S. Census Bureau, Longitudinal Business Database 1977–2010, 2009 County Business Patterns, 2010, http://censtats.census.gov/cgi-bin/nonemployer/nonsect.pl, http://www.sba.gov/advocacy/849/12162

[2] Source: International Finance Corp., member of the World Bank Group, “Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises

Around the World: How Many Are There, and What Affects the Count?” 2010

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/news/contactpr.mspx.

Version 0.8.7 of restSQL, an open-source persistence framework, was released on January 12, 2014. The release adds auto-increment/sequence-based column support and extends function-based column support to PostgreSQL. See the Release Notes for more detail.

See http://restsql.org for an overview, developer documentation and binary distributions of the framework and the SDK. The source code is licensed under MIT and hosted on github.

restSQL is a very unconventional, ultra-lightweight data access layer for browser, mobile, desktop or server-based applications. For many applications, conventional ORM is heavyweight and inflexible, and conventional Web Services (WSDL/SOAP) are cumbersome. restSQL substantially lightens the middle-tier. It is targeted at the 80% of data access that is basic CRUD (Create-Read-Update-Delete), making it faster and simpler to develop distributed applications.

restSQL is not an object-oriented view of the database. It presents flat or hierarchical "views" of relational database tables. These views are query-able and updatable through a simple REST-based HTTP or Java API. The HTTP interface is based on REST principles, which use HTTPT's built-in features, rather than abstracting away from them.

http://restsql.org

restSQL - Trim your middle!

Datanamic is pleased to announce the release of DeZign for Databases V8. Version 8 enables you to design a database across a team of people, and offers new features including dynamic highlighting of related objects, new object selection methods (select transitive, children, ...), new auto-layout routines and options, and much more.

DeZign for Databases Version 8 provides collaborative modeling via a server-based repository database, the Datanamic Repository. The new Datanamic Repository is a version control system for data model management. The new Datanamic Repository can be hosted on PostgreSQL databases.

Go to http://www.datanamic.com/dezign/whatsnew.html and read and/or see more about the new features.

Nordic PGDay 2014 will be held in Stockholm, Sweden, at the Hilton Stockholm Hotel, on March 20, 2014. It will feature a full day with a single track of PostgreSQL presentations from both local and global speakers, covering a wide range of topics. For more information about the conference, please see our website.

We are currently accepting proposals for presentations at the conference. We are interested in submissions from both seasoned PostgreSQL experts and people new in the community, from both locals and representatives of the global community. In short, from anybody who has an interesting story to tell about PostgreSQL, whether deeply technical or story about a successful (or failed) usage. All presentations are 45 minutes, with time for questions. Please see the website for details.

We have also opened up for Early Bird registration. Early bird registration costs EUR 40, and is available until Feb 16th, after which the price goes up to EUR 60. There is a limited number of total space available at the venue, so we suggest you register early!

Finally, we are also looking for sponsors! We have two different levels of sponsorship, to make sure there is a choice for everybody. If you are interested, please see the sponsor page.

We look forward to seeing you in Stockholm in March!

New Infotainment System, Smart Display, Digital Cockpit to Join Audi Lineup, All Powered by NVIDIA Tegra Mobile Processors

LAS VEGAS, NV - CES -- NVIDIA today announced that three new in-vehicle systems powered by the NVIDIA® Tegra® Visual Computing Module (VCM) will soon begin shipping in Audi's vehicles.

REDMOND, Wash. — Jan. 7, 2014 — Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday announced that it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire Parature, a leading provider of cloud-based customer engagement solutions. The acquisition will add world-class customer self-service capabilities to further accelerate the Microsoft Dynamics vision of helping organizations deliver amazing customer experiences.

“Customers are more connected and better informed than ever before. Organizations are looking for business solutions that can strengthen their ability to connect with customers on their own terms, using whatever device and whatever channel they prefer,” said Bob Stutz, corporate vice president, Microsoft Dynamics CRM. “Parature is a perfect fit for every business and will enable us to offer customers one of the best cloud-based solutions for customer self-service. This is a compelling combination for organizations committed to delivering the best service experience that consistently exceeds their customers’ expectations.”

As a provider of cloud-based customer service software to midsize and enterprise organizations, Parature has a well-earned reputation for outstanding customer service with 70 million users worldwide and more than 500 well-known brands, including Ask.com, the United States Environmental Protection Agency, IBM, Saba Software Inc., Tagged Inc. and Threadless. The company also received the 2013 Frost & Sullivan Customer Value Enhancement Award for using social media to help organizations deliver outstanding customer service.

Parature’s approach to its solutions enables organizations to take advantage of an extendable knowledge base available through self-service portals on the Web and Facebook, support ticketing, mobile customer care on virtually any device the customer chooses to use, social customer support, and chat for both traditional customer service scenarios and proactive sales engagement to create new, revenue-generating opportunities for the business. These capabilities complement the existing Microsoft Dynamics CRM customer-care solution with core strengths in workflow, extensibility and process-driven user experiences that allow contact center agents to do their best work.

Microsoft will continue to offer Parature solutions and support all new and existing customers as the company works to further enhance these offerings.

The terms of the agreement are not being disclosed. More information on this announcement, including product integration plans and timeline, will be shared at Parafest 2014 (Feb. 24–25) in Las Vegas and Convergence 2014 (March 4–7) in Atlanta. A blog by Bob Stutz speaking about this announcement Tuesday can be found at https://community.dynamics.com/crm/b/crmconnection/archive/2014/01/07/microsoft-dynamics-crm-and-parature-a-match-made-for-you.aspx.

More information about Parature is available at http://www.parature.com, and more on Microsoft Dynamics CRM can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics/crm.aspx.

Those interested can follow and engage with the Microsoft Dynamics community on Twitter at @MSDynamicsCRM, hashtags #MSDynCRM and #CRM2013, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/msftdynamics.

About Microsoft Dynamics

At the heart of every successful business are the people who make things happen. Microsoft Dynamics designs modern business solutions that empower individuals with intuitive tools that allow them to do their best work. Our proactive, easy-to-use business applications adapt to the way people and systems work, enabling businesses to rapidly deploy and be forward-looking in an ever-changing world.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/news/contactpr.mspx.