Microsoft to sell its major products at brick-and-mortar stores

 

The software giant Microsoft has announced that it is returning to the physical retail market and will be selling products at brick-and-mortar stores. The company will start selling products at its "Experience Centers" in London, New York City, and Sydney by the end of July. The products selected by Microsoft will be available on July 1st, but the global chip shortage will create a big impact on what is available to buy.

Microsoft's most anticipated Xbox Series X / S consoles will not be available in these stores initially until stocks of these devices improve to meet demand. But other Xbox-related products will be available, alongside Surface devices and Microsoft 365 subscriptions. Microsoft Experience Centers will also be providing its customers a way to experience their new products in person.

Microsoft will use these innovative experience centers to test and experiment and continue to evolve the knowledge based on customer feedback. The experience centers will be starting from July 1st, and the customers will be able to purchase select Microsoft products at the New York, London, and Sydney locations. Information about products being sold will be updated on the company's official website.

 

LG renews its conglomerate with collegial esports series Battle Academy

LG Business Solutions USA, in a press meet, has renewed its partnership with collegiate multi-game esports tournament series Battle Academy. As a result, LG's most renowned UltraGear gaming monitors will remain the tournament's official monitor. As per the reports, the deal was renewed as the series became successful in 2020 and saw participants offered scholarships by universities and colleges.

Battle Academy is run by UGC EDU, which is a division of the Ultimate Gaming Championship. The series mainly aims at providing an organized, education-focused competition league that helps gamers pursue a career in the esports and media industry. This can range from players competing in the event to offer more opportunities for designers, marketers, and journalists.

Battle Academy's 2020 launch was an overwhelming success and the game has given students a new avenue to enhance their skills in multiple competitive esports games and in media sector.The game has also attracted interest and even financial assistance from colleges looking to bolster their nascent esports programs and rosters. Also, the company is planning to launch new titles for its summer season and other series' in 2021.

 

 

Alibaba Cloud has launched $1 billion Project for Startups APAC

 

Alibaba Cloud has launched Project AsiaForward with a funding of $1 billion that will help the talented developers and growth of technology startups in Asia Pacific (APAC). The announcement was made at Alibaba Cloud Summit 2021.

“Our strategic roadmap for APAC includes targeted investments to facilitate the digital transformation of local businesses. We see these investments as all the more timely given the impact of the pandemic and the sharp rise in demand for digital business tools. Equally important is our focus on talent development and nurturing a digitally-competent workforce, which we see as a key challenge for many businesses to overcome going forward,” said Selina Yuan, General Manager of International Business Unit, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence.

The Project AsiaForward’s three core programs are called DigiTalents Forward, AI Forward, and DigiEntrepreneurs Forward. The company kicked off the DIgitTalents Forward programme in Singapore with the School of Computer Science and Engineering (SCSE), and NTU-Alibaba Singapore Joint Research Institute (JRI) at Nanyang Technological University.

In other announcements at Alibaba Cloud Summit 2021, the company has launched its first data center in the Philippines towards the end of the year. This will help support digitalization of local businesses through a variety of products and services including Elastic Compute Service (ECS), database, global network solution, Content Delivery Network (CDN) and storage services. Also, the company will build its first innovation center in Malaysia. Alibaba Group also unveiled a new one-stop e-commerce livestreaming solution to help global merchants of all sizes launch live, interactive channels to offer personalized online shopping experience.

 

Fastly Reports Software Bug that Triggered Internet Outage

Fastly Inc., the company which was behind a major global internet outage this week, in a recent announcement, had stated that the incident was caused by a bug that was present in its software, which triggered when one of its customers changed the network settings. The outage that occurred on Tuesday raised several questions about the reliance of the internet on a few infrastructure companies. Fastly's issue knocked out high-traffic websites, which also included major government websites.

Fastly primarily operates a group of servers strategically that have been placed around the world to help customers store content close to their end-users quickly and safely. The company post gave a timeline of events and promised its customers to examine and explain why it has failed to detect the software bug during its testing process.

Fastly said the bug was in a software update shipped to customers on May 12 but was not triggered until one unidentified customer carried out settings changes that triggered the problem, which caused 85 percent of the network to return errors. The outage was broad and severe, and it had a massive impact on Fastly's customers and everyone who relied on them. The company immediately apologized to all its users on its blog post.

 

Orange teams up with insurance firm AXA Assurance to buy a majority stake in DabaDoc

In a recent announcement, Orange has stated that it has joined hands with insurance firm AXA Assurance Maroc to buy the majority of stakes in DabaDoc, which is a Moroccan digital healthcare platform. Besides the financial investment of an unspecified amount, the deal is also primarily focused on Orange providing access to its main digital payments infrastructure to help DabaDoc grow its business.

DabaDoc, an online medical appointment management platform, is a free service in that it costs customers nothing to make an appointment with a medical and healthcare professional. However, the service does not cover treatment costs. The company has not yet specified how many medical professionals might have to pay to use this beneficiary service.

Orange's tri-party partnership with DabaDoc will benefit from the broad experience of AXA, which is the global leader in health insurance, and Orange's technological expertise and payment solutions will enable digital solutions will be developed rapidly to scale up and benefit patients and the entire African healthcare ecosystem. AXA's involvement with Orange will help its policyholders interact with healthcare organizations and professionals through its appointment booking system and remote consultation infrastructure.