April 7, 2013 – BOAO, Hainan, China – The Hainan government and Microsoft China today announced comprehensive collaboration to enable Hainan in its ambition to become the “Hawaii of China,” transform Hainan into an international tourism destination and a powerhouse of software development. In the memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed today, both parties agreed to form a long-term partnership, cooperate strategically on incubating the application of informatization, nurturing the software industry, developing the next generation of IT, cultivating talent, and protecting intellectual property rights. Guests from Hainan government and Microsoft present at the signing ceremony included Luo Baoming, secretary of the Hainan Provincial Committee, Sun Xinyang, secretary-general of Hainan province, Li Guoliang, vice governor of Hainan Province, and Orlando Ayala, corporate vice president, chairman of Emerging Markets, Ralph Haupter, corporate vice president, chairman and CEO of Microsoft Greater China Region, Ya-Qin Zhang, corporate vice president, chairman of Microsoft Asia-Pacific R&D Group, and Sandy Gupta, CTO of Microsoft China.

Luo Baoming, secretary of the Hainan Provincial Committee, said, “Hainan is committed to becoming a world-class international tourism island characterized by sustainable and efficient, low-carbon local industries and the information technology is the critical foundation for realizing this. By partnering with world-leading IT companies like Microsoft, Hainan can leverage innovative technologies to upgrade and enhance industries including tourism, real estate, transportation, maritime and agriculture, and accelerate Hainan’s transformation into an international tourism island. The MOU reflects both sides’ vision and commitment to Hainan’s bright, sustainable future.”

Orlando Ayala, corporate vice president, chairman of Emerging Markets, extended his congratulations on the partnership, adding, “Information technology and intelligent applications are playing an increasingly important role in developing more sustainable industries, including the tourism industry. This is vitally important because Asia Pacific is quickly becoming the world’s most popular region for tourists, and China is expected to become the leading tourism destination over the next decade. Microsoft has always been committed to helping industries transform through technological innovation and we look forward to working closely with the Hainan government to enhance the competitiveness of Hainan’s tourism industry and accelerate their transformation into a sustainable international tourism island.”

Ralph Haupter, corporate vice president, chairman and CEO of Microsoft Greater China Region, said, “Microsoft is honored to be in this strategic partnership with the Hainan government. Over the last 20 years, Microsoft has invested throughout the country as a part of its long-term commitment to partnering in developing an innovative, competitive and talented China. With comprehensive strengths in devices and services, from client to cloud, Microsoft China has the capabilities and is committed to supporting the Hainan government in promoting local industries, driving economic transformation and creating a model of eco-friendly international tourism.”

As the only tropical island in China, Hainan is the weathervane of China’s tourism industry. The construction of Hainan as an “international tourism island” was elevated in status to one of national strategy as it is seen as playing an essential role in China’s overall development. Under the MOU, Microsoft and the Hainan government will work together to improve Hainan’s competitiveness in information technology and help develop information-based industries, which will facilitate the smooth, rapid upgrade of the local industrial sector and support intelligent tourism industry growth.

Microsoft demonstrated tailor-made, forward-looking tourism solutions at the Bo’ao Forum, including innovative service experiences such as no-contact, motion sensing and multi-touch technology; the integration of the Hainan International Tourism Island portal and Bing Travel; a “space-time tunnel” and much more.

Technology innovation has become a driving force for the sustainable development of cities. With Microsoft’s extensive experience in software service outsourcing and cloud services, as well as the strengths of its products, technology and global resources, the company hopes to enable the nation’s governments and enterprises to improve their core competitiveness through informatization, to accelerate economic transformation and build better, flexible more connected cities.

REDMOND, Wash. — April 10, 2013 — Microsoft Corp. today announced that the power and automation technology company ABB will deploy Microsoft Office 365 and Yammer to its employees worldwide.

With about 145,000 employees in 100 countries, ABB is transitioning from multiple IT collaboration and messaging solutions to Office 365 to provide a single platform for productivity, communication, collaboration and enterprise social in the cloud.

“Office 365 and Yammer will enable us to transform communication and collaboration among our employees, surfacing the best and most innovative ideas across the organization,” said Andy Tidd, chief information officer at ABB Group.

