Microsoft announces it will start allowing users without an internet connection and those with low bandwidth connectivity toread chat messages on Microsoft Teams platform. This is to make it easier for users to continue working no matter where they are.
This part of a wider upgrade programme aimed at enhancing the user experience, the company shares. As more and more organisations, employees and students across the globe shift to remote working and learning in an effort to keep themselves and the people around them healthy and safe amidst Covid-19.
“Enabling remote work is more important than ever, and we are committed to building the tools that help organisations, teams, and individuals stay productive and connected even when they need to work apart,” says Jared Spataro, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft 365.
As part of this upgrade programme, Teams is also introducing real-time noise suppression capabilities to minimize
distracting
background noise, allowing participants to hear what is being said. In
large meetings, it is also sometimes difficult for remote participants to chime
in when they have something to say. The newly introduced raise hand feature lets anyone in the meeting send a visual signal that
they have something to say.
“We continue to invest in experiences that will make it easier for teams to communicate and collaborate. The new capabilities we are announcing reflect our commitment to two things: building the very best online meeting experience for our customers; and bringing technological solutions to traditionally underserved professionals, including first line and healthcare workers,” explains Spataro.
Teams will soon enable
users to pop out chats into a separate window to help them streamline their workflow and
move more easily between ongoing conversations.
We are also expanding the Teams devices ecosystem, with new devices certified
for Teams. The Yealink VC210, now generally available, is the first collaboration bar certified for Teams,
and brings together speakers, microphone, camera and the Teams app to deliver a
meeting experience for smaller conference rooms that is simple to install and
easy to manage.
Over
the last three years, thousands of organisations, large and small, have
discovered how Teams can be their hub for teamwork, helping them to stay
connected and engaged. Today, 93 of the Fortune 100 use Teams, and 32
million people around the world make use of the solution daily.
In
the face of COVID-19, there are countless stories from customers who are using online
video conference facilities like Teams to connect and thrive in inspiring ways.
Universities across the world are moving courses online while doctors are using
Teams for videoconferencing with patients, especially those who are most
vulnerable to Coronavirus, as a way to protect both patients and
healthcare providers. Organisations are also using the online platform to conduct
orientation and trainings for new incoming employees.
Also introduced is the new Bookings app in Teams which makes it easy to schedule, manage and conduct virtual appointments for situations like healthcare patient consults, client meetings, or job candidate interviews.
[jetpack_subscription_form show_only_email_and_button=”true” custom_background_button_color=”undefined” custom_text_button_color=”undefined” submit_button_text=”Subscribe to get the latest from the ecosystem.” submit_button_classes=”undefined” show_subscribers_total=”true” ]
Are you a female computer science, IT, or computer science-related course graduate? Or do you have six months or more coding experience? Apply to participate in the next software engineering cohort of the Microsoft LEAP Engineering Acceleration apprenticeship Program in Kenya.
The LEAP Engineering Acceleration Program is a Microsoft initiative that tries to increase diversity. Bringing more women into software engineering roles. By providing them with real world experience through development and project management apprenticeships with hands-on projects.
The selected participants will undergo six weeks of virtual classroom and labs training. Because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Microsoft notes, this is a training program only. However, successful candidates may be eligible to apply for Software Engineering roles within its Africa Development Center department.
[jetpack_subscription_form show_only_email_and_button=”true” custom_background_button_color=”undefined” custom_text_button_color=”undefined” submit_button_text=”Subscribe to get updates of breaking opportunities like this and many others. Get the latest news from the Microsoft ecosystem in the Middle East and Africa.” submit_button_classes=”undefined” show_subscribers_total=”true” ]
Standard Bank South Africa is moving its core SAP Cloud Platform services to Microsoft Azure to significantly improve customer experience.
This accelerates the digital transformation of SAP customers to S/4HANA by partnering with Microsoft and using jointly developed reference architectures, roadmaps, and industry best practices. Many enterprises are looking to reduce their reliance on their own datacentres and moving more of their core workloads to the cloud.
Sabelo Nkwanyana, Standard Bank’s CIO for Personal and Business Banking SA, says leveraging the computing power of Microsoft and the product innovation capability of SAP demonstrates how Standard Bank is embracing partnerships and ecosystems to develop customised solutions for its clients.
