Hi Everyone,
Today, I would like to share some of the key highlights from our recent Microsoft conferences targeted towards developers and IT Professionals. Last few weeks were filled with so many awesome announcements from Microsoft. We have covered different areas including personal computing to public cloud, IoT to Machine Learning and much more. Here are glimpse of some of the things we announced during these two awesome conferences.
Let’s begin with BUILD 2015 conference for developers.
First thing first: You can download and watch all BUILD 2015 content over here at Channel 9 – http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2015
We have covered so many awesome announcement during BUILD 2015 conference. Satya started off with overall theme of the conference covering the future ahead and the opportunities that we have around intelligent cloud, business productivity and processes, and lastly creating a more personal computing experience. The event started off with Windows app running on Surface called StaffPad. Then Scott Guthrie talked about some of the key highlights around Azure numbers and how much what all we have done with Azure in terms of the features and overall service improvement in so less time. He covered some of the enhancements we done in terms of identity, databases and overall utilization by businesses and various start-ups and ISVs.
After that we saw the announcement of a new Azure application model (not new as such completely) called as Azure App Service and the availability of Visual Studio Code. Visual Studio Code is a free tool to build and debug modern web and cloud applications. Code is free and available on your favorite platform – Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows. Just a quick that this product is still in its preview phase. You can all the announcement related to .NET over here http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dotnet/archive/2015/04/29/net-announcements-at-build-2015.aspx
Later, Mark Russinovich talked about debugging a .NET Code on Linux operating system and deployed a Docker container. As you all know Microsoft talked about our partnership with Docker some time back and we are doing a great progress.
We then talked about the some of the new enhancements within the Azure SQL database. We talked about some of the new features announced namely Elastic Data Pool, Azure SQL Data Warehouse and Azure Data Lake. Additionally, for Azure SQL we added support for Transparent Data Encryption, Full Text Search and more. You can more in the announcement page with detailed information and availability times.
Next, we talked about Windows 10 & Windows 10 Mobile. As announced by Terry sometime back Windows 10 will be available as a free upgrade for the first year. But the most important feature we talked about is Windows Store Universal Windows Platform.
- Ability for deeper integration of Web Apps within Windows Platform and Store
- .NET and Win32 Applications will be available on Windows Store as Store apps leveraging the containerization technologies like App-V (Not exactly same but just for understanding)
- Ability to reuse Android code to build applications on Windows Store (Project Astoria/Project A)
- Ability to develop Windows Apps using iOS Object-C code (Project Islandwood)
Later Joe Belfiore, demonstrated Windows 10 enhancements and new feature called Continuum for phone. This is an ability to extend your Windows Phone device to external display and utilize all the display for launching apps and at the same time connecting using Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. Watch the demo of continuum for phones.
After this demo Joe also demonstrate the next generation browser in Windows 10 called as Microsoft Edge (Project Spartan)
Lastly, we talked about Microsoft HoloLens. The grand product and an awesome demonstration. Microsoft HoloLens is the first fully untethered, see-through holographic computer. It enables high-definition holograms to come to life in your world, seamlessly integrating with your physical places, spaces, and things. We call this experience mixed reality. Holograms mixed with your real world will unlock all-new ways to create, communicate, work, and play. Pretty awesome. DO WATCH THE DEMO in the keynote.
And of course in the end we announced the availability of the new Windows 10 Build 10074 for everyone (PC Experts) over here https://insider.windows.com/
On the Day 2 keynote we covered a lot of developer content including some real application building and few more announcements.
For more details visit http://www.buildwindows.com/
Microsoft Ignite 2015 for IT Professionals
Now, let’s switch gears and talk about Microsoft Ignite 2015 conference for IT Professionals.
First thing first: You can download and watch all Microsoft Ignite 2015 content over here at Channel 9 – http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Ignite/2015
Many of you are not aware but this time we combined various conferences together and we have our first ever Ignite conference covering various infrastructure technologies all the way up in the cloud.
