Microsoft expands in Canada amid U.S. visa crunch
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Microsoft  Corp.  said on Thursday it will open a software  development center in Vancouver, giving it a place to employ  skilled workers snagged by U.S. immigration quotas.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft hopes to better meet the back-office needs of smaller businesses with a new take on enterprise resource planning (ERP) software called Dynamics Entrepreneur Solution. The software will provide smaller organizations with finance, purchasing, and sales and marketing software. It's aimed at companies employing up to 49 staff and tops out at five concurrent users, according to Barb Edson, director, Microsoft Dynamics. Along with other ERP companies, Microsoft is looking for ways to attract startups that are starting to outgrow entry-level accountancy software like Intuit's QuickBooks and are in search of more sophisticated applications on which to run their businesses. Based on Microsoft's existing Dynamics NAV ERP applications, Entrepreneur can be seen as a stepping stone to the full-blown Dynamics NAV as a company expands its business. Microsoft said that Entrepreneur itself was more than just a scaled-down version of Dynamics NAV and had been specially developed for small businesses, particularly in terms of cutting back on the need for users to heavily customize the software. Priced at â¬795 ($1,086), Entrepreneur is set to make its debut in Europe as part of a phased worldwide rollout of the software. The product will initially be available in September in Germany, The Netherlands, Spain, and the U.K., Microsoft announced Tuesday at its Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) in Denver. As with Microsoft's other back-office applications, the software will be provided by the vendor's partners. Microsoft also announced new software to make another one of its ERP families of products, Dynamics AX, accessible from mobile devices. Costing $495 per client access license, Dynamics AX Mobile Sales software is shipping this month. The product enables salespeople to remotely place and track orders, query sales histories and manage advertising campaigns from their Windows Mobile-based devices. The software includes Microsoft Dynamics Mobile Development Tools, which customers and partners can use to build additional mobile offerings based on Dynamics. At the same time, Microsoft announced an intensification of its existing relationship with Motorola Inc. to allow their joint partners to create Dynamics-based applications for some Motorola mobile computers. Adding mobile extensions to Dynamics AX is just the start, Edson said. The overall plan is to also extend Microsoft's other Dynamics ERP families so that those families of applications can be accessed by mobile devices. As yet the company is not commenting publicly on when such capabilities will become available for Dynamics GP, NAV and SL, she added. The software giant also made a number of other Dynamics announcements at the WPC event, notably releasing initial pricing,Â product and rollout details for its Dynamics Live CRM service. Microsoft also pledged to invest $20 million in initiatives over the coming year to act as inducements to its Dynamics partners. The programs include investments in training and education for technical sales staff and new hires at Microsoft partners along with financial rewards for partners completing a process to certify their add-on applications for Dynamics ERP or customer relationship management (CRM) software. Â
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Microsoft has updated its Live Search Maps service to include photo-realistic 3D imagery of New York City and six other U.S. cities along with Ottawa, Canada and Northampton, England.
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Microsoft Corp., the world&#39;s largest software maker, has expanded its flagship MSN Hotmail internet email service to include European and Japanese domain names, it said on Friday.
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When Microsoft made what appeared to be a minor announcement last week that it would expand its Canadian operations with the creation of the Microsoft Canada Development Centre for software development based in the greater Vancouver, British Columbia area, it went mostly unnoticed.
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Canadaâs merit-based immigration system has helped it compete for highly educated workers but has created waits of four years or more for immigrants.
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Microsoft will open a software development office in Vancouver, Canada, later this year, in part as a way to retain talented workers who can't stay in the U.S. because of immigration laws.
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Microsoft is expanding a plan to draw mainframe customers to Windows for high-end applications. Under a program with the internal code name Mission Critical Microsoft, the company is trying to extend its current
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Microsoft Corp. will expand its software development operations in India , according to the companyâs statement. Microsoft&#39;s chief executive Steve Ballmer has formally opened the first building of the campus near Hyderabad .
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BANGALORE, INDIA -- Microsoft Corp. is hiring hundreds of new staff for its operations in Hyderabad over the next 12 months, the company's chief executive officer, Steve Ballmer told reporters Monday in Bangalore, India.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft will open a software development office in Vancouver, Canada, later this year, in part as a way to retain talented workers who can't stay in the U.S. because of immigration laws. Software developers from around the world will staff the center, which will allow Microsoft to keep skilled workers who are affected by U.S. immigration issues, the company said in a statement Thursday. Microsoft, along with other high-tech companies, has been a vocal supporter of legislation that would increase the number of foreign workers allowed to stay in the U.S. Proposed amendments to the current foreign worker regulations were part of a larger controversial immigration bill that stalled in the U.S. Congress last week. Without new regulations, companies across the country are competing for 65,000 H-1B visas issued each year. "This is especially a problem for Microsoft because it's so big and doing so much hiring," said Susannah Malarkey, executive director of the Washington Technology Alliance, an association of companies promoting education and an entrepreneurial environment in the state. "If you can't use visas to bring people in, you have to take the jobs to where the people are," she noted. Companies like Microsoft can "either create a worksite in the country of origin of these people or lose out on them altogether," she said. In addition to its Redmond headquarters, Microsoft already has development centers in Ireland, Denmark, Israel, and North Carolina. The Vancouver location is in part attractive because of its proximity to Redmond, Microsoft said. Microsoft did not reveal the Vancouver facility's size or precise location.
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Microsoft is expanding its indemnification program for Windows and other software products in order to shield users from legal claims and patent disputes.
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India News, Hyderabad, World&#39;s largest software maker Microsoft Corp is hiring more staff at its new India campus - its largest outside the US - near here, the company&#39;s chief executive Steve Ballmer said Monday.
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Microsoft Corp. plans to open a software development center in Canada this fall to attract talent and avoid U.S. immigration issues.
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Until now, it was harder to get a Blockbuster card than to get into the U.S. from Canada. An explainer on the new border identification requirements
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Microsoft this week announced that it&#39;s expanding its Windows XP Starter Edition into Russia. The company said that it hopes to get the software to PC OEMs in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States by early 2005.
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Microsoft Corp. MSFT.O is expanding  its indemnification program for Windows and other software  products in order to shield users from legal claims and patent  disputes, the world's largest software maker said on Tuesday.