Microsoft's OneDrive for Business now an option with Office Online

IDG News Service - Microsoft has introduced OneDrive for Business, the new name for SkyDrive Pro, and announced that companies can adopt the cloud storage service as a standalone product, without having to sign up for Office 365 or SharePoint Online.

OneDrive for Business is a service where employees can store, share and sync personal work files. Starting April 1st, companies will get access to the service as part of Office Online, the free, browser-based version of Microsoft's productivity suite formerly called Office Web Apps.

Companies that use OneDrive for Business as part of Office Online can get 25GB of storage for each employee, for US$5 per user per month, according to Microsoft. They can also buy additional storage capacity if they need it.

"With the new offering, businesses of all sizes can get started with a full-featured and intuitive file sync and share service that includes Office Online, so employees can collaborate on Office documents in real time via a browser or using their Office desktop applications," Julia White, general manager of technical product management for Office 365, wrote in a blog post Monday.

OneDrive for Business has been available at no extra cost with most editions of Office 365, the cloud email and collaboration suite that includes online versions of Exchange, Lync and SharePoint, and with the standalone SharePoint Online service.

Other enhancements announced on Monday include a revamped user interface that gives prominent placement to the most commonly used OneDrive for Business features on a menu strip near the top of the page, and a new view that lists folders of sites a user follows.

Microsoft also improved the OneDrive for Business search engine with results that are auto-suggested as users type their queries and with the ability to act on results from the results page, including sharing them with other users.

Microsoft made the announcement at its SharePoint Conference, which runs through Thursday in Las Vegas.

Juan Carlos Perez covers enterprise communication/collaboration suites, operating systems, browsers and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Juan on Twitter at @JuanCPerezIDG.

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2014 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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Microsoft's DirectX 12 to boost gaming on PCs, mobile devices

IDG News Service - Windows and Xbox games will receive a significant graphics and performance boost with Microsoft's new DirectX 12, a set of application programming interfaces and tools used in PC games.

Users can expect better-quality games with DirectX 12, Microsoft said Thursday. The company announced DirectX 12 at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.

DirectX tools work in the background to power games on PCs, tablets and smartphones using Windows operating systems. DirectX 12 will also be used to author games for Xbox One. Most games are already based on DirectX 11, but higher-quality games based on DirectX 12 will be out by the end of 2015, Microsoft said.

One of the most important updates in DirectX 12 is Direct3D 12, which "enables richer scenes, more objects, and full utilization of modern GPU hardware," Microsoft said.

DirectX 12 will work across all Microsoft devices and make game programming easier. It will harness the computing power of graphics processors and CPUs to deliver better gaming quality.

The company demonstrated the "Forza Motorsport 5" game at GDC to show the improvements in multicore GPU utilization by DirectX 12.

Microsoft also said it would "abstract" hardware, which would make it easier for programmers to write games. In essence, DirectX 12 will make the CPUs and GPUs transparent and programmers will have to worry less about writing code to specific hardware. However, most graphics rendering is done through GPUs, so Direct3D 12 has new pipeline, execution and rendering features that make processing via GPUs more efficient.

Users won't have to wait to buy new hardware to support DirectX 12, Microsoft said. More than 80 percent of gaming PCs being sold now will support DirectX 12.

Nvidia, Intel, Qualcomm and Advanced Micro Devices announced support for DirectX 12 before it was announced.

DirectX 12 will compete with AMD's low-level Mantle API (application programming interface), which is designed to take advantage of specific features in its Radeon GPUs to deliver a better gaming experience. However, AMD has said it will fully support DirectX 12.

Graphics chip maker Nvidia has its own low-level APIs, but said its latest graphics cards will support DX 12.

"Our work with Microsoft on DirectX 12 began more than four years ago with discussions about reducing resource overhead," said Nvidia spokesman Ken Brown in an email.

In addition to working closely with Microsoft, Nvidia has provided drivers and a DirectX 12 development kit to more than 15 game developers.

Developers have been asking for a leaner API that allows them to control hardware resources while extracting more performance from GPUs, Nvidia said Thursday.

"DirectX 12 was designed from scratch to provide the infrastructure for these advanced applications," Nvidia said.

Microsoft will share more details on DirectX 12 at the Build 2014 conference in San Francisco early next month. Meanwhile, game developers can sign up for an early access program to get DirectX 12 tools.

Agam Shah covers PCs, tablets, servers, chips and semiconductors for IDG News Service. Follow Agam on Twitter at @agamsh. Agam's e-mail address is agam_shah@idg.com

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2014 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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