Cloud computing giant Microsoft is taking measures to increase stability of its cloud services by forcing new restrictions for activities like cryptocurrency mining. Microsoft has quietly banned crypto mining from its online services in order to better protect its customers and clouds, British technology news agency The Register reported on Dec. 15. The company introduced the new restrictions as part of its universal license terms of Microsoft Online Services. Microsoft updated its acceptable use policy on Dec. 1 to clarify that “mining cryptocurrency is prohibited without prior Microsoft approval.” In the “Acceptable Use Policy” section, Microsoft said that it now …

Microsoft is turning off its corporate Azure Blockchain Service on September 10 and will not accept any new deployments effective immediately, with no official explanation provided. Large corporate customers who use Azure Blockchain include J.P. Morgan, GE Aviation, Singapore Airlines, Starbucks, and Xbox according to its website. The announcement was made in a low key post on the Microsoft documentation site on Monday, informing all current customers to migrate to alternate services. ConsenSys Quorum Blockchain Service was the only suggestion and ConsenSys founder and CEO Joseph Lubin welcomed the Azure refugees: “Expanding our relationship with Microsoft helps organizations take advantage …

With an eye towards the rapidly spreading coronavirus pandemic, Albany Airport has begun experimenting with the "Wellness Trace App" to track the cleanliness of surfaces and objects inside the airport. The app, developed by General Electric Co. (GE) in partnership with TE-FOOD and Eurofins, aims to provide a safe travel experience during and after the coronavirus pandemic. It is built using the Microsoft Azure enterprise blockchain. The app aims to provide travelers with information about the cleanliness of surfaces prior to travelers touching them in real-time. Travelers will be able to gather this information by scanning QR code stickers scattered …

Microsoft announced on June 10 that it had discovered a number of cryptojacking attacks on powerful machine-learning clusters on its Azure cloud computing network. In a blog-post, the company said that some customers had misconfigured nodes, allowing attackers to hijack them to mine the privacy-focused cryptocurrency Monero (XMR). Default settings overridden Microsoft said that it had discovered tens of clusters affected by the attack, which targets a machine learning toolkit, Kubeflow, for the open-source Kubernetes platform. By default the dashboard to control Kubeflow is only accessible internally from the node, so users need to use port-forwarding to tunnel in via …

Microsoft has acknowledged that the quarantined gamers are putting a strain on its Azure cloud platform which is a backbone of the company’s Blockchain As a Service (BaaS) offering. In the SEC filing, Microsoft addresses the impact of “the global health pandemic” on its Azure cloud services. The company admits that in certain regions “deployments for some compute resource types (...) drop below our typical 99.99 percent success rates”. Furthermore, Microsoft confirms that “Xbox Live [is] putting a strain on overall Azure capacity:” “As a result of the surge in use over the last week, we have experienced significant demand …

Ever since the game CryptoKitties was released in November 2017, the concept of nonfungible token has been ingrained in the minds of developers and investors in the crypto community. However, 2019 has been the year that NFTs have gained mainstream attention. And it should come as no surprise that even huge, multinational companies are currently developing NFT projects. Recently, Mirosoft’s blockchain-based cloud platform, Azure, released its own nonfungible tokens program called “Azure Heroes” with the aim of rewarding its developer community. Azure Heroes Through Azure Heroes, Microsoft is on a mission to empower technical practitioners of all backgrounds. With that …

Microsoft’s blockchain-enabled cloud service Microsoft Azure announced new tokenization and blockchain data management services. In a post published on the official Microsoft Azure blog on Dec. 6, the IT service giant announced the Azure Blockchain Tokens and blockchain data manager. New tools for Azure blockchain users The Azure Blockchain Tokens service aims to simplify the definition, creation and management of compliant tokens built to industry standards. The firm also provides pre-built templates for common uses and hosts a gallery for templates created by partners, which are expected to be added in the future. The announcement reads: “With this latest offering, …

Microsoft’s blockchain-enabled cloud platform Microsoft Azure announced the “Azure Heroes” blockchain non-fungible tokens (NFT) aimed at rewarding its developer community. The tokens represent cartoonish badgers (a play on the word “badge”) and aim to compensate positive behavior in Azure’s community. Each badger has a limited supply ranging from just 100 units to 10,000, Microsoft announced on Dec. 4. The firm said: “Azure Heroes aims to reward individuals for verifiable acts of impact such as coaching, creating demos, building sample code, blogging about Azure or completing certain challenges. Community members that have demonstrated their contributions will be recognised with badges across …

Thanks to the high computational flexibility that it offers, the influence of cloud computing on the blockchain space continues to grow. It's less of a surprise, then, that cloud computing giants — such as Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle and Google's parent company Alphabet — are leading the charge to merge blockchain, especially the enterprise type, and the cloud. Microsoft in particular has been actively engaging with blockchain startups that are developing blockchain solutions for the enterprise market, working with them to deploy their solutions on the Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure. The company's aggressive approach to bolstering the blockchain functionalities of Azure …

Hybrid blockchain solutions startup Kadena has updated its enterprise blockchain platform on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace. On Aug. 27, Kadena announced that its new product called Kadena Scalable Permissioned Blockchain is available on Azure Marketplace for free. Blockchain scalability ambitions Founded by former blockchain experts at United States banking giant JPMorgan, Kadena first released its permissioned blockchain on the Amazon Web Services Marketplace in January 2019. At the time, company co-founder Stuart Popejoy said that existing versions of private blockchains were inadequate due to low scalability. Kadena also claimed that two Fortune 100 firms in the health and insurance industry …

Only a “very, very tiny percentage” of this month’s 1,700 job losses at IBM affected its blockchain division, The Block reported on June 20. Jerry Cuomo, the vice president of IBM Blockchain Technology, told the website that the tech giant is prioritizing blockchain skills when making hiring and firing decisions — adding it was “full steam ahead” for his department. The layoffs have been described as a “realignment plan.” The consulting arm of IBM’s blockchain business experienced some losses of redundant positions, but its engineering side reportedly escaped unscathed. A source told The Block: “The product team had no layoffs, …

Microsoft has registered a suite of applications in Brazil that are designed to improve efficiency in the agriculture sector, according to an exclusive report by Cointelegraph Brazil on June 6. The technology, known as FarmBeats, uses blockchain, drones, IoT, artificial intelligence and big data to improve productivity. It has already been rolled out on farms in the United States, India, New Zealand and Kenya, achieving a 30% reduction in water consumption. Ranveer Chandra, the scientist who created FarmBeats, recently said that the agriculture sector had been left behind by the benefits big data, AI and blockchain can bring — even …