REDMOND, Wash. — Jan . 10 , 2013 — As part of its effort to simplify and modernize technology solutions, jcpenney is rolling out Microsoft Office 365 to team members throughout the company. With Office 365 as its communication and enterprise social platform, the company aims to improve customer service and increase information-sharing between team members through the ease and accessibility of the cloud.

“In selecting a cloud solution, we were looking for a partner who would support our goal of becoming America’s favorite store,” said Kristen Blum, chief technology officer, jcpenney. “And when we realized that we could improve customer service even more by providing cloud-based collaboration tools to increase communication between team members, it was easy to choose Microsoft and Office 365.”

Office 365 will improve remote access for employees who can now stay connected virtually anywhere, anytime from smartphones, remote PCs or other mobile devices. And perhaps most importantly, ease of communication will increase between stores, allowing team members to work seamlessly with colleagues at other locations while assisting customers.

“We always aim to help customers at every touchpoint, from entering the store to finalizing a transaction. Office 365 will be a big driver in supporting that pursuit,” Blum said.

Microsoft’s Tracy Issel, general manager for Worldwide Retail and Enterprise Solutions said, “We’re excited jcpenney employees will be able to utilize technology such as Office 365, which is custom tailored to fit their needs. Better yet, I can’t wait for ordinary customers to experience the benefit of this newly connected shopping environment for themselves.”

To try Office 365 for yourself, visit http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/what-is-office365.aspx. More information about how organizations are turning to Microsoft technology is available on the Microsoft Customer Spotlight newsroom.

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. — Jan. 10, 2013 —

Where: National Retail Federation (NRF) 102nd Annual Convention & EXPO, Jacob K. Javits Convention Center

655 W. 34th St.

New York, NY 10001

When: Jan. 14–15, 2013

What: Microsoft Corp. will demonstrate how new technologies and its broad ecosystem of partner solutions can help retailers deliver the future of retailing today — putting customers at the center of their businesses and delivering the personalized, seamless and differentiated experiences that shoppers have come to expect. Microsoft booth No. 1005 will feature these sections:

• Engaging Your Customers. Attendees will have a firsthand chance to experience how they can reinvent the customer experience through connected shopping scenarios across multiple digital channels in-store and online. Advances in digital marketing and location-based awareness for creating more effective and relevant digital experiences will also be on display. A Device Bar will give visitors a hands-on experience with the latest Windows 8-powered devices and apps to help retailers innovate their businesses and deliver new and enhanced shopping experiences to customers.

• Engaging Your Employees. This section of the booth will feature the latest in sales, social and collaborative productivity tools to engage employees and provide personalized access to the information they need. Microsoft will showcase how cloud computing solutions such as Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft SharePoint Online can cost-effectively deliver powerful productivity tools, including store employee portals to deskless workers from virtually any device or location.* By providing store employees with modern productivity tools and multipurpose devices to complete their critical sales, inventory and customer service tasks, retailers can improve their workforce’s level of productivity and service on the front line of customer service and sales.

• Optimizing Your Operations. Demonstrations will showcase the latest in Microsoft technologies and partner solutions designed to help retailers drive greater efficiencies and run their businesses more effectively by optimizing and streamlining their operations and enabling better insight and decision-making across the retail organization, all helping increase profitability and customer satisfaction. Visitors can see the power of 3-D technology for immersive in-store planning experiences and learn how to manage shelf availability and minimize out-of-stock situations using advanced analytics, minimize “show rooming” through a more proactive approach of price and availability analysis, and enable site selection for new stores through geospatial analysis.

• Microsoft Dynamics. The booth will also feature the latest Microsoft Dynamics for Retail innovations, providing enterprise and midmarket retailers with a unified solution for multichannel management, point-of-service (POS), store operations, supply chain, e-commerce, merchandising and financials. This enables the dynamic retailer to be connected across channels, to drive personal shopping experiences, and to be agile in meeting and exceeding customer expectations with superior time to value. Attendees will be able to preview the latest offering from the Microsoft Dynamics product line, Microsoft Dynamics AX for Retail, which includes improved omnichannel retailing across all channels, powerful enhancements in POS and new e-commerce capabilities with a fully integrated Web storefront powered by Microsoft SharePoint 2013 to deliver a complete shopping experience. The booth will also feature professionals from Microsoft Services who can help customers build and optimize Microsoft Dynamics retail solutions based on extensive experience and expertise learned from retail engagements around the globe.

• Windows Embedded. In this area of the booth, visitors can experience intelligent systems for retail through a demonstration with a large home improvement retailer. Consisting of three parts, the holistic demonstration spans the retailer’s customer engagement and channel strategy, from shopping at home and visiting a store to driving intelligence for the retailer in the back office, all through connected devices — including smartphones, digital signage, handheld devices, Microsoft Surface and POS tablets, and kiosks working seamlessly together to help the retailer and its store associates deliver a new level of interactive and personalized services.

Other News: Microsoft executives will also lead education sessions in NRF’s BIG !deas Boulevard.

