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Azure recently experienced a nasty outage, lasting several hours. It seems to have been centered around DNS, but had wide side effects. Microsoft’s cloud platform took something of a beating. By the sound of it, a DDoS could have been to blame. Or not. Redmond isn’t saying…

HP buys 26,500 seats of Microsoft Dynamics, displacing Salesforce and Oracle. It’s a huge deal, cementing Microsoft as the SaaS leader, according to analysts. As goes SaaS, so goes IaaS and PaaS? Scott Guthrie certainly thinks so, arguing that only Amazon stands between Microsoft and the cloud top spot. Who’d a thunk it…

Microsoft is said to be launching a new Surface, codenamed Cardinal. The new device will be a one-box desktop PC—i.e., an all-in-one (AiO), as popularlized by Apple’s iMac. The avian-themed rumor seems credible and well-sourced. And an October hardware event would fit with Microsoft’s previous form. But beyond that, everything is mere speculation. None of which stops us from some amusing Friday musing…

With new PC chips rapidly approaching, here’s a timely reminder about Windows 7 support: There isn’t any—at least not on Intel or AMD’s new silicon. Only Windows 10 is supported. Your downgrade rights were wrenched away, back in January…

Microsoft Excel causes problems in genetic research. That’s the claim of three researchers from an Australian institute, who discovered almost 20% of data sets contained errors introduced by Excel. The problem is Excel being “clever”—guessing the type of data it’s being asked to import. Unfortunately…

Microsoft Windows 10 comes under fire for privacy. The Electronic Frontier Foundation last week reopened the case against Redmond’s telemetry and personalization efforts. Despite acknowledging previous press stories were wildly incorrect, EFF paralegal staffer Amul Kalia argues his case with sincere passion…

Microsoft PowerShell on Linux and macOS—yes, it’s now open source. If you think the world’s gone mad, you might be right. For die-hard Linux-heads, it’s never going to replace Bash, Perl or Python. But for Microsoft-centric dev/ops types, it promises to be a wonderful widget in the toolbag. Especially as more workloads move to “the cloud.”

Microsoft Windows Secure Boot has a big problem. It’s no longer secure, and can’t be fixed—or so say a pair of security researchers who found the issue. Apparently, Microsoft created a secret backdoor, for internal QA use. But two Ring Of Lightning researchers uncovered the so-called “golden key.”

Microsoft HoloLens is now available to all. Redmond wants more businesses and developers to get going with its augmented-reality Windows headset. No longer do you need an invitation. And along with the latest build of Windows 10 come a container-load of new, enterprisey features. But it may (or may not) still cost $3000. In today’s IT Newspro, we mow the lawn like it’s 1992…

Microsoft has announced that they will further cut their employee count by over 2000 staff by the end of fiscal year 2017.