Posted by Kerry Godes
Senior Manager, Worldwide Marketing and Operations

Earlier today, Microsoft released the beta version of System Center 2012 Configuration Manager SP1. This release includes extended client management support for Windows 8, Mac OS X, Linux and Unix operating systems, functionality originally included in June’s Community Technology Preview.

Consumerization is a growing challenge for IT organizations as employees need consistent access to applications from wherever they are, on any device they’re using—desktops, laptops, smartphones, and tablets. The B.Y.O.D. (Bring Your Own Device) trend can yield productivity gains for employees, but also presents unique challenges for IT managers in delivering secure applications. System Center 2012 Configuration Manager helps to manage this influx of devices, regardless of platform, while still enabling compliance and data protection.

For more on today’s announcement, please see the Microsoft Server and Cloud Platform blog. Or visit the Microsoft Download Center to download and evaluate the beta release.

Posted by Kerry Godes
Senior Manager, Worldwide Marketing and Operations

Social networking accounts for 1 of every 6 minutes spent online, generating an enormous amount of content that could be useful to consumers, schools, governments and corporations – almost anyone interested in measuring trends – if only there were a way to harness it.

Enter Klout, a data services company, which offers fast, detailed insights from an index of the online activity of 100 million people, more than 2.7 billion pieces of content daily and 30 billion API calls per month on 15 leading social networks.

From these hundreds of terabytes of data, Klout customers and partners get nearly real-time access to information on what people are doing, searching and talking about on their social networks. “We take in raw data and make it into something that is actionable for our consumers, brands, and partners,” says David Mariani, Vice President of Engineering at Klout.

Posted by Kerry Godes
Senior Manager, Worldwide Marketing and Operations

Today’s global online launch event showcased the general availability of Windows Server 2012. In his keynote and blog post, Satya Nadella, President of the Sever and Tools Business, describes how Windows Server 2012 delivers significant new advancements in virtualization, storage, networking and automation.

Windows Server 2012 has been reimagined to power a new world of continuous services and connected devices. It is a cornerstone of what we call a Cloud OS, which provides a consistent platform for infrastructure and applications across private, hosted, and public clouds. According to Satya, “Microsoft’s unique legacy in the most widely used operating systems, applications and cloud services positions us to deliver the Cloud OS, based on Windows Server and Windows Azure, helping customers achieve a datacenter without boundaries.”

For more on today’s news, check out the online launch experience, where you can engage with Microsoft and the community through on-demand sessions and participate in games and social media.

Posted by Kerry Godes
Senior Manager, Worldwide Marketing and Operations

In celebration of the 40th anniversary of its first arcade games – classics like Pong, Asteroids, and Missile Command – Atari partnered with Internet Explorer and Grant Skinner to create the new Atari Arcade that features eight classic games with more titles to come.

As a leading pioneer of this entertainment platform, Atari sold 30 million Atari 2600 consoles, quickly became the definitive gaming platform of its era, and inspired multiple video game franchises.

Guaranteed to spark nostalgia for enduring fans, the Atari Arcade is also intended to reach a new and broader audience of gamers and game developers via the web. The games were all built with HTML5 and multi-player capabilities that come to life with a new Windows 8 touch device and Internet Explorer 10. They also work great in IE9 on a Windows 7 PC, or any other modern browser.

Hear from Atari’s Founder Nolan Bushnell and the team on how the project came together in this video: 

For developers, the team has also created a software development kit available in the developer behind the scenes section of the site, along with new and updated versions of JavaScript libraries and new tutorials for building HTML5 games. All code is available on the Internet Explorer GitHub repository here.

For more on this collaboration, see the Exploring IE blog or start gaming at Atari Arcade.

Posted by Kerry Godes
Senior Manager, Worldwide Marketing and Operations

Yesterday Android joined the family of SkyDrive apps available for mobile devices. This extends SkyDrive’s commitment to delivering personal cloud storage that’s available anywhere – via any modern web browser, across operating systems, and on many mobile devices.

Here are a few of the SkyDrive for Android app features:

• Access, share, and manage your SkyDrive files and photos.
• Choose multiple photos or videos to upload from your phone.
• Open your SkyDrive files from other Android apps.

For more details on the app, please see the Inside SkyDrive blog or download today from the Google Play site.