A look at the announcements from Microsoft Build 2022

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This year’s edition of Microsoft Build has now wrapped up, but don’t worry if you missed it! The high-quality sessions and keynotes from across the two days are available to watch on-demand via the Microsoft Build Session Catalogue.

The event brought us many surprises, so just in case you couldn’t tune in live, let’s walk through some of the announcements.

Azure AI

Microsoft Azure AI is introducing two updates to Azure Cognitive Services to help developers deploy high-quality models as APIs and infuse language capabilities into their apps more efficiently and responsibly.

Azure OpenAI Service, an Azure Cognitive Service, is now available in preview. OpenAI Service helps customers enable new reasoning and comprehension capabilities for building cutting-edge apps for use cases such as writing assistance, code generation and making sense of unstructured data.

Azure Cognitive Service for Language now offers summarization for documents and conversations, a new capability that helps developers quickly surface key information in documents and contact center calls, such as the reason for the call and resolution.

The full list of updates is as follows:

Azure Cloud Native and Application Platform

The Azure Communication Services Mobile UI Library, now generally available, helps save time and reduce complexity for app developers by providing production-ready UI components for mobile apps. The release includes support for 13 languages, accessibility for UI components and the ability to view shared screen content – including pinch-to-zoom, a key feature for mobile users.

The full list of updates is as follows:

Azure Data

The Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform, now generally available, is a new, integrated platform that unifies databases, analytics and governance, empowering organizations to invest more time creating value rather than integrating and managing a fragmented data estate.

SQL Server 2022 is the most Azure-enabled release of SQL Server with improvements in performance, security and availability. You can try it out here.

The full list of updates is as follows:

Azure Developer Tools and DevOps

Developers today face long onboarding times, conflicting development workstation settings and difficulty switching between tasks. It can also be difficult for IT admins to maintain secure, compliant and up-to-date dev environments while providing developers the flexibility needed to remain agile.

Microsoft Dev Box will give developers self-service access to high performance, cloud-based workstations that are preconfigured and ready-to-code for specific projects. Azure Deployment Environments will make it easy for developer teams to quickly spin up app infrastructure with project-based templates that establish consistency and best practices.

Both services will centralise management and governance, enabling developers to focus on coding while maximising security, compliance and cost efficiency.

The full list of updates is as follows:

Azure Hybrid

Azure Arc helps customers get the most from their hybrid environments by bringing the best of Azure to on-premises and multicloud environments. New features include the landing zone accelerator for Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes, which gives customers tools to accelerate and simplify hybrid and multicloud, and the Business Critical service tier for Azure Arc-enabled SQL Managed Instance, which delivers strong business continuity requirements, increased performance and continuous security to customers’ most database-intensive use cases. Learn more about these updates here.

The new single node Azure Stack HCI, now generally available, fulfills the growing needs of customers in remote locations while maintaining the innovation of native integration with Azure Arc. Specifically, it offers customers the flexibility to deploy the stack in smaller spaces and with less processing needs, optimizing resources while still delivering quality and consistency.

Azure Infrastructure

NGINX for Azure, in preview, is a natively integrated software as a service (SaaS) solution with advanced traffic management and monitoring. Customers can purchase this solution through the Azure Marketplace, get a unified bill for all services they use on Azure and leverage existing enterprise agreements.

Dynatrace for Azure is a natively integrated software as a service (SaaS) solution that will provide deep cloud observability for proactive identification and resolution of issues impacting mission-critical apps. Dynatrace for Azure will be available in preview in June.

The full list of updates is as follows:

Power Platform

Microsoft Power Pages is a low code development and hosting platform ideal for building business-centric websites, allowing low code makers and professional developers to design, configure and publish sites for both desktop and mobile through a fluid, visual experience.

Previously, Power Pages existed as a feature within Power Apps called Power Apps portals. Power Pages will become the fifth member of the Power Platform family as a standalone offering within the Power Platform portfolio.

The full list of updates is as follows:

Windows

As an open platform, Windows welcomes developers and apps across platforms and coding languages, including .NET, web, Android, C++ and Linux. Developers can design app experiences for Windows with their technology of choice. This keeps costs low and allows them to build with tools and software they are familiar with.

Several updates and improvements have been made across Windows developer technologies and include:

  • The Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is available in the Microsoft Store.
  • Windows Subsystem for Android is now running on Android Open Source Project (AOSP) 12.1.
  • The latest Windows App SDK 1.1 update is currently in preview and will be generally available soon.
  • Tooling updates include Template Studio for WinUI 3 to help build Windows apps, .NET Upgrade Assistant to migrate Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps to WinUI 3 and updated Edge developer tools.
  • Widgets in Windows 11 provide a fresh, glanceable and useful view into app content for users.
  • Hybrid Loop is a cross-platform development pattern for building AI experiences that span the cloud and edge.
  • The new Microsoft Store on Windows was rebuilt from the ground up for developers because of the tremendous growth in the number of developers bringing their apps and games to the Microsoft Store.

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