REDMOND, Wash. — Sept. 16 , 201 4 — JC Jacobsen founded his brewery, Carlsberg, more than 160 years ago to serve the Danish market. Recently the company has experienced tremendous growth, particularly within the past 14 years, expanding from a local production base of just six markets in 2000 to now the fourth-largest brewer of beer in the world with a roster of 500 different brands. This development has brought about the challenge of incorporating globally dispersed businesses into one company while ensuring each beer lives up to Carlsberg’s high standard of excellence. Cutting-edge technology from Microsoft has made it possible to centrally manage Carlsberg’s operations around the world.

The Carlsberg Group introduced a vision for business it calls “GloCal,” which aims for global efficiency while staying true to its local roots. When deciding how technology could be used to play a role in enabling this vision, the company chose Microsoft Office 365 to implement a complete productivity and collaboration solution that employees can use to connect with each other.

“One way we are helping our employees work better together is by deploying Office 365,” said Etienne Dock, vice president of IT architecture and sourcing at Carlsberg. “No matter what device or distance, the cloud is breaking down traditional barriers so we’re better able to focus on brewing the best beer in the world.”

Employees use Microsoft Exchange Online for email and calendaring; they take advantage of Microsoft Lync Online to connect via webconferencing and instant messaging; virtual teams are collaborating on projects using Microsoft SharePoint Online; and employees are adopting the Yammer Enterprise social networking platform for messaging and collaboration.

The Carlsberg Group is also taking advantage of Office 365’s integrated productivity and collaboration services to launch the Carlsberg Supply Chain (CSC) — its most important GloCal initiative — to help streamline its global supply chain. CSC uses the webconferencing, instant messaging and collaborative team sites within Office 365 services to centrally manage the procurement, production, logistics and planning functions that previously occurred in isolation across the world.

“Beer is heavy, so we don’t want to transport it very long distances,” Dock said. “And breweries are capital intensive, so we don’t want to build too many. CSC gets huge business value from using Office 365 as a global collaboration tool to interact with our global markets and exchange the information we need to fine-tune the balance between these variables to optimize our operations and save money.”

With user-friendly tools and a social networking platform that opens up the lines of communication using virtually any device from anywhere, the company is reinventing itself as a true “family of brands in a world of diversity.” Because its global workforce is more connected, the company can satisfy customers at less cost. Today, sales representatives working with pubs and restaurants in 140 markets use mobile devices to share customer insights with colleagues around the world, so the company can continue to deliver the flavors its beer-loving customers enjoy.

“That’s because we gain the efficiencies of business done on a global scale, while staying close to our local markets,” Dock said. “Thanks to Office 365, we’re becoming a true GloCal organization.”

More information about how organizations are turning to Microsoft technology is available on the Microsoft Customer Spotlight newsroom.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services, devices and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/news/contactpr.mspx.

REDMOND, Wash. — Sept. 16 , 2014 — Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq “MSFT”) on Tuesday announced that Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015, as well as updates to its Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and Microsoft Dynamics Marketing services, will be generally available in the fourth quarter of 2014.

The new updates revolutionize the way sellers and marketers unite and collaborate by bringing outside-in insights to sales and marketing professionals so they can understand the impact of their campaigns to customers, giving them more personalized experiences. Salespeople now have the visibility to impact campaigns and targeting with unprecedented insight into marketing calendars and campaigns. The updates also enable marketers to more effectively plan and execute marketing campaigns and better track their impact, while strengthening synergies with the sales process. Microsoft Dynamics CRM continues to deepen its interoperability with Microsoft’s leading productivity applications, including Microsoft Office 365, Yammer, Lync, Skype, SharePoint and Power BI for Office 365.

The new release is designed to address ongoing needs for businesses to collaborate among different divisions and groups to better take advantage of opportunities and to meet the evolving needs of their customers.