Satya started off keynote with 3 main pillars around this year’s Ignite conference pretty much similar to BUILD 2015 conference. These are…
- Era of more personal computing
- Reinventing productivity and business processes
- Building the intelligent cloud backend for the worlds applications
In more first category Joe Belfiore talked about some of the new enhancements we made within Windows 10 that include the new Start Button, Start Menu, Jump Lists, Cortana, Live Times, Multiple Virtual Desktops and many more. The most interesting demo was around Microsoft Edge or Project Spartan as discussed in the above in the BUILD highlights. Additionally, the Universal Apps play a critical roles within Windows. And of course Continuum for Phones in Windows 10 Mobile.
Before we continue I would like to highlight that we also announced today the Windows 10 editions http://blogs.windows.com/bloggingwindows/2015/05/13/introducing-windows-10-editions/
Next up Gurdeep Singh Pall talked about reinventing productivity and business processes. At high level he talked about the business productivity, enhancements within meeting space, conferencing and how Office is changing all that. We demonstrated some of the coolest features like Office Delve, Groups feature in Outlook, Content Co-Creation using Desktop or Online, Meeting using Microsoft Surface Hub device with awesome 84″ 4K multi-touch device with loads of sensors and cameras designed for collaboration.
The last part is awesome around Building Intelligent Cloud covered by Brad Anderson. Brad demonstrated some of the awesome features coming to the cloud computing using features.
The key features in cloud computing:
- Trustworthy
- Flexible
- Integrated
- Intelligent
Brad emphasized that Security is the number one concern in enterprise. He talked about the key challenges and how do we balance security with modern devices and architecture. He talked about endpoint enablement and user enablement. And it beings with identity that’s Azure Active Directory. This is how it looks like…protecting Devices, Identity, Apps and Files…
Modern Architecture for Devices & Users.
Brad demonstrated the security within Windows 10 like Device Guard, Microsoft Passport and Windows Hello. Then he demo’d a feature how the corporate data and a personal data is separated on the iPad and a user cannot copy the corporate data and paste it into any of the personal apps and that’s an awesome Mobile Device Management (MDM) capability. Later he demonstrated the security feature about sharing the protected content using Azure RMS (Rights Management Services) and RMS Document Tracking site. It is generally available.
Later Brad talked about identity and demonstrated Azure AD Cloud App Discovery to discover which SaaS apps are used within an organization today.
After this demo he talked about a new security service from Microsoft called as Microsoft Advanced Threat Analysis (Preview) Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics (ATA) helps you identify breaches and threats using behavioral analysis and provides a clear, actionable report on a simple attack timeline.
Later Terry Myerson talked about a new feature in Windows 10 for Enterprises called as Windows Update for Business. As you can see some of the new enhancements here and it will be fully integrated with System Center Configuration Manager. Pretty awesome!
Lastly, Brad talked about some of the coolest datacenter and cloud technologies. Firstly, we have officially named two products. It’s known as Windows Server 2016 and System Center 2016. Customers asked for getting Azure like features in their private cloud and this time we are bringing it together and we call it Microsoft Azure Stack.
Microsoft Azure Stack brings proven innovation from Microsoft’s hyper-scale public cloud into your datacenter, providing agility and productivity for application owners, flexibility and control for IT, and assurance that corporate assets are protected.
Brand touch based around Nano Server and Dockers Containers within Windows Server and you will get access to these features in the Technical Preview 3 in the coming months.
Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS) – OMS extends your System Center investments and helps simplify management of your datacenter assets wherever they live. That means any instance in any cloud, including your datacenter, Azure, AWS, Windows Server, Linux, VMware, and OpenStack, at a lower cost than competitive solutions. OMS leverages a cloud-first approach to managing your enterprise for a fast and cost-effective way to meet new business challenges and accommodate new workloads, applications and cloud environments.
So that’s all and much we covered during Ignite 2015 conference. As mentioned in the beginning feel free to visit Channel9.msdn.com to access all the deep dive content around all these awesome technologies that we have announced during the Ignite 2015 conference.
For all the demos that Brad talked about you can find them here http://blogs.technet.com/b/in_the_cloud/archive/2015/05/04/exploring-the-ignite-keynote-demos.aspx
Lastly, we announced Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 2 and System Center Technical Preview 2. You can get it from MSDN or TechNet Evaluation Center.
Have a great learning. Thank you.
Aviraj Ajgekar