• Jan. 14, 2 p.m., 3D09: “Enabling Great Customer Experiences with Big Data,” ShiSh Shridhar, Microsoft

• Jan. 14, 3:15 p.m., 3D09: “Become a Dynamic Retailer with Microsoft Dynamics & Deliver the Future of Retail Today,” Lynda Barr, chief financial officer, Edwin Watts Golf; Ashvin Mathew, Microsoft, and Michael Griffiths, global product industry director, Retail & Distribution, Microsoft Business Solutions

• Jan. 15, 11 a.m., 3D09: “Modern Productivity Solutions for Stores,” Mike McNamara, chief information officer, Tesco, and Tracy Issel, general manager, Worldwide Retail Sector, Microsoft

Who:

• Brendan O’Meara, managing director, Worldwide Retail Sector, Microsoft

• Fred Studer, general manager, ERP Product Management Group, Microsoft Business Solutions

• John Doyle, director of product management, Windows Embedded, Microsoft

• Michael Griffiths, global product industry director, Retail & Distribution, Microsoft Business Solutions

• Tracy Issel, general manager, Worldwide Retail Sector, Microsoft

More Details:

More information is available at http://www.microsoft.com/nrf.

For the latest NRF news, links and photos, follow @msretail, @MSFTDynamicsERP and @MSFTWEB on Twitter.

*An appropriate device, Internet connection, supported browser and/or carrier network connectivity are required. Data charges may apply.

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. — Jan. 10, 2013 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the appointment of Blake Krikorian as corporate vice president for its Interactive Entertainment Business (IEB). Krikorian will report to Marc Whitten, chief product officer for IEB. This announcement follows the acquisition of Krikorian’s company, id8 Group R2 Studios (R2 Studios).

“We are thrilled to have Blake join the Xbox team,” Whitten said. “He’s a proven innovator and well-respected leader in both the media and technology industries, having created simple, elegant products that have transformed the way people engage with and consume content. We look forward to his contribution to our team as Xbox continues to evolve and transform the games and entertainment landscape.”

“I am excited to join Microsoft and be a part of the Xbox team. As a 10-year Xbox LIVE subscriber, I have seen firsthand how Xbox has delighted us by reinventing how consumers experience games and entertainment,” Krikorian said. “I look forward to helping the team define the future of entertainment and contribute to the next decade of continued innovation.”

Krikorian most recently founded R2 Studios. Before that he served as the co-founder, chairman and CEO of Sling Media Inc., inventors of the Emmy® award-winning Slingbox®, which is now owned by EchoStar Corp. Krikorian served on the board of Amazon.com Inc. and also co-founded the Philips Mobile Computing Group where he co-led the team that created the award-winning Velo 1 handheld PC running Windows CE. He has received numerous lifetime achievement awards including the Lifetime Technology Leadership Award from Broadcasting & Cable, as well as the TechFellow Award for Disruptive Innovation from TechCrunch, Founders Fund and NEA.

About Xbox

Xbox is Microsoft’s premier entertainment service for the TV, phone, PC and tablet. It’s home to the best and broadest games, as well as one of the world’s largest libraries of music, movies, TV and sports. With Kinect, Xbox 360 transformed gaming and entertainment in the living room with a whole new way to play games and find entertainment — no controller required. More information about Xbox can be found online at http://www.xbox.com.

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.

REDMOND, Wash. — Jan. 9, 2013 — Tesco, one of the world’s leading retailers, has chosen Microsoft Office 365 for its companywide collaboration and social platform. The U.K.-based retailer is committed to deploying Office 365 to its employees working at the company’s headquarters, in the field and in stores, across all its locations in Europe and Asia.

“We want to put technology in the hands of all our colleagues, whether in the store, distribution center or office, so they can create value for our customers,” said Mike McNamara, chief information officer, Tesco. “We see Office 365 as an important solution to help us continue to meet that goal.”

Office 365 enables a search functionality that quickly delivers access to experts, information and tools to help employees do their jobs, and it allows people to work more effectively together, regardless of geographic location. It also permits information to flow in a way that supports efficient decision-making by bringing relevant information directly to the user.

One of the challenges businesses face when they experience global growth is that it becomes difficult for staff to work together as a team, share knowledge, find the right person or answer, and consume increasingly unstructured information without feeling overwhelmed and disconnected from the organization as a whole.

“Office 365 will serve as the portal for all Tesco employees, suppliers and colleagues, encouraging a cultural shift to more flexible ways of working,” McNamara said. “This will allow our colleagues to engage with each other and deliver a great shopping experience on any channel, as well as encouraging colleagues to share, re-use, and reward ideas and expertise.”

Tesco also sought to put in place an internal collaboration platform that was more than just a repository for documents. Instead, the company wanted to find better ways of communicating ideas and news to its multinational workforce.

“Office 365 will enable us to be a fully connected organization that works closely together, proactively shares knowledge, motivates loyalty and retention of employees, and encourages better working practices to ensure that we create value for customers,” McNamara said.

More information about how organizations are turning to Microsoft technology is available in the Microsoft Customer Spotlight newsroom.

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.

CES -- NVIDIA today announced that Audi's newest auto-infotainment system featuring NVIDIA® Tegra® technology will be rolled out globally in select vehicles this year.

We've finished the schedule for FOSDEM PGDay 2013 and PostgreSQL Developer Room at FOSDEM in Brussels in February, and published it at

http://fosdem2013.pgconf.eu/schedule/

http://fosdem2013.pgconf.eu/m/ (mobile version)

Of course, a schedule is never truly finished - we will update it if necessary as we get closer to the conference.

We have many great talks from well known speakers in the PostgreSQL community such as Heikki Linnakangas, Devrim Gunduz and Dimitri Fontaine, as well as a number of new speakers.

Please register as soon as possible for the FOSDEM PGDay 2013 on Friday at:

http://fosdem2013.pgconf.eu/registration/

We have only a limited number of seats on Friday. No registration is required for the PostgreSQL Developer Room at FOSDEM on Sunday. Just walk in and enjoy great talks.

We hope to see you all in Brussels next month!