The updated platform lets users stream Windows software such as Excel, AutoCAD, or SAP directly through the Chrome browser or as web apps, taking out the need for full desktop virtualisation. 

This approach gives organisations the freedom to operate legacy Windows programmes alongside modern web-based tools in ChromeOS, simplifying workflows and cutting down the time and resources needed to switch between systems.

“For years, the primary blocker for deeper enterprise adoption of ChromeOS has always been the ‘app gap’, the persistent need to access a few remaining Windows applications within an organization,” Google said in its announcement. 

“Now, teams can move to a more modern, collaborative productivity suite that was built for the web, and they can still access any specialized Windows apps that their workflows still depend on.”

Cameyo’s integration with ChromeOS Flex takes the transition a step further, allowing IT departments to convert existing Windows or Mac devices into secure ChromeOS endpoints while still running Windows applications. 

This feature provides companies with a cost-effective and sustainable way to modernise their systems without replacing their hardware.

The service also includes centralised management and security tools for IT teams and supports Gemini AI for smarter, contextual assistance. For hybrid work environments, this balance between cloud-native and legacy software could reduce complexity while boosting productivity.

In bridging the gap between traditional and web-based computing, Google is making ChromeOS a practical alternative to Windows, particularly in sectors like education, healthcare, and government, where device costs and manageability are most important.

PCMag noted that Cameyo by Google “makes ChromeOS an even more effective Windows replacement”, stressing how the new integration could finally close one of the biggest limitations to wider ChromeOS adoption.

This release is available exclusively to ChatGPT Plus, Enterprise, Team, and Educational (Edu) subscribers, with broader availability planned for later in the year.

The desktop app brings several features designed to enhance user experience. With the Alt + Space shortcut, users can quickly summon ChatGPT without moving from their current tasks. 

The app supports functions such as uploading files and photos for AI analysis, document summarisation, and image creation via the DALL-E 3 image generator.

Currently, the app is limited in some aspects, particularly the absence of voice functionality, which is present in the macOS version. OpenAI also notes that integrations with its GPT Store are not yet operational on the Windows app. 

Despite these limitations, users can still benefit from advanced model improvements, including access to the latest version, OpenAI o1-preview.

Unlike the macOS version, which requires an Apple Silicon machine running the latest operating system, the Windows app has wider compatibility.

It runs on most devices operating Windows 10 version 17763.0 or higher, making it accessible to a wider audience. Free access to the app is expected to roll out before the end of the year.

The ChatGPT app for Windows can be downloaded from the Microsoft Store, providing users with a more seamless experience for using the AI-powered chatbot. OpenAI plans to continue updating and improving the app as it moves closer to the full release.

• The company also unveiled significant enhancements to its offerings for professional developers and app development teams.

These include early access to new services within Catalyst, the company’s pro-code full-stack development platform, and the general availability of Zoho Apptics, an application analytics solution that enables developers to track the in-app usage and performance of applications built on iOS, macOS, Android, and other platforms.

“Businesses are looking for unified solutions that help them optimise for value, maximise their competitive advantages, and tap into new market opportunities amid tough economic conditions,” said Kehinde Ogundare, country head, Zoho Nigeria. “At Zoho, we’re focused on continuously deepening our current offerings and expanding others to serve business needs. Zoho CRM for Everyone, for instance, is the first true democratisation of the CRM paradigm and helps unify all customer operations teams onto the CRM to deliver better customer experiences. Likewise, the upgraded Catalyst and the privacy-focused Apptics solution work hand-in-hand to deliver an unmatched developer experience from concept to code, and deployment to analytics.”

Zoho CRM for Everyone – What You Should Know:

Zoho CRM is one of the top selling products in Nigeria. The product recorded a  60% YoY growth in 2023 in the country.

Zoho CRM for Everyone allows sales teams, the primary custodian of customer relationships, to communicate and coordinate with other customer-facing teams from a single place—the CRM application—instead of holding fragmented discussions.