“SAP has a deep understanding of our business requirements and how we want to ensure our customers are happy with our service offering. This partnership continues our focus on innovation by leveraging the respective skills of SAP and Microsoft to transform the digitisation and personalisation journey for our customers,” says Nkwanyana.
Lillian Barnard, Managing Director, Microsoft South Africa says, “The Project Embrace initiative between Microsoft and SAP announced globally last year is centred around the customer journey to SAP S/4HANA and SAP Cloud Platform on Microsoft Azure. The work that we are doing with Standard Bank is the first local demonstration of this partnership, and another milestone in the journey Microsoft is on with Standard Bank, to bring innovation into every aspect of the bank’s IT system and enable enriched interactions with the bank’s customers.”
The partnership brings together SAP and Microsoft, along with a global network of selected system integrators, to move on-premise SAP ERP and SAP S/4HANA customers to the cloud through industry-specific best practices, reference architectures and cloud-delivered services.
Barnard continues, “Enterprises are migrating to cloud providers at an accelerated rate. This makes it critical for our customers to have the right cloud infrastructure in place, enabling them to unlock the power of innovation. Microsoft’s significant investment on the African continent, with our first hyperscale datacentre regions in Johannesburg and Cape Town, means many more partners and customers are enjoying the benefits of our intelligent cloud platform.”
Speaking on the SAP partnership specifically, Barnard adds, “Project Embrace has three tenets at its heart: simplify, accelerate and innovate. By accelerating our customers’ digital transformation journey, we are enabling them to become agile, efficient digital enterprises on Microsoft Azure – with a cloud platform optimised for SAP – leveraging best practice and specialist expertise.”
“Today’s announcement is the biggest partnership centred on SAP implementation in Africa. With client experience a key strategic pillar for Standard Bank, Project Embrace reflects the shared commitment of both SAP and Microsoft to accelerate our customers’ journey to the cloud,” says Cathy Smith, Managing Director at SAP Africa.
This project will deliver a unified approach to how Standard Bank runs SAP S/4HANA in Microsoft Azure. Ultimately, this will help the bank deliver a faster time-to-market on products and services, while ensuring its IT infrastructure is optimised. By moving workloads to the cloud, Standard Bank will be able to access a range of features that it can deploy instantly and scale according to demand. This will result in cost reductions, improved system performance, and access to innovation.
“This will empower the bank to create new business models and deliver more personalised outcomes in today’s dynamic business environment. By providing Standard Bank with consistent engagement and delivery models, SAP and Microsoft bring both industry-specific best practices and deep local insight to deliver a compelling value proposition for their clients,” says Smith.
“Through Project Embrace, we are now able to better identify our business pain points and effectively address them through technologies that deliver a demonstratable return on investment. Having the ability to more accurately predict where customer challenges and dissatisfaction will occur enables a more flexible enterprise environment. We can help our customers transform their businesses and their lives in a secure way. This is much more than SAP and Microsoft supplying us with products. This is about fundamentally enhancing our digital journey for the future,” concludes Nkwanyana of Standard Bank SA.
In addition to the work done with Standard Bank, the Microsoft and SAP initiative is assisting customers around the world, and in a variety of industries, accelerate their journey to becoming digital, intelligent enterprises.
[jetpack_subscription_form show_only_email_and_button=”true” custom_background_button_color=”undefined” custom_text_button_color=”undefined” submit_button_text=”Hi, Kindly subscribe to get the latest from the world of tech and Microsoft across Africa and the Middle East. ” submit_button_classes=”undefined” show_subscribers_total=”true” ]
Huawei Consumer Business Group (BG) held an online global lunch event where it announced the new HUAWEI P40 Series flagship smartphones. It also mentioned a host of other HUAWEI mobile ecosystem features and devices. The new flagship devices are the HUAWEI P40 Pro+, HUAWEI P40 Pro and HUAWEI P40. Other announced devices are the Watch GT 2 and GT 2e, Sound X, HUAWEI Eyewear.