Microsoft’s Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner emphasizes: “Strong internal communications are the lifeblood of a company’s success, and ABB’s decision as a global technology leader to deploy Office 365 and Yammer will help it realize its vision for empowering employees with new ways of working via enterprise social and the cloud. When you remove barriers to productivity and innovation and enable employees to collaborate and communicate even more freely and seamlessly across organizational and geographical boundaries, incredible things happen.”

Office 365 integrates a number of typical functionalities that employees use in their daily work. The mail service works seamlessly with the online meeting and videoconferencing service. Office 365 simplifies online meetings, and in large organizations such as ABB that can typically reduce travel costs by 15 to 20 percent.

ABB is rapidly embracing enterprise social networking solutions, implementing Yammer as its companywide platform to increase collaboration and knowledge sharing across the organization. ABB also plans to take full advantage of the planned integration between Office 365 and Yammer.

About ABB

ABB (http://www.abb.com) is a leader in power and automation technologies that enable utility and industry customers to improve their performance while lowering environmental impact. The ABB Group of companies operates in around 100 countries and employs about 145,000 people. The company invests more than $1.3 billion annually in research and development. In November 2012, ABB announced it had developed the first hybrid breaker for high-voltage direct current, enabling a new generation of super transmission grids. (http://new.abb.com/about/hvdc-grid).

About Yammer

Yammer (www.yammer.com) is a best-in-class Enterprise Social Network used by more than 200,000 organizations worldwide — including 85 percent of the Fortune 500 — to foster team collaboration, empower employees, drive business agility and promote organizational connectedness. Yammer’s freemium business model lets customers see the value of Yammer before upgrading to the premium offering. Founded in 2008, Yammer is now part of the Microsoft Office Division.

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.

LAS VEGAS — April 9, 2013 — Today at the National Association of Broadcasters Show, Microsoft Corp. and NBC Sports Group announced they are partnering to use Windows Azure Media Services across NBC Sports’ digital platforms, including NBCSports.com, NBCOlympics.com and GolfChannel.com.

Through the agreement, which rolls out this summer, Microsoft will provide both live-streaming and on-demand viewing services for more than 5,000 hours of games and events on devices, such as smartphones, tablets and PCs. These services will allow sports fans to be able to relive or catch up on their favorite events and highlights that aired on NBC Sports Group platforms.

“NBC Sports Group is thrilled to be working with Microsoft,” said Rick Cordella, senior vice president and general manager of digital media at NBC Sports Group. “More and more of our audience is viewing our programming on Internet-enabled devices, so quality of service is important. Also, our programming reaches a national audience and needs to be available under challenging network conditions. We chose Microsoft because of its reputation for delivering an end-to-end experience that allows for seamless, high-quality video for both live and video-on-demand streaming.”

NBC Sports Group’s unique portfolio of properties includes the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games, “Sunday Night Football,” Notre Dame Football, Premier League soccer, Major League Soccer, Formula One and IndyCar racing, PGA TOUR, U.S. Open golf, French Open tennis, Triple Crown horse racing, and more.

“Microsoft is constantly looking for innovative ways to utilize the power of the cloud, and we see Windows Azure Media Services as a high-demand offering,” said Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president at Microsoft. “As consumer demand for viewing media online on any available device grows, our partnership with NBC Sports Group gives us the opportunity to provide the best of cloud technology and bring world-class sporting events to audiences when and where they want them.”

Microsoft has a broad partner ecosystem, which extends to the cloud. To bring the NBC Sports Group viewing experience to life, Microsoft is working with iStreamPlanet Co. and its live video workflow management product Aventus. Aventus will integrate with Windows Azure Media Services to provide a scalable, reliable, live video workflow solution to help bring NBC Sports Group programming to the cloud.

NBC Sports Group and iStreamPlanet join a growing list of companies, including European Tour, deltatre, Dolby Laboratories Inc. and Digital Rapids Corp., which are working with Windows Azure to bring their broadcasting audiences or technologies to the cloud.

In addition to Media Services, Windows Azure core services include Mobile Services, Cloud Services, Virtual Machines, Websites and Big Data. Customers can go to http://www.windowsazure.com for more information and to start their free trial.