It enables account managers, for example, to pull in a solutions engineer to coordinate a product demonstration for a customer.

• A marketer can perform win-loss analysis for specific deals. A community specialist can manage advocacy engagements like case studies.

They may all use different core applications for deep work but can now converge on the CRM for managing shared responsibilities towards the customer.

Besides opening up CRM access cross-functionally, Zoho CRM for Everyone also empowers every team to manage their own workflows autonomously within the corporate IT framework.

The new capabilities stand to improve visibility for every stakeholder in the customer journey, mitigate gaps in coordination, reduce turnaround time, and improve the quality of the customer experience.

To make CRM for Everyone possible, the following capabilities have come together in Zoho CRM:

• Team Modules and Requesters: Under team modules, business teams can create their own team-level data modules (in addition to organisation-level modules) by themselves while being governed by IT teams. Requesters is a new user profile in Zoho CRM that allows a team member to raise a request for colleagues in different teams and track the request status.
  ● Refreshed User Experience: To enable this fundamental shift in usage, the interface of Zoho CRM has been redesigned for better usability across roles and functions. With this release, Zoho CRM is also making a major stride in accessibility with capabilities covering areas like vision, motor activity, and interactions.

New Custom App Development Capabilities in Catalyst

Building custom solutions out of a disparate mix of tools has consistently been a source of frustration for developers. Catalyst unifies pro-code development efforts and streamlines the entire lifecycle by abstracting away complexities, providing pre-built components, and offering a comprehensive suite of developer tools.

Catalyst’s newest offerings, available under early access, expand on developer logic, design, and delivery:

• Signals: Routes events from sources like Zoho services, third-party sources, or custom applications to handlers (like Catalyst Functions, Circuits, etc.) using topics and subscriptions.
  ●NoSQL Database: Allows users to store structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data while supporting diverse data types and scaling dynamically with high performance.
  ● Slate: A fully managed frontend platform that lets developers easily build highly customised interfaces that leverage frameworks such as React.js, Next.js, Sveltekit, etc.
  ● CI/CD Pipeline: Automates tests and builds for continuous delivery pipelines, streamlining development workflows for faster time-to-market.

Catalyst seamlessly integrates with the Zoho ecosystem and third-party applications, enabling developers to leverage existing infrastructure and data sources. The platform stands out with its transparent and cost-effective pricing model, empowering organisations of all sizes by eliminating hidden fees and offering predictable, scalable pricing.

Privacy-Friendly Application Analytics:

Zoho Apptics delivers an extensive digital analytics platform designed for every stakeholder involved in application development and management.

The solution consolidates analytics across app usage, performance, user engagement, and growth metrics into a centralised console, then synthesises these multifaceted data streams into actionable insights presented visually in dashboards and reports.

This unified view empowers organisations to make informed decisions, optimise app experiences, drive user engagement, and fuel sustainable growth throughout the application lifecycle.

Apptics provides multi-platform analytics support, covering Android, iOS, macOS, tvOS, watchOS, iPadOS, Windows, React Native, Flutter, and Unity, with web analytics capabilities coming soon.

Apptics stands out by offering a unique capability to prompt Android and iOS users for app ratings and updates directly from the Apptics console. Integrated app store reviews management helps in streamlining the process of analysing user sentiment.

Additionally, Zoho Apptics prioritises data privacy and security, exceeding industry best practices and regulatory compliance standards.

User information is safeguarded behind encryption and access controls, ensuring analytics insights are leveraged responsibly without compromising individual privacy.

Pricing and Availability  

• Starting today, early access to Zoho CRM for Everyone is available upon request for Zoho customers worldwide.
• Zoho will be releasing additional capabilities to CRM for Everyone over several weeks during the early access phase.
• Catalyst offers a generous Free Tier that renews monthly, alongside options for a pay-as-you-go model and subscription-based pricing.
• The new features are now available for early access, and interested users can sign up by visiting Zoho’s Catalyst page. 
• Apptics is globally available now and offers a free plan and a pro plan starting at NGN18600 per month, when billed annually.