According to Ray Wang, principal analyst, founder and chairman at Constellation Research Inc., “Closing the gap between marketing and sales is required for a successful customer experience. Organizations need tools to track the customer interactions from marketing to sales and back, collaborate on leads and opportunities, and measure the metrics that matter to both sales and marketing.”

“Unlike vendors that want to separate businesses by selling them countless different clouds and solutions, we have designed Microsoft Dynamics CRM to facilitate the kind of collaboration that businesses need to thrive and grow,” said Bob Stutz, corporate vice president, Microsoft Dynamics CRM. “This means that marketers and sellers can work more closely together to engage customers, bridging the chasm between marketing, sales and service to truly deliver end-to-end experiences that customers will love.”

Uniting m arketing and s ales

To break down the silos between sales and marketing, Microsoft Dynamics Marketing introduces the new Sales Collaboration Panel, which allows sellers to provide input into campaigns and targeting. The release also gives marketers the ability to streamline campaign creation and improve segmentation with graphical email editing, A/B testing, integrated offers and approval workflows. Marketers can more effectively collaborate with the click-to-call feature in Lync and easily schedule and execute webinars as part of their marketing initiatives. The new Interactive Marketing Calendar allows marketers to visualize and manage their end-to-end marketing plans. Microsoft Dynamics Marketing will also be available in Japanese and Russian.

In addition to providing salespeople with the ability to more effectively collaborate with marketing, the new release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides the ability to recommend products to up-sell and cross-sell across product families, improving their selling effectiveness. The new release enhances the Guided Sales Processes to help steer sellers toward desired outcomes and ensure the enforcement of business rules across all devices. New mobile sales capabilities across mobile platforms increase productivity with flexible RoleTailored dashboards and analytics, as well as personalized home pages.

Continuing to enhance capabilities to Microsoft Social Listening, the company added Italian as a sixth native language for sentiment tracking and analysis and expanded listening capabilities to include news sources. These capabilities give people access to real-time insights so they can see what is happening and make the right decisions to take advantage of opportunities the moment they arise.

Expanding into new markets, Microsoft announced that Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online is available for purchase in 17 new markets in Latin America on Tuesday, making the service globally available in more than 65 markets worldwide. The company confirmed that the global expansion of Microsoft CRM Online will continue and is expected to reach over 130 markets and in 44 languages by the end of calendar year 2014. The company, which recently announced the opening of a Brazil datacenter to service the Latin American region, also noted that in calendar year 2015, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online would expand into additional Microsoft regional datacenters. More capabilities and features of the new Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 and Microsoft Dynamics Marketing, such as productivity improvements, automated business processes and real-time forecasting data, are detailed in the Release Preview Guide. A blog post series by Bob Stutz is available on CRM Connection. In addition, all can follow and engage with the Microsoft Dynamics CRM community @MSDynamicsCRM at http://www.twitter.com/msdynamicscrm, #MSDYNCRM.

About Microsoft Dynamics

At the heart of every successful business are the people who make things happen. Microsoft Dynamics designs modern business solutions that empower individuals with intuitive tools that allow them to do their best work. Our proactive, easy-to-use business applications adapt to the way people and systems work, enabling businesses to rapidly deploy and be forward-looking in an ever-changing world.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services, devices and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/news/contactpr.mspx.

15 September 2014, London. The LedgerSMB project - all-volunteer developers and contributors - today announced LedgerSMB 1.4.0.

Based on an open source code base first released in 1999, the LedgerSMB project was formed in 2006 and saw it's 1.0 release in the same year. It has now seen continuous development for over eight years and that shows no signs of slowing down.

"LedgerSMB 1.4 brings major improvements that many businesses need," said Chris Travers, who helped found the project. "Businesses which do manufacturing or retail, or need features like funds accounting will certainly get much more out of this new release."

Better Productivity

LedgerSMB 1.4 features a redesigned contact management framework that allows businesses to better keep track of customers, vendors, employers, sales leads, and more. Contacts can be stored and categorized, and leads can be converted into sales accounts.

