DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania — Oct. 9, 2013 — Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday unveiled the 4Afrika Advisory Council, an external board of advisers tasked with guiding strategic investments undertaken by the Microsoft 4Afrika Initiative across the continent and ensuring 4Afrika is closely aligned to broad African development goals. His Excellency Benjamin Mkapa, former president of the United Republic of Tanzania chairs the board, and Mteto Nyati, managing director of Microsoft South Africa, serves as the vice chair.

The Microsoft 4Afrika Initiative was introduced in February 2013 as an effort through which the company is actively engaging in Africa’s economic development to improve its global competitiveness. To help ensure the initiative meets its critical goals, Microsoft 4Afrika chose to form the 4Afrika Advisory Council to solicit external input and guidance from a respected group of regional influencers.

Other members of the 4Afrika Advisory Council include Juliana Rotich, executive director for Ushahidi and senior TED fellow from Kenya; Hanan Abdelmeguid, CEO of Orascom Telecom Ventures in Egypt; Bright Simons, social innovator, entrepreneur, writer and researcher in Ghana; Florence Iwegbue, co-founder LiveWello LLC in Nigeria; Marieme Jamme, Senegalese-born and London-based CEO, blogger, technologist and social entrepreneur; Luís Lélis, executive director at Banco Angolano de Investimentos in Angola; Phuti Mahanyele, CEO of Shanduka Group in South Africa; Richard Attias, founder of The New York Forum and Moroccan events producer; Benjamin Mophatlane, CEO of Business Connexion in South Africa; and Monica Musonda, CEO of Java Foods and board member of the Bank of Zambia. Louis Otieno, director of Legal and Corporate affairs for Microsoft Africa, will serve as the council secretary.

“I am deeply honored to chair the 4Afrika Advisory Council and to represent this prestigious group of council members because we all believe deeply in Microsoft 4Afrika’s mission to help Africa improve its global competitiveness,” Mkapa said. “Together with the Microsoft team, we look forward to helping to grow African leaders, encourage and support African businesses and highlight African innovation here on the continent and on the world stage.”

The council had its first meeting Oct. 4, 2013, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. At this meeting, the council discussed topics relevant to advancing the 4Afrika mission, including the importance of developing strategies that address both rural and urban youth populations, the role of teachers as content creators, and approaches to building sustainable models for growth of African entrepreneurs and small businesses.

In addition, to ensure that the critical voices of African youth are heard, the council made provisions for four additional slots on the 4Afrika Advisory Council, to be occupied by youth leaders from the continent. Candidates were selected from existing African youth leadership groups, including U.S. President Obama’s Young African Leaders Initiative, the African Leadership Network, the African Leadership Initiative, the Desmond Tutu Leadership Fellowship Program and the World Economic Forum’s Forum of Young Global Leaders. Nominees will be contacted in the coming weeks with formal invitations to join the 4Afrika Advisory Council.

“As established influencers and innovators in Africa, we know that this group composing the 4Afrika Advisory Council will make highly impactful contributions to Microsoft 4Afrika’s efforts to shape development priorities across the continent with the use of technology as an enabler,” Nyati said. “Not only will the group help Microsoft 4Afrika to understand and engage in existing areas of untapped potential, but we are confident it will also help us break new ground within the initiative’s targeted sectors, including healthcare, education and small business enablement.”

The council will meet in person twice annually and will also hold regionally focused meetings at other times in the year. The council members have also committed to contribute to 4Afrika efforts in capacity-building with African youth leaders.

The Microsoft 4Afrika Initiative is built on the dual beliefs that technology can accelerate growth for Africa and Africa can also accelerate technology for the world. More information is available at http://www.microsoft.com/4afrika.

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. — Oct. 7, 2013 — Microsoft Corp. on Monday announced a wave of new enterprise products and services to help companies seize the opportunities of cloud computing and overcome today’s top IT challenges. Complementing Office 365 and other services, these new offerings deliver on Microsoft’s enterprise cloud strategy.

