As per recent reports, it has been revealed that a licensing deal has been signed, which will allow cloud services of Microsoft's Office 365 and Windows Azure to be available in China. Things would not have been possible if the deal would not have been finalized by 21Vianet Group, a local data center service provider.

Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system is on track to become available on 26th of October. The Redmond-based software giant has already announced the release to manufacturing (RTM) of the new software. It means that the software company's hardware partners can now equip their upcoming devices with final code of the new OS.

In the latest development in Microsoft-Motorola patent-infringement lawsuit, Judge Andreas Voss, of Germany’s Mannheim Regional court, issued a verdict in favor of Microsoft, saying that Motorola's Android-powered devices had been found to have infringed on a technology which had been developed and patented by Microsoft --- namely, the File Allocation Table (FAT) patent.

Microsoft recently introduced the world to its Office 2013, which will soon be available to the public along with the latest version of the cloud-based Office 365.

There are several strong reasons that will encourage Microsoft customers to upgrade to the latest software. Some of the most compelling reasons are as follows:

Just a few days after launching a new antitrust probe against Microsoft for failing to live up to an agreement to provide Windows users with adequate access to rivals’ Internet browsers, the European regulators have broadened the scope of the investigation.

On Tuesday, the European Union (EU)'s executive body, the European Commission (EC) disclosed in an announcement that it was initiating new antitrust proceedings against Microsoft to ascertain whether the software giant had kept the antitrust commitments it made in 2009; and added that "severe" penalties will be imposed on the company for non-compliance.

The fiscal year of 2012 will be very crucial for Microsoft as Redmond-based software giant has launched or will launch several new important products during the twelve-month period.

The software firm recently jumped into the tablet arena by introducing the world to its own tablet computer called the Surface, which will try to snatch some market share from its biggest rival – the iPad.

In its monthly Patch Tuesday release, Microsoft has - for its July Patch Tuesday on July 10 - announced patches for as many as 16 vulnerabilities in nine security updates, with the fixes including a critical drive-by Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) bug, as well as Windows zero-day vulnerability.

Three of the nine security updates announced by Microsoft this Patch Tuesday were rated as "critical", which is the company's most-severe threat ranking; and the other six updates were rated "important", the second-most-serious threat label.