About NBC Sports Group

When the Comcast-NBCUniversal transaction was completed in January 2011, the sports assets of the two companies combined to form the NBC Sports Group, which serves sports fans 24/7 with premier live events, insightful studio shows, and compelling original programming. The sports media company consists of a unique array of broadcast television, cable television, radio and digital sports assets, including NBC Sports, NBC Olympics, NBC Sports Network, Golf Channel, 11 NBC Sports Regional Networks, NBC Sports Radio and all of their respective digital properties. The NBC Sports Group possesses an unparalleled collection of television rights agreements, partnering with some of the most prestigious sports properties in the world: the International Olympic Committee and United States Olympic Committee, the NFL, NHL, PGA TOUR, PGA of America, USGA, Churchill Downs, Premier League, MLS, Tour de France, French Open, Formula One, IndyCar and many more.

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.

The PostgreSQL project has again been selected to take part in Summer of Code for 2013. Google will be funding several students to work with mentors from our project in order to hack PostgreSQL code for the summer.

Applications for students open April 22nd. Our Summer Of Code page has all the information you need about applying this year.

If you are connected with a university, please make sure that students know about this opportunity. If you are a student, please apply!

LAS VEGAS — April 8, 2013 — Today at the Microsoft Management Summit, Microsoft Corp. showcased companies relying on Windows Server Hyper-V and System Center to adapt to the changing needs of their businesses and customers.

“Companies around the world are using our technologies to innovate for their businesses. Our focus is to help IT organizations expand their capabilities and embrace the opportunities of cloud computing,” said Brad Anderson, corporate vice president of Windows Server and System Center Division. Anderson delivered the keynote address at the Summit and blogged about Microsoft’s Cloud OS strategy.

Powering Pizza Delivery

A pizza delivery pioneer, Domino’s Pizza has computerized nearly all aspects of store operations, from inventory to order taking to staff scheduling. The company moved to Windows Server Hyper-V for better reliability and management of its in-store servers running the Domino’s Pulse point-of-sale (POS) application.

Hyper-V is currently deployed in 750 stores and will be rolled out to more than 4,000 in the United States, as well as international locations. Using System Center to centrally manage over 15,000 servers and devices, Domino’s has cut virtualization-related help desk calls by 99 percent.

“If online ordering goes down, a third of our business evaporates. It’s that simple. It’s absolutely critical that our store servers remain running and, with Hyper-V, we’ve dramatically reduced store downtime,” said Lance Shinabarger, vice president, Global Infrastructure, Domino’s Pizza. “From pricing to management, performance and reliability gains, Hyper-V and System Center have been a huge win for Domino’s.”

Closing the “Dev-Ops” Gap

The Xerox India Development Center (IDC) supports software development for customers all over the world. IDC needed to help its developers better collaborate with customers and a more reliable way to quickly test and fix applications. The organization built a Microsoft private cloud with Windows Server Hyper-V and System Center that dynamically replicates customer datacenter environments. Using System Center with Visual Studio Team Foundation Server, the operations team can efficiently provide developers with deep insights into applications for real-time troubleshooting and optimization. As a result, IDC improved developer productivity by approximately 40 percent and cut costs by about 30 percent.

“Microsoft is my cloud platform vendor of choice because it provides the complete, integrated stack of infrastructure, application platform and development tools,” said Raman Padmanabhan, senior vice president and chief information officer, Commercial Business Process Outsourcing, Xerox Commercial Solutions. “We want our developers to be able to work across multiple development projects and sites with ease. They now have the tools and infrastructure they need to accelerate the ever-shrinking write-test-debug cycle.”

Building Productivity and Cost Savings

Pedcor Companies develops, builds and manages housing communities, including construction of more than 17,000 apartment units in the U.S. The company needed to improve datacenter availability and give employees in 77 remote offices better access to data and important applications, such as the Pedcor Management Application for collecting and processing rental fees. By replacing VMware infrastructure with a Microsoft private cloud built with Windows Server and System Center, Pedcor has reduced downtime by 40 percent, saved US$560,000 in IT costs and enabled reliable remote access to corporate resources.

“We can automate the management and delivery of healthy applications, which boosts the productivity of our people in the field,” said Sumeeth Evans, vice president of Information Technology, Pedcor Companies. “Microsoft’s technologies free my team to focus on new solutions for the business and give us a platform for the future.”

More news about MMS is available on the STB News Bytes blog, while information about how organizations are turning to Microsoft technology is available in the Microsoft Customer Spotlight newsroom.

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.