Satya Nadella, Cloud and Enterprise executive vice president, said, “As enterprises move to the cloud they are going to bet on vendors that have best-in-class software as a service applications, operate a global public cloud that supports a broad ecosystem of third party services, and deliver multi-cloud mobility through true hybrid solutions. If you look across the vendor landscape, you can see that only Microsoft is truly delivering in all of those areas.” More comments from Nadella can be found on The Official Microsoft Blog.

Hybrid infrastructure and modern applications

To help customers build IT infrastructure that delivers continuous services and applications across clouds, on Oct. 18 Microsoft will release Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2. Together, these new products empower companies to create datacenters without boundaries using Hyper-V for high-scale virtualization; high-performance storage at dramatically lower costs; built-in, software-defined networking; and hybrid business continuity. The new Windows Azure Pack runs on top of Windows Server and System Center, enabling enterprises and service providers to deliver self-service infrastructure and platforms from their datacenters.

Building on these hybrid cloud platforms, customers can use Visual Studio 2013 and the new .NET 4.5.1, also available Oct. 18, to create modern applications for devices and services. As software development becomes pervasive within every company, the new Visual Studio 2013 Modern Lifecycle Management solution helps enable development teams, businesspeople and IT managers to build and deliver better applications, faster.

Enabling enterprise cloud adoption

Recognizing that most enterprises will take a hybrid approach to cloud, Microsoft wants to help customers utilize their investments in on-premises software solutions toward the adoption of cloud computing. On Nov. 1, Microsoft will offer Enterprise Agreement (EA) customers access to discounted Windows Azure prices, regardless of upfront commitment, without overuse penalties and with the flexibility of annual payments.

As another part of this effort to reduce cloud adoption barriers, Microsoft on Monday announced a strategic partnership with Equinix Inc. Building on recently announced partnerships with AT&T and others, this alliance will provide customers with even more options for private and fast connections to the cloud. Customers will be able to connect their networks with Windows Azure at Equinix exchange locations for greater throughput, availability and security features.

Governments are among the most demanding enterprise customers. To help U.S. federal, state and local government agencies realize the benefits of public cloud computing, Microsoft is introducing its Windows Azure US Government Cloud. This will offer U.S. government customers a dedicated community cloud for data, applications and infrastructure, hosted in the continental U.S. and managed by U.S. personnel. Windows Azure has been granted FedRAMP Joint Authorization Board Provisional Authority to Operate, making it the first public cloud of its kind to achieve this level of government authorization.

Data platform and insights

As part of its vision to help more people unlock actionable insights from big data, Microsoft next week will release a second preview of SQL Server 2014. The new version offers industry-leading in-memory technologies at no additional cost, giving customers 10 times to 30 times performance improvements without application rewrites or new hardware. SQL Server 2014 also works with Windows Azure to give customers built-in cloud backup and disaster recovery.

For big data analytics, later this month Microsoft will release Windows Azure HDInsight Service, an Apache Hadoop-based service that works with SQL Server and widely used business intelligence tools, such as Microsoft Excel and Power BI for Office 365. With Power BI, people can combine private and public data in the cloud for rich visualizations and fast insights.

People and devices in the cloud

The proliferation of cloud applications, data and consumer devices is moving many enterprises to a bring-your-own-device model. The new release of Windows Intune, also available Oct. 18, combines with System Center Configuration Manager to help IT departments give mobile employees security-enhanced access to the applications and data they need on the Windows, iOS and Android devices of their choice. This unified management environment for PCs and mobile devices complements the new access and information protection capabilities in Windows Server 2012 R2.

Further, with Windows Server 2012 R2 Microsoft is introducing the Microsoft Remote Desktop app, available for download in applications stores later this month, to provide easy access to PCs and virtual desktops on variety of devices and platforms, including Windows, Windows RT, iOS, OS X and Android.

