Microsoft confirms earlier rumours by confirming the purchase of enterprise social networking services developer Yammer for $1.2 billion in cash. 

Yammer now becomes part of the Microsoft Office Division, even if employees will continue reporting to Yammer CEO David Sacks. 

The purchase is the 2nd biggest for Microsoft since the $8.5bn acquisition of Skype back in May 2011. 

Microsoft says it will "accelerate Yammer's adoption alongside complementary offerings from Microsoft SharePoint, Office 365, Microsoft Dynamics and Skype," hinting at further Read more...

Milestone Systems maintains its position as the number one vendor for total VMS global market share in the latest report from IMS Research.

IMS Research has recently published the ninth edition of its report: World Market for CCTV and Video Surveillance Equipment. The results are based on data from 2011.

"Milestone Systems has retained the number one global position in the VMS software category in 2011. In addition to maintaining its position as the leading vendor of VMS, Milestone also grew faster than the total VMS market in 2011, Read more...

Samsung demonstrated the benefits of its Smart School solution at InfoComm.

Its large touch display and eBoard software enhances classroom interactivity between teachers and students, allowing tablet content to be shared with the entire class.

A 65? eBoard works with both Windows-based PCs and Android operating systems, as well as the Samsung Galaxy Tab, allowing teachers to move freely around the room while giving interactive lessons. Teachers can also share specific student screens as well as interactive content like quizzes and polls. Read more...

If Bloomberg is correct, Microsoft pay soon cough up over $1 billion to buy Yammer, a business-oriented social network used by over 200000 companies. 

Yammer proudly describes itself as "the enterprise social network," and offers a collaboration and data sharing environment more similar to Facebook than Microsoft Office. Users include employees from the likes of Ford and EBay. 

It already has a level of integration with Microsoft SharePoint, and supports a number of 3rd party apps. 

Acquiring Yammer would put Microsoft in competition with Salesforce.com, Read more...

AMD, ARM, Imagination, MediaTek and Texas Instruments team up in a collective effort against the mighty Intel-- the HSA Foundation, a non-profit alliance formed around the mysterious art of "Heterogeneous System Architecture."

After all, as the old saying goes, "the enemies of my enemy are my friends." Or is that "the enemy of Intel is my friend"?

What is Heterogeneous System Architecture (aka HSA)? It is a fairly old concept, actually. Heterogeneous-- or hybrid-- processors use all chip components (such as CPUs and GPUs) as co-processors of a "parallel computing engine."

This directly opposes the way current processors work, where all components act as solo units on specialised tasks.

One might think Microsoft is busy pushing the soon released Windows 8 as the OS of business choice... but a Microsoft-sponsored IDC white paper suggests Windows 7 is the logical upgrade for businesses still using Windows XP. 

The name of the white paper says it all-- "Mitigating Risk: Why Sticking with Windows XP is a Bad Idea."

How come? Microsoft would rather kill off Windows XP (now 10 years old) as soon as possible than sell more copies of Windows 8 later in the future. 

"Organizations that continue to retain a Windows XP environment not only Read more...