Technology & IT | Monday 15 May, 2017 6:37 pm |

At the Build 2017 developer conference in Seattle, Microsoft Corp. shared the first details of the next major update to Windows, the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update. Windows, Microsoft Office and Microsoft Azure offer developers more than a billion opportunities to connect their innovations with Microsoft customers. Microsoft also announced new Azure data and cloud services to help developers quickly modernize their existing apps, new AI and Azure services that allow any developer to more easily build intelligent apps, with understanding and natural user interaction capabilities, and showcased new data, Internet of Things (IoT) Edge and artificial intelligence services built for a future with an intelligent cloud and intelligent edge.

 

Windows 10 Fall Creators Update

Microsoft shared the first details of the next major update to Windows, the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update. Available later this year, the Fall Creators Update delivers new experiences for more than 500 million Windows 10 devices: a new design system; creative experiences that will move with you across Windows, iOS and Android; and new apps coming to the Windows Store.

• Microsoft Fluent Design System will deliver intuitive, harmonious, responsive and inclusive cross-device experiences and interactions. For developers, Fluent Design is built to help people create more expressive and engaging apps that work across a wide range of device and input diversity

• The Microsoft Graph is an intelligent fabric that helps connect dots between people, conversations, projects, and content within the Microsoft Cloud – ensuring experiences flow seamlessly between Windows, iOS and Android devices. Key features helping to bring this to life include: Timeline which allows users to jump back in time with a visual timeline that displays what a user was doing previously and easily hop back into files, apps and websites as if it was real time. And Clipboard which is a fast, easy way to copy and paste just about anything between connected devices by allowing to copying from the desktop and pasting on a phone. As well as OneDrive Files on Demand allows access to all files in the cloud without having to download them and use storage space on a specific device
• Windows Story Remix:  is an application built on .NET and distributed through the Windows Store as a Universal Windows Application, Windows Story Remix uses AI and deep learning to organize and transform photos and videos into stories. It will use the Microsoft Graph to connect users across devices. Story Remix brings memories, photos and videos together to create stories with a soundtrack, theme, and cinematic transitions. Users can also create mixed reality by adding 3D objects to your photos and videos to tell stories in a whole new way, or turn photos and videos into a canvas, drawing on them with Windows Ink

 

Cloud and developer’s tools

Our world is overloaded with information, every minute, and yet it is in this very information — data — that opportunities and insights abound. To help customers realize these opportunities, Microsoft shared an early peek into innovations it is bringing to bear to help every person and organization achieve more. Microsoft also showcased how it is meeting developers where they are, and helping them be more successful, with new Microsoft Azure and Visual Studio services and tools to help modernize existing applications and quickly build intelligent apps for all major platforms, In support of this vision Microsoft announced the following:

• A preview of Azure IoT Edge, technology that extends the intelligence — and other benefits — of cloud computing to edge devices. Extensions to the Microsoft Graph to combine insights from the world of work with device insights and contextual awareness of the physical world.  Technology that will allow you to search the real world in the same way you search the digital world, helping to keep your data safe and secure while making you more productive
• Azure Cosmos DataBase, built from the ground up to power planet-scale cloud services and data-intensive applications — from IoT to AI to mobile — with incredible performance, fault tolerance and support for every type of data, including graph
• New MySQL- and PostgreSQL-managed services that join Azure SQL Database to give developers expanded choice and flexibility on a service platform that delivers high availability and scalability, with minimal downtime, and data retention and recovery. A new Managed Instance private preview, which offers customers SQL Server instance-level compatibility and makes it even easier for organizations to migrate existing SQL Server apps to Azure SQL Database
• General availability of Visual Studio 2017 for Mac, which enables developers to work seamlessly across Windows and Mac environments with full support for mobile, web and cloud workloads, and previews of Docker tools, Azure Functions and Xamarin.IoT support. Also, Support for containers of nearly every type, on every platform, with the general availability of Windows Server Containers support in Azure Service Fabric, with Visual Studio tooling, and a preview of the ability to use Docker Compose support for Service Fabric to deploy containerized apps to Service Fabric — enabling developers to deliver mission-critical, scalable apps and services

 

Application development on the world’s largest productivity platform “Office 365”

With more than 100 million monthly commercial active users, Office 365 is where the world works. Today Microsoft announced plans to better connect developers with Office 365 customers around the globe:

• Any developer can now publish for Microsoft Teams, the new chat-based workspace in Office 365. Coming soon, apps in Teams will be more discoverable for end users through a new app experience. Developers can also add new capabilities to Teams apps, including third-party notifications in the activity feed, Compose Extensions and Actionable Messages
• Microsoft also made new Microsoft Graph APIs available to developers, including APIs from SharePoint and Planner. The Microsoft Graph gives developers access to Office 365 data and intelligence and helps connect the dots between people, conversations, projects, schedules, processes and content. These insights help developers build smarter apps, enabling smarter ways to work
• Developers and ISVs who host their production SaaS applications on Microsoft Azure and sign up through the Azure website can now have their apps’ data and workflow automatically extended to authorized Office 365 customers through standard connectors for PowerApps and Microsoft Flow. To help ISVs expand their business even further, Microsoft is also providing additional incentives to its sales force when they jointly co-sell eligible SaaS apps and services to enterprise customers

 

Windows Store supports iOS and Android

Windows Store is adding additional popular applications later this year: AutoDesk introduced their UWP SketchBook last summer it became their fastest growing new platform introduction with an average of 35% sales growth every month throughout 2017. Autodesk SketchBook, the de-facto application for painting and drawing, was built from the ground up as a Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app leveraging the pen and touch capability of Windows 10. Autodesk will continue to use UWP to extend their Windows Store offerings to include support for Windows Mixed Reality in Autodesk Stingray, a 3D game engine and real-time rendering software.

SAP also will bring SAP Digital Boardroom to the Windows Store this month. SAP Digital Boardroom is one of the most popular solutions from SAP.  It is a next-generation board portal which leverages data from lines of business applications to provide a single source of truth for executives to steer the business in real time. The app was submitted to the Windows Store as a Progressive Web App. This allows SAP to reuse their web content and investments to target multiple platforms, while at the same time take advantage of deeper integration with Windows 10.