Microsoft Build empowering the developer community

“What you dream, what you build, is changing how we live and how we work,” said Satya Nadella in his keynote address at Microsoft Build 2022. The CEO of Microsoft highlighted ten technologies with the importance of having a focus on building what the world needs for the future, especially when it comes to improving humanity with technology sustainably.

“We’re building Microsoft Cloud as a platform to help you build your own platforms. With more than 50 new products being announced, this is your platform to build upon. Our vision for you is ambitious. Ultimately, this is about maximizing the opportunity for every developer by providing the richest set of technologies and platforms that empower you to dream and build what is next. Breaking free of any arbitrary restrictions and removing friction so you can reach every person and every corner of the planet,” added Nadella.

For Kathleen Mitford, Corporate Vice President, Azure Marketing at Microsoft, the key to making innovation happen is all about perfecting the developer experience today. Microsoft wants to equip developers with tools to shift security left, into code so that problems and concerns can be identified and fixed before a security breach even happens.

With working models being remote and hybrid, dispersed development teams using different languages, devices, and networks, developers need to interact and connect with their teams and have confidence they can deliver their best work from anywhere and that it will be secure. Teams need to stay agile and onboard new team members quickly and efficiently. Ideally, developers can focus on code instead of spending time setting up dev environments and managing infrastructure.

As such, Microsoft Build 2022 saw several key announcements being made to enable the development community to build and design with flexibility and agility at the core. Among the announcements made include Microsoft Dev Box, a new cloud service that provides developers with secure, ready-to-code developer workstations for hybrid teams of any size.

Currently, in preview mode, Microsoft Dev Box empowers developers to focus on the code only they can write, making it easy for them to access the tools and resources they need without worrying about workstation configuration and maintenance. Dev teams preconfigure Dev Boxes for specific projects and tasks, enabling devs to get started quickly with an environment that’s ready to build and run their app in minutes.

To accelerate innovation, Microsoft unveiled the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform, a leading cloud data platform that fully integrates databases, analytics, and governance. This seamless data platform empowers organizations to invest more time creating value rather than integrating and managing their data estate.

According to Rohan Kumar, Corporate Vice President, Azure Data at Microsoft, “furthering our mission of integration, Azure Synapse Link for SQL removes data movement barriers, providing a seamless data pipeline to Azure Synapse Analytics, and enables near-real-time analytics for SQL Server 2022 and Azure SQL Database”

Kumar added that once Azure Synapse Link transfers data to Azure Synapse Analytics, data can be used for advanced analytics with no performance impact on transactional workloads. There are currently over 10 million Azure SQL databases globally that can now leverage this capability.

When it comes to low code, the Microsoft Power Platform is making it faster, easier to use, and more innovative for all developers. This includes the introduction of Power Pages, which combines low-code capabilities and experiences that empower anyone to create and deliver business-centric, data-powered, modern, and secure websites.

Meanwhile, Microsoft also announced new capabilities for developers building collaborative apps for Teams and Microsoft 365. This includes LiveShare, a capability for apps to go beyond passive screen sharing and enable participants to co-watch, co-edit, co-create, and more in Teams meetings. Another capability, the Microsoft Azure Communication Services interoperability with Teams enables developers to create experiences that support seamless communications between customers on any custom app or website and employees working in Teams.

At Microsoft Build, it was also announced that Meta has selected Azure as a strategic cloud provider to help accelerate AI research and development. As part of this deeper relationship, Meta will expand its use of Azure’s supercomputing power to accelerate AI research and development for its Meta AI group.

“By scaling Azure’s supercomputing power to train large AI models for the world’s leading research organizations, and by expanding tools and resources for open source collaboration and experimentation, we can help unlock new opportunities for developers and the broader tech community, and further our mission to empower every person and organization around the world,” stated Eric Boyd Corporate Vice President, AI Platform at Microsoft.

 

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