The updated app features a new setup experience for smoother onboarding and a syncing status indicator to track file transfers more effectively. 

In a bid to bolster security measures, enhancing privacy and data protection, Apple has introduced support for physical security keys, allowing users to fortify their Apple ID credentials. 

The Apple redesigned iCloud app for Windows comes with improved photo-syncing performance, particularly with Microsoft Photos, facilitating effortless multimedia management. Additionally, users can revel in convenient shortcuts granting speedy access to various Apple services, elevating user convenience and accessibility.

Apple’s latest effort builds upon its recent focus in enhancing the Windows experience for its patrons. Notably, the introduction of separate apps for iCloud, Apple TV, and Apple Music in 2022 was a significant departure from the iTunes period. Last year, Apple tantalized users with previews of these apps, pointing to a paradigm shift in the Windows-Apple synergy.

The culmination of Apple’s efforts materializes this week with the official launch of Apple TV, Apple Music, and Apple Devices apps on Windows. Collaborative endeavors between Apple and Microsoft have topped off in the removal of the preview tag, bringing a maturation of these applications.

By ensuring seamlessly integrated applications, Apple endeavors to diminish the reliance on iTunes, relegating it primarily for podcasts and audiobooks access on Windows devices. The integration of iCloud Photos further enriches the Windows experience, bridging the divide between Apple’s ecosystem and Microsoft’s platform.

However, the caveat lies in the limitation of Apple’s new Windows apps, which are exclusively tailored for traditional x86-based PCs running Windows 10 or 11. As of now, there’s a dearth of ARM64 versions tailored for Qualcomm-powered Windows devices, leaving a segment of users yearning for compatibility enhancements.

In essence, Apple’s strategic maneuvers underline its goal to facilitate cross-platform cohesion while enhancing user experience across diverse digital landscapes. 

New previews for Azure OpenAI Service, AI dashboards in Azure Machine Learning and a web application routing add-in for Azure Kubernetes Service were among the biggest Azure announcements from Microsoft during this year’s Build conference aimed at developers.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also touted the company’s Azure OpenAI service during the company’s latest quarterly earnings call in April, describing how the service helps “companies like CarMax turn customer reviews into customized content for shoppers.”

He said that Azure Machine Learning’s “number of monthly inference requests increased 86 percent year over year with companies like PepsiCo using the service to predict which products are most likely to sell.”

For starters, Microsoft introduced ‘Dev Box’, its new cloud service for developers with ready-to-code workstations that allow coders to focus on work instead of workstation configurations and maintenance.

Since Dev Boxes are hosted in the Microsoft Cloud, they work on all Windows, MacOS, Android and iOS devices, and also on all major web browsers, giving developers an option to not be bound to a physical PC, and rather, “spin up a virtual machine (VM) and provision it automatically in the cloud, reducing limitations and delays,” Nadela said.

Developers using Dev Box can create a developer portal to access specific Dex Boxes for different projects.

The CEO said that Microsoft is offerings Dev Box in a private preview starting Tuesday, with the cloud service going public in the “next few months.”

Moving on, the Washington-based company unveiled its ‘Project Volterra’,  a developer kit powered by an unnamed Snapdragon compute platform that will let developers explore several AI scenarios using Qualcomm’s Neutral Processing SDK for Windows toolkit.

The dev kit comes alongside a mini-desktop PC, though it won’t be available as a retail product.

From what we know so far, the mini-PC will sport three USB ports, a DisplayPort and an Ethernet port. Microsoft didn’t reveal much else about Project Volterra, though it did say that it will share more information about it at a later date.

Nadela added that Microsoft is also revamping Teams by introducing a new Live ‘Share Feature’ that will allow users to work on a shared document together in real-time, making group meetings more collaborative.

He said that developers, on the other hand, will be able to develop new collaborative software and applications inside Microsoft Teams.

