It was a big day in Microsoftland, where the company announced new Windows 10 features and unveiled a set of SDKs to help developers bring their code for the web, .NET, Win32, Android and iOS to Windows 10. Additionally, the company announced new Microsoft Azure data services for intelligent apps, Visual Studio and .NET tools and runtimes for Windows, Mac, and Linux, and APIs to enable developers to build rich apps with Office 365. It also announced a partnership with Adobe.
New WIndows 10 features include capabilities to scale apps across devices and new ways for developers to build code for the operating system. Microsoft aims to have a billion active Windows 10 devices by 2018, and it’s banking on developer tools to help it accomplish that.
Microsoft summarizes some of the announcements it made at its Build conference:
The company further detailed ways in which developers can create a single app that scales across all Windows 10 devices, automatically adapting to different screen sizes. With the Universal Windows Platform, developers can tailor their apps to the unique capabilities of each device, integrate Cortana and Xbox Live into their apps, offer trusted commerce, create holograms, and publish their apps into the Windows Store. Also as part of the Universal Windows Platform, the company shared how apps can scale using Continuum for phones, enabling people to use their phones like PCs for productivity or entertainment.1
The Windows Store will also offer a single unified experience for Windows 10 customers across devices and make finding great content easier than ever — across apps, games, music, video and other content.2 Transactions will take advantage of a range of popular payment options, including the largest carrier billing footprint of any ecosystem supporting 90 mobile operators. USA Today, WeChat, Disney and Netflix Inc. are a few of the partners referenced in the keynote already building apps for the Windows Store.
Microsoft welcomed all developers to the Universal Windows Platform by announcing four new software development toolkits that will make it easy to bring their code for the Web, .NET, Win32, iOS and Android to the Windows Store with minimal code modifications. This will enable developers to start with an existing code base such as Android or iOS, integrate with the Universal Windows Platform capabilities, and then distribute their new application through the Windows Store.
New features for Microsoft Edge, the new browser for Windows 10, were also unveiled, offering developers better discoverability of their apps and future extensibility with JavaScript and HTML.
Highlighting the opportunity with Windows 10, Microsoft shared the progress it has made in fewer than 100 days since unveiling Microsoft HoloLens — the world’s first untethered holographic computer powered by Windows 10 — and showcased how customers like Trimble, Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland Clinic are using this innovative new technology.
The company also previewed Azure SQL Database elastic database and announced Azure SQL Data Warehouse and open data repository Azure Data Lake.
Microsoft also announced a preview of Visual Studio Code, a free code-focused editor optimized for Web and cloud apps as well as a preview of the .NET Core for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X and Visual Studio 2015 Release Candidate, which the company says makes it easier for developers to build and deploy apps to Windows, Linux, iOS and Android.
As far as Office 365, the company introduced its new Office Graph API, expanded add-in capabilities for the iPad and Outlook, and unified APIs.
You can find more information on all of these things here.
The Adobe partnership was actually announced at Adobe Summit in London. It’s described as a strategic partnership that will “redefine how enterprises manage their marketing, sales and service to better engage with customers across touch points.”
It includes the integration of Adobe’s cloud solutions with Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
“Adobe and Microsoft are creating the industry’s first large-scale solution for connecting the customer experience across all touch points,” said Brad Rencher, SVP and GM, Digital Marketing Business at Adobe. “We are making it possible for the long-held promise of the customer-centric enterprise to become a data-driven reality.”
Microsoft goes into more detail about the partnership here.
Image via Microsoft
