Sunday, June 29, 2014

Microsoft Azure To Be Available Under Open Licensing Program

Microsoft Azure is the cloud computing platform set up by the software giant, which deploys and manages applications with the global datacenters of the company. Microsoft Azure offers a wide range of support for various programming languages, third party software applications and other tools. This has attracted majority of big business houses to use this platform. According to the official website of Azure, more than half of the Fortune 500 companies have already chosen Azure.

Microsoft says that the platform will be available under open licensing program from August 1, 2014. According to Microsoft help center, the company’s partners can purchase a service from any of the distributors and then sell it to the customers. Earlier, Azure was available to purchase from the official website of the company or with an Enterprise Agreement with the company.

The senior director of the company, Josh Waldo says, “Through the Open Licensing program, Azure will now be available through another familiar licensing option that offers the benefits of Microsoft Volume Licensing, flexible monetary payments, and additional opportunities for you to grow margins and deepen customer relationships”. He further adds, “As we lead up to availability of Azure in Open Licensing in August, you’ll have opportunities to gain sales and technical skills to prepare for this opportunity.”

Microsoft Azure provides IaaS and PaaS services to the users. It was four years back when Microsoft launched this service. This cloud platform from Microsoft allows users to develop websites based on different platforms like ASP.NET, Python, PHP etc. The services also allow migration of applications by using both Linux virtual machines and Windows server. The cloud services of the program are a great way to develop scalable services and applications. Media services are also offered by the platform, which can be used for streaming, analytics, content protection and encoding.

According to Microsoft help center, Azure offers several website hosting services. Once the user develops a website, he/she can choose any of the applications to deploy the website. Customers are allowed to create virtual machines with the service and they are allowed to have complete control of these machines, which can be used to operate Microsoft data centers.

Data management is another service offered by Azure. The SQL database helps users to extend the applications with the SQL server technology. The data management services work well with the Microsoft system center, Hadoop and Active directory for efficient management of data.

Thursday, June 19, 2014

What Happens When You Contact Microsoft Support Services

If you are faced with any issue on your Windows operating system, it is better to visit the Official Microsoft Help page and seek for help rather than trying to solve the problem yourself. When you take the task into your own hands, you might risk the chance of making the problem even more severe if you are not completely sure of what you are doing!

The Microsoft help forum exists for this very reason. You can find everything there, from detailed text guides with pictures that explain everything from the nature of the problem to how you can solve it to a tutorial that ensures that you do not suffer from the same issue ever again! Such help and support pages contain articles on every possible issue, which can range from mundane to extremely complex ones. The best part about them happens to be the fact that they are completely free and can be accessed with the touch of a button.

At times, the error maybe a minor one, but the solution would not be at hand. Instead of fiddling with your computer without any solutions at hand, it is better to call up a separate company that specializes in providing third party Microsoft technical support. It is often a better idea than making sense of complicated instructions and facing problems that are too complicated to be handled by ourselves.

It is the job of such technical support experts to know the solution to your problems and to assist you in every possible way. Only the best professionals who have the required technical skill-sets are hired in such firms. Even after they are hired, they have to take part in regular refresher courses to make sure that they are familiar with the latest updates.

To help solve the issue, these tech support employees access your system using remote access software. This enables them to take control of your system as if they were physically present right beside you. Of course, you get to see what all changes they are making and you can regain control of your system at anytime if you are not comfortable to do so.

Solving problems yourself can be a tiring and frustrating process. Some tutorials, which are published in Microsoft help forum, might only work for selected systems and might not work for you! In such cases, rather than wasting your time, it makes more sense to seek assistance from a third party technical support team.

Monday, June 16, 2014

New Features Added To Outlook Web App In Exchange 2013

Outlook Web App (OWA), which was originally known by the name Outlook Web Access, is the web mail service from Microsoft Exchange Server. The service can be used for accessing your emails from the Desktop with a click of the mouse. The service is available twenty fours of the in a week and it allows the users to access not only their email accounts, but also their calendar and contact details. Even though it does not give the users a complete web mail experience like the Outlook email manager program, Outlook Web App is used by some users as a lighter replacement for the program.

Usually, people use OWA when they are on a public computer and are trying to access their mailbox for viewing emails or contacts. Some even use this program as a replacement of Outlook as they do not have enough money to afford the overpriced Microsoft Outlook price. However, some use the program simply because they like it more than the Outlook email client. The truth is that even the technicians in the Microsoft support team like OWA in place of Outlook as it relieves them from the added burden of developing, deploying and maintaining a specially designed email client.

