Microsoft has announced new tools and feature updates for the developer community on its three-day (May 24-26) annual Build 2022 conference. Most of the features are aimed at making it easier for developers to create native apps for multiple platforms, migrate to the Azure cloud, build collaborative experience in Teams, and improve discoverability of apps on the Microsoft store.
These updates and innovations fall into several key categories:
- The impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and AI-assisted development – keeping developers in their flow.
- The broad opportunity with Windows for developers including new hybrid AI app patterns for new edge endpoints, without walled gardens.
- Keeping developers more productive – introducing tech innovation that will help bring that same sense of flow more broadly across the organization with automation.
Highlighted areas are just the beginning when it comes to the new features and products for developers released at Build. Other news include:
- Cloud developer environments and DevSecOps, including news on the .NET Multi-platform App UI, otherwise known as .NET MAUI, which is now generally available.
- Cloud-native apps that deliver new levels of scale and performance alongside greater reliability, including Azure Container Apps, a serverless container hosting service where developers can focus on apps instead of managing underlying cloud infrastructure.
- The Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform, a new, integrated platform that unifies databases, analytics, and governance to empower organizations to invest more time creating value rather than integrating and managing a fragmented data estate.
- Microsoft Store Ads, a new product designed to help developers grow their business by getting their apps or games in front of the right customers, at the right time. In the coming months, developers can participate in the pilot program, where they will be able to create ad campaigns for the Microsoft Store using Microsoft Advertising.
- The new Live Share experience for apps in Teams, which takes screen sharing in meetings to the next level by making the Teams meeting stage interactive. Developers can build Live Share apps in Teams that let meeting participants edit, annotate, zoom in/out, and interact with shared content in new ways.
- The metaverse is creating an entirely new feedback loop and opportunity for business. Enabling metaverse experiences, so customers can more effectively model, automate, simulate, and predict changes within their industrial environments, feel a greater sense of presence in the new world of hybrid work and create custom immersive worlds to enable new opportunities for connection and experimentation.
During Build, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also focused his keynote address on the company’s strategy to empower developers to achieve greater agility, security, and innovation for the future. Nadella kicked off with the notion of “developer flow,” a term suggesting that vendors must fit into the brain streams common in development. “We want to make it easy for developers to go from idea to code and code to cloud and cloud to the world,” he said.
For more information, you can visit the Microsoft Microsite dedicated to Build, where you can find more information on the announcements and the Book of News of the Build event.