Additionally, a new import module has been included that allows businesses to upload csv text files to import financial transactions and much more. No longer is data entry something that needs to be done entirely by hand or involves customizing the software.

Many smaller enhancements are here as well, For example, shipping labels can now be printed for invoices and orders, user management workflows have been improved,

Better Reporting

The reporting interfaces have been rewritten in LedgerSMB 1.4.0 in order to provide greater flexibility in both reporting and in sharing reports. Almost all reports now include a variety of formatting options including PDF and CSV formats. Reports can also be easily shared within an organization using stable hyperlinks to reports. Additionally the inclusion of a reporting engine means that it is now relatively simple to write third-party reports which offer all these features. Such reports can easily integrate with LedgerSMB or be accessed via a third party web page.

Additionally, the new reporting units system provides a great deal more flexibility in tracking money and resources as they travel through the system. Not only can one track by project or department, but funds accounting and other specialized reporting needs are possible to meet.

Better Integration

Integration of third-party line of business applications is also something which continues to improve. While all integration is possible, owing to the open nature of the code and db structure, it has become easier as more logic is moved to where it can be easily discovered by applications.

There are two major improvement areas in 1.4. First additional critical information, particularly regarding manufacturing and cost of goods sold tracking, has been moved into the database where it can be easily shared by other applications. This also allows for better testability and support. Secondly LedgerSMB now offers a framework for web services, which are currently available for contact management purposes, allowing integrators to more easily connect programs together.

Commercial Options

LedgerSMB isn't just an open source project. A number of commercial companies offer support, hosting, and customization services for this ERP. A list of some of the most prominent commercial companies involved can be found at http://ledgersmb.org/topic/commercial-support

REDMOND, W ash. — Sept . 15 , 2014 — Microsoft Corp. today announced it has reached an agreement to acquire Mojang, the celebrated Stockholm-based game developer, and the company’s iconic “Minecraft” franchise.

The Mojang team will join Microsoft Studios, which includes the studios behind global blockbuster franchises “Halo,” “Forza,” “Fable” and more. Microsoft’s investments in cloud and mobile technologies will enable “Minecraft” players to benefit from richer and faster worlds, more powerful development tools, and more opportunities to connect across the “Minecraft” community.

Under the terms of the agreement, Microsoft will acquire Mojang for $2.5 billion. Microsoft expects the acquisition to be break-even in FY15 on a GAAP basis. Subject to customary closing conditions and any regulatory review, the acquisition is expected to close in late 2014.

Available across multiple platforms, “Minecraft” is one of the most popular video games in history, with more than 100 million downloads, on PC alone, by players since its launch in 2009. “Minecraft” is one of the top PC games of all time, the most popular online game on Xbox, and the top paid app for iOS and Android in the US. The “Minecraft” community is among the most active and passionate in the industry, with more than 2 billion hours played on Xbox 360 alone in the past two years. Minecraft fans are loyal, with nearly 90 percent of paid customers on the PC having signed in within the past 12 months.

“Gaming is a top activity spanning devices, from PCs and consoles to tablets and mobile, with billions of hours spent each year,” said Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft. “Minecraft is more than a great game franchise – it is an open world platform, driven by a vibrant community we care deeply about, and rich with new opportunities for that community and for Microsoft.”

“The ‘Minecraft’ players have taken the game and turned it into something that surpassed all of our expectations. The acquisition by Microsoft brings a new chapter to the incredible story of ‘Minecraft,’” said Carl Manneh, CEO, Mojang. “As the founders move on to start new projects, we believe the high level of creativity from the community will continue the game’s success far into the future.”

Microsoft plans to continue to make “Minecraft” available across all the platforms on which it is available today: PC, iOS, Android, Xbox and PlayStation.

“‘Minecraft’ is one of the most popular franchises of all time,” said Phil Spencer, head of Xbox. “We are going to maintain ‘Minecraft’ and its community in all the ways people love today, with a commitment to nurture and grow it long into the future.”

More details will be available upon the acquisition closing.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services, devices and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/news/contactpr.mspx.