Watch highlights of the HUAWEI P40 Series launch event
https://youtu.be/h0mD5v1MDFY
Missed the event? Watch it in full
https://youtu.be/x4nFTqmuQxY?t=1880
Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei Consumer Business Group, announced the latest in Huawei’s smartphone photography. The P series from the company has looked to set the pace in camera and photography innovation. With the P30 and P20 having one of the highest zoom optical lenses. This continued as the new devices are noted to outcompete the latest Samsung Galaxy and iPhone.
Event announcments
Flagship P40 phones : HUAWEI P40 Pro+, HUAWEI P40 Pro and HUAWEI P40
AI gesture controls
Huawei MeeTime
Attention Aware screen
Huawei Mobile Services
EMUI 10.1 with new vibrant 3D rendereed always on dispplay (AOD)
Hey Celia virtual assistant
Huawei Sound X
[jetpack_subscription_form show_only_email_and_button=”true” custom_background_button_color=”undefined” custom_text_button_color=”undefined” submit_button_text=”Subscribe to recieve the latest news, opinions and offers from the technology ecosystem in Africa and the Middle east.” submit_button_classes=”undefined” show_subscribers_total=”true” ]
There are various ways to send money from your PayPal account to your M-Pesa wallet. These transactions are mostly done through third-party platforms leaving you with high transaction fees. I find the PayPal collaboration with Safaricom (Safaricom Money Transfer Services Limited) and Thunes (TransferTo Mobile Financial Services Ltd) the easiest and most cost-efficient.
Firstly you don’t have to create several different accounts. Or need to have a bank account. All you need is your PayPal email address and your M-Pesa mobile money number. The PayPal mobile money platform lets you link your wallet to your account in seconds. It also has a simple way to withdraw funds from your PayPal account. That is transferred to your M-Pesa in at least two hours. A 3% conversion fee applies to withdrawals and 4% for top-ups. I still find this better than the other platforms as they boast of a better forex rate.
Here is how to link your PayPal and M-PESA accounts
Enter the amount you would like to withdraw and click on continue to withdraw.
Verify the withdrawal and confirm it.
You’ll get a notification from Safaricom telling you your transaction from PayPal is being processed. Including how much you’ll receive and the duration.
After the duration lapses, you’ll get a transaction completed notification. And how much has been added to your M-Pesa.
During the withdrawal process, you will see the processing time. You are able to withdraw a maximum amount of 150,000 KES per transaction.
I hope this helps. Got questions? Shoot them at me. Did i miss something, let me know.
[jetpack_subscription_form show_only_email_and_button=”true” custom_background_button_color=”undefined” custom_text_button_color=”undefined” submit_button_text=”Hi, subscribe to stay up to date on the trending news, offers and opportunities from the Microsoft and tech ecosystem in Africa and the Middle East. ” submit_button_classes=”undefined” show_subscribers_total=”true” ]
Popular consumer operating system (OS) Windows, marks new user milestone, reaching one billion devices. Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President for Modern Life, Search and Devices, Yusuf Mehdi shared this in a blog post. Thanking customers, partners and employees for more than one billion active Windows 10 devices.
Today we’re delighted to announce that over one billion people have chosen Windows 10 across 200 countries resulting in more than one billion active Windows 10 devices. We couldn’t be more grateful to our customers, partners and employees for helping us get here.
This announcement means one out of every seven persons on the planet uses a Windows 10 device.
The Journey
In July 2015, Microsoft launched Windows 10 as a free upgrade to its older operating systems. Releasing the OS in seven versions: Windows 10 home, mobile, pro, enterprise, education, mobile enterprise and internet of things (IoT). The company envisioned the OS running on 1 billion devices before or by 2018.
Twenty-four hours after the general release of Windows 10, Microsoft reported it was running on 14 million devices. The number increased to 75 million upgrades by the end of July 2015. Finally, it has taken the company two more years to reach the target. There is the belief that Microsoft mobile which was scrapped along the way could have helped the company in meeting this target.
Here is a timeline of how the OS was adopted over time. With moments where it looked as if Microsoft was forcing the upgrade on users.
[jetpack_subscription_form show_only_email_and_button=”true” custom_background_button_color=”undefined” custom_text_button_color=”undefined” submit_button_text=”Hi, kindly subscribe to get the latest news, events, offers, opportunities, etc. from the technology ecosystem in Africa and the Middle East region.” submit_button_classes=”undefined” show_subscribers_total=”true” ]