Software as a service business solutions

The next major version of the company’s CRM solution, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Fall ’13 will be available later this month, helping make customer interactions more personal via contextual information for deeper insights than the previous version, delivered on a variety of devices.* The on-premises version is expected to be available later in the fall for deployment either in-house or hosted by a partner. More information is available here. In addition, Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 R2 is now available, offering small and midsize businesses interoperability with Office 365, full multitenant support, and a range of tools designed to support large-scale hosting of the application on Windows Azure.

More information on Monday’s announcements can be found at the Microsoft News Center.

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

* Devices include Windows 8 tablets and iPad tablets with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013; Windows Phone 8, iPhone and Android phone shortly following the release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013.

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 — Oct. 7, 2013 — Monday at the Money 2020 event in Las Vegas, leading merchants and companies from ecommerce, banking, payments and social media unveiled The CardLinx Association, a new interoperability organization to enhance the consumer experience with local commerce and card linked offers. Founding members of The CardLinx Association include Microsoft Corp., Bank of America, Discover, Deem, Facebook, First Data Corp., Linkable Networks Inc., LivingSocial, MasterCard, Affinity Solutions Inc., CardSpring Inc. and Cardlytics.

As the “offers” space has become more popular, consumers have often found it cumbersome to take advantage of the variety of offers, which has slowed growth in the industry. Card linked offers help solve that problem by giving merchants and advertisers the ability to deliver an offer or deal to consumers via their credit, debit or other payment cards without having to use a paper coupon, voucher or promotion code on their mobile devices. The mission of The CardLinx Association is to establish increased interoperability, eliminate friction and promote the growth of the card linked offers industry.

The CardLinx Association membership is open to financial institutions, publishers, advertisers and merchants, merchant acquirers, payment networks and offer technology companies. The association will develop and institute common business practices and interoperability standards to minimize friction in the sourcing, serving, publishing, redeeming and cross-syndicating of card linked offers — ultimately leading to the growth of the industry. Companies interested in joining the association should visit http://www.cardlinx.org.

“We’re focused on connecting digital advertising to the physical world in a way that minimizes friction for merchants and consumers so they can engage with each other in valuable ways. We believe that card linked offers will play a key role in delivering on this promise, which is why we’re eager and committed to be one of the founding members of The CardLinx Association,” said Erik Jorgensen, general manager of Local Advertising with Microsoft. “We’re excited to partner with other industry leaders to bring this to life via The CardLinx Association.”

“The CardLinx Association brings together thought leaders across a variety of important linked industries, allowing us to define a set of standards and services that will make it easier for consumers to shop and for merchants to sell their goods and services,” said Silvio Tavares, founding CEO of The CardLinx Association.

Tavares and founding members of The CardLinx Association will host a presentation to share more about their commitment to standardizing card linked offers Monday at the Money2020 conference in Las Vegas from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the ARIA Resort & Casino in the Starvine Meeting Rooms 10 and 11.

About The CardLinx Association

The mission of the non-profit CardLinx Association is to establish increased interoperability, eliminate friction and promote the growth of the card linked offers industry. On behalf of its members, the Association develops and institutes common business practices and industry services to minimize and eliminate friction in the sourcing, serving, publishing, redeeming, and cross-syndicating of card linked offers — ultimately leading to the growth of the industry. Companies interested in joining should visit www.cardlinx.org.

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.

Denpasar , Bali, INDONESIA — Oct . 5 , 2013 — Tech-savvy small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) created more new jobs and drove more revenue gains over the past three years than SMEs using little technology, according to new research commissioned by Microsoft Corp. and independently conducted by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), a global management consulting firm and a leading adviser on business strategy.