However, even with the hefty Microsoft Outlook price, some people go for the email client due to the reason that it allows the users to work offline with their calendars and emails whereas Outlook Web App requires constant internet connectivity for functioning. This is the main reason for the popularity of Outlook email client and the lesser popularity of OWA. However, with new updates installed with OWA, it will not be the same.

One of the major changes made to the service is that the company had improved the design of OWA, so that now it has a fresh and modern look. The service will now look same in all devices and platforms as it now has a simplified modern look. The company has also added new formatting options with the service for the email users to explore and use. One of the major advancements the service got was the ability to drag and drop files as attachments. You will now also have the ability to view pictures in an attachment without having to open or download them to the system.

Hope you got some idea about the Outlook Web App from iCloud 24x7. For further information of the service, contact our tech support desk.

Friday, June 13, 2014

Setup And User Interface Of Windows Phone 8

The Start screen of the Windows operating system got the biggest facelift through Windows Phone 8. There are also many important changes to the lock screen that has made the operating system even more useful. In the Windows Phone 7, the users were allowed to get some details about the next appointment in the calendar. In the Windows Phone 8, the users can swap it out for the most recent unread mail, missed call or text message. The user has the option to customize the notifications on the bottom of the screen as the user can choose the type of notifications that they receive and the order in which they are displayed. This information was confirmed after contacting the Windows support number.

In Windows Phone 8, there is ample room for five standard sized icons. It is a very good improvement over WP7, but unfortunately, this is not better than the notification system of Android operating system. The user also has the option to dynamically update the lock screen background to display information of third party apps. For example, HTC does a terrific job in its weather app, letting the users view the current temperature and the weather forecast. Other apps like CNN will offer breaking news updates in a similar way. The user can also have the lock screen to show off the Bing photo, if you are looking for eye candy.

Apart from these two changes, the Windows Phone 8 does not include a number of drastic changes to the UI. This does not mean that Microsoft has not thrown in extra features in Windows Phone 8. This just means that people who are familiar with the modern User Interface will not be having much of a learning curve when they start using their new handsets.

WP8 provides a number of elements for rendering text, in addition to the set of properties that are aimed at making a variety of formatted text. In addition, the user will be able to make an app bar to provide quick access to an app’s most frequent tasks. By using the app bar of Windows Phone, you help to make a consistent User Interface across all the apps on the Windows device.

If you wish to know more on the feature updates that are introduced by Windows Phone 8, you can contact the Windows support number. They will be able to give you the latest information on the features of Windows Phone 8.

Thursday, June 5, 2014

Checkout The Newly Introduced Features And Options In Outlook Webmail

Microsoft launched the Outlook webmail service and merged their existing Hotmail service to it, so that they take the competition from Google’s Gmail and Yahoo Mail head on. However, there have been a few technical glitches and problems with the Outlook webmail service.

These resulted in a few bouts of temporary service outage that affected many Outlook users. Though these problems affected only a few users, the news spread quickly online.

Microsoft introduces some new features in Outlook.com

In short, Microsoft needs to remove this stain and make the Outlook.com service look more user-friendly and efficient. Maybe that’s why they have launched this new update for their free email service, and not for their paid Office 365 service.

If you go to your Outlook webmail page, you will see a new much more advanced Outlook setting for assigning Rules. Rule was originally an Outlook mail client feature, which Microsoft has introduced in their webmail service as well.

Now, a typical Outlook user will be getting dozens of emails every day and hundreds stored in their Inbox folders every month. You can use the Rule Outlook setting to set the mail server to perform certain actions, if certain conditions are met. For example, you can set Outlook to transfer all the email messages received from a particular sender to a particular folder. The server will check the email messages that are under this condition (the sender email address) and perform the assigned action (transferring the message to the assigned folder).

The newly introduced Advanced Rules option brings much more options for setting the conditions and actions in Outlook webmail. This means that you can use these settings to make the Outlook server do most of the work of rearranging the email messages, by setting up the right conditions and actions.

You will also see a new Undo button, which can be accessed by pressing the Ctrl + Z. This was a much-needed requirement. Accidental deletions and moving of messages are very common, especially when you are dealing with so many email messages. From now on, when such things happen, you just need to press the Undo button and your last action will be undone.

These are just some of the new features introduced in the Outlook webmail service. Login to your Outlook account to find out more about the other new features.