Live Share is built on Fluid Framework, Microsoft’s web-based platform for interactive experiences that it debuted at 2019’s Build conference.

Some of Microsoft’s partners, including Accenture, Hexagon and Frame.io have already started building with Live Share, he said.

Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform

Azure Data chief Rohan Kumar also spoke about the Intelligent Data Platform.  Kumar explained the feature promises to “fully integrate databases, analytics and governance.”

The platform is meant to speed up the process of turning data from disparate sources into actionable intelligence.

Microsoft also launched the MySQL Flexible Server ‘Business Critical’ which presupposes that the old “Memory Optimized” tier for the Azure Database for MySQL Flexible Server product is no more.

“As of Build, it’s now called the “Business Critical” tier. New capabilities include “1.5x faster performance than Azure Database for MySQL Single Server deployment,” the company said.

Even though Microsoft regularly releases patches for its Print Spooler, software that manages the printing process, cybercriminals continue to actively exploit its vulnerabilities.

This gives them the opportunity to distribute and install malicious programs on victims’ computers that can steal stored data.

Over the past year, various vulnerabilities in Windows Print Spooler have been discovered. By abusing them, cybercriminals have been able to take control of servers and victims’ machines, even without a special admin access.

The most well-known vulnerabilities are CVE-2021-1675 and CVE-2021-34527 (aka PrintNightmare), which were discovered in late June 2021.

PrintNightmare was accidentally published by researchers as a proof of concept (PoC) exploit for a critical Windows Print Spooler vulnerability.

The exploit was quickly removed from GitHub, however, some users had already managed to download it and then republished it.

In late April 2022, a highly severe vulnerability (tracked as CVE-2022-22718) was also discovered in Windows Print Spooler.

Microsoft had already issued a patch against this threat, but the attackers were still able to exploit this vulnerability and gain access to corporate resources.

Kaspersky researchers discovered that cybercriminals made approximately 65,000 attacks between July 2021 and April 2022. Moreover, Kaspersky experts detected that roughly 31,000 of these hits occurred during the last four months, from January to April.

This suggests that vulnerabilities in Windows Print Spooler remain a popular attack route for cybercriminals, which means users need to be aware of any patches and fixes that Microsoft releases.

The exploitation of vulnerabilities in Windows Print Spooler has hit numerous countries, with the number of overall attacks still growing. From July 2021 to April 2022, nearly a quarter of detected hits came from Italy.

After Italy, users in Turkey and South Korea were the most actively attacked. Kaspersky researchers also discovered that over the past four months attackers were most active in Austria, France and Slovenia.

“Windows Print Spooler vulnerabilities are a hotbed for emerging new threats. We anticipate a growing number of exploitation attempts to gain access to resources within corporate networks, accompanied by a high-risk of ransomware infection and data theft. Through some of these vulnerabilities, attackers can gain access not only to victims’ data but also to the whole corporate server. Therefore, it is strongly recommended that users follow Microsoft’s guidelines and apply the latest Windows security updates,” comments Alexey Kulaev, security researcher at Kaspersky.

To protect yourself from cybercriminals’ attacks through vulnerabilities in the Windows Print Spooler, Kaspersky recommends:

• Installing patches for new vulnerabilities as soon as possible. Once downloaded, threat actors can no longer abuse the vulnerability.
• Performing a regular security audit of your organisation’s IT infrastructure to reveal any gaps and vulnerable systems.
• Using a protection solution for endpoints and mail servers with anti-phishing capabilities to decrease the chance of infection through phishing attempts.
• Using dedicated services that can help fight against high-profile attacks. The Kaspersky Managed Detection and Response service can help identify and stop attacks in their early stages, before attackers achieve their goals.
• Installing anti-APT and EDR solutions, enabling threat discovery and detection, along with investigation and timely remediation of incidents’ capabilities. Provide your SOC team with access to the latest threat intelligence and regularly upskill them with professional training. All of the above is available within the Kaspersky Expert Security framework.