Successful Tech-Savvy SMEs October 03, 2013 How Microsoft enables their productivity and growth

Downloads: Web

The BCG report, Ahead of the Curve: Lessons on Technology and Growth From Small Business Leaders, which is being published Saturday, found there is potential for SME revenue to grow by a combined $770 billion in the five primary countries if more SMEs could achieve the growth rates of those SMEs that use modern IT. These same SMEs could add some 6.2 million new jobs in those countries alone. What’s more, BCG believes that this association between IT adoption and growth would be consistent in countries across the world.

“SMEs are a critical growth engine for jobs and economies today, and we wanted to better understand the impact of technology on these small businesses,” said Orlando Ayala, corporate vice president and Microsoft chairman of Emerging Markets. “Since the economic crisis, many economies have struggled to return to strong economic growth and to create new jobs, and this research suggests strongly that greater use of advanced IT by SMEs can potentially boost both growth and employment.”

BCG’s research found that over the past three years, IT-enabled SMEs, which BCG refers to as “technology leaders,” grew revenues 15 percentage points faster and created twice as many jobs as SMEs that use less technology. The research also revealed that across nearly all product categories, these fast-growing SMEs use more Microsoft solutions than any other products, and that SMEs view Microsoft as the top partner for new and future technology needs. In fact, when asked what technologies survey respondents could not live without, they chose Microsoft Office as the top productivity application over all others. What’s more, SMEs that adopted Microsoft Cloud services grew faster than SMEs that do not use any Microsoft products.

“The BCG research revealed that Microsoft products and services are the No. 1 choice of these technology leaders,” said Vahé Torossian, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Worldwide Small and Mid-Market Solutions and Partners organization. “Microsoft is the brand that small businesses trust and use to power their growth.”

The BCG report argued that the latest wave of technological advancement, such as cloud services, brings potential for the most far-reaching innovation and business growth ever, creating an opportunity for more SMEs to achieve the growth rates of technology leaders by leveraging technology to fuel productivity and growth. The research revealed that high-performing SMEs stayed ahead of mainstream IT adoption, riding new waves of advancement to improve productivity, connect with new customers and markets, particularly outside their own region or country, and compete with much larger players. These companies employ the full range of available tools — from productivity software to Internet connectivity and cloud-based services.

But at the same time, the research revealed a risk, because SMEs’ adoption of IT is decidedly uneven. Across the world, many SMEs, and their customers, don’t have access to modern broadband networks, and many lack the skills to get the most out of IT. Many SMEs are also still using large amounts of old and less efficient hardware and software. New devices are also sometimes very expensive due to high import duties, and SMEs are concerned about online security and privacy. But the growth prospects described in the study are too important for governments and the IT industry to ignore.

The risk of a growing technology gulf is relevant to governments looking to maximize economic growth, and it is an opportunity for policy-makers and the IT industry to implement strategies to remove barriers to IT adoption by addressing small businesses’ top concerns about using more technology.

“Our objective is to help more SMEs transition to, and benefit from, modern IT,” Torossian said. “For customers, it means providing product training and helping SMEs understand the full range of available devices and services, but it also means community investments such as skills training and partnering with governments and communities to remove the bigger, systemic barriers that hold SMEs back.”

The results of the BCG survey of more than 4,000 SMEs in five of the world’s largest and most diverse economies were consistent across all industry sectors, but there were some surprises from emerging markets and with women-owned firms. Technology leaders in emerging markets grew jobs and revenue faster than in developed markets and are even quicker than their developed market counterparts to embrace new tools, and women-owned firms are among the most technically advanced, innovative and successful firms interviewed.

“What we are seeing is that technology can help level the playing field for groups with historical disadvantages in business, and we would like to see more SMEs benefit from being technology leaders,” Ayala said. “Microsoft is committed to enabling people from all over the world and bridging the gender gap in computing careers with tools and programs to provide opportunities in the computing field for business growth and innovation.”

A copy of the report can be downloaded at http://www.bcgperspectives.com.

More about how Microsoft is working with SMEs can be found at

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/presskits/SMETechLeaders/default.aspx .

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.