The second day of Build 2016 has just ended. We present (as for the first day) a quick recap of what happened at Microsoft's developer conference.
All about Azure
BUILD 2016 kicked off with Microsoft's Azure cloud computing platform. There weren't too many announcements, but there were plenty of demos for developers to help them understand how they can best leverage Microsoft's services.
The company said today that it is building a massive data center to support its growing user base. “85% of Fortune 500 companies use Azure, as do NBC, Ford, 3M, Heineken, Samsung, and many others.”.
Microsoft also briefly mentioned its acquisition of Xamarin, which aims to boost cross-platform development, and showed how it works in practice, alongside Visual Studio. The company showed off an emulator that can show how an app looks on a phone screen.
The touchscreen works just like a real smartphone screen!
Developers can use Xamarin Test Cloud to test apps on 1,000 devices and use HockeyApp to monitor performance.
Xamarin will be available to Visual Studio users at no additional charge – even free to users of the community edition of the application! It will be open source.
Microsoft (as mentioned above) presented a video from BMW that shows how it envisions a future with a car that will display video calls in the window.
The company said it will soon release an Azure IoT kit along with an Adafruit board so you can make clothes with lights…
Microsoft also announced a new tool called Power BI Embedded for in-app data visualization directly within interested developers' own applications. The tool will be free and will be available until December 1.
Other Azure products such as Container Service and Service Fabric previews will be available starting today, so you can connect to DocumentDB using MongoDB tools or libraries.
Immediately afterwards, Microsoft introduced the Office suite, stating that today 1.2 billion users use all Office products.
In a small announcement, it said that Office add-ins for Mac are arriving, adding support to the Windows, iOS, and iPad lineup.
Microsoft also addressed device overload, with too many apps crammed onto consumers' devices. The company wants to address the issue with "conversational interfaces" by providing tools that will let you know when trains are leaving, place online orders from Office, Skype, and Cortana.
Specifically, it announced Office 365 Group Connectors and the Skype for Business SDK so developers can integrate these features natively into Microsoft tools.
TNW Photos
