Every new Azure AD tenant comes with an initial domain name, domainname.onmicrosoft.com. You can’t change or delete the initial domain name, but you can add your organization’s names to the list. Adding custom domain names helps you to create user names that are familiar to your users, such as alain@contoso.com. Before you begin Before you can add a custom domain name, you must create your domain name with a domain registrar.… Read more

Microsoft has announced making a strategic investment in ride-sharing service Grab, as one of the first moves under a recently forged partnership between the two companies. Grab will also adopt Microsoft Azure as its preferred cloud platform, hoping to use the latter’s cloud and artificial intelligence capabilities to “scale its platform and increase its capacity and capabilities”. Under the five-year agreement, the companies will work together on a range of technology projects, including in the areas of big data and AI, that president of Grab Ming Maa expects will transform the delivery of everyday services and mobility solutions in Southeast Asia. “Microsoft’s investment into Grab highlights our position as the leading homegrown technology player in the region,” he said.… Read more

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft announced today that it’s joining the Open Invention Network (OIN), an open-source patent group designed to help protect Linux from patent lawsuits. In essence, this makes the company’s library over 60,000 patents open source and available to OIN members, via ZDNet. OIN provides a license platform for Linux for around 2,400 companies — from individual developers to huge companies like Google and IBM — and all members get access to both OIN-owned patents and cross-licenses between other OIN licensees, royalty-free. Microsoft joining is a big step forward for both sides: OIN gets thousands of new patents from Microsoft, and Microsoft is really helping the open-source community that it has shunned in the past.… Read more

It is my pleasure to announce the availability of the public preview of the Azure Sphere Security Service, Azure Sphere Operating System, and Visual Studio development experience for Azure Sphere. Today’s announcement marks an important milestone in Microsoft’s commitment to provide an end-to-end solution for securing any IoT device. In tandem with these releases, Azure Sphere development kits are immediately available from Seeed Studio.… Read more