Microsoft Build Conference is underway, it will be running from May 10-12th with over 5,000 developers from all over the world in attendance. The event will have keynotes from top Microsoft officials including their CEO Satya Nadella.
Nadella’s keynotes highlighted some of the achievements the company has had this year. He was proud to announce that Windows 10 now has 500 Million monthly user base. This could be attributed to the fact that the update was being offered free of charge, but since it now requires a purchase, the fast growth might slow down significantly.
The build conference this year focuses mostly on three areas namely cloud services, Office 365 and artificial intelligence. In cloud services, Microsoft is introducing Azure Cosmos DB, according to the press release, “It is the industry’s first globally distributed, multi-model database service to deliver horizontal scale with guaranteed uptime, throughput, consistency and single-digit millisecond latency at the 99th percentile.” Azure SQL also received improvements such as a new Managed Instance private preview , Microsoft Graph preview and general availability of Threat Detection and Visual Studio 2017 for Mac.
On to Office 365, the company announced that the software has over 100 million monthly commercial active users. Moreover, they now allow any developer to publish for Microsoft Teams, a chat based workspace for Office 365. Developers can also get in on Microsoft Graph through new APIs.
Artificial intelligence wasn’t left behind either, there are now 29 services for developers to customize and interact with, they include Bing Custom Search, Custom Vision Service, Custom Decision Service and Video Indexer. Every time you hear Microsoft and AI, Cortana instantly comes to mind, this voice intelligent system will be available for developers to tweak thanks to Cortana Skills Kit which is now in public preview. It will allow them to build new skills for Cortana that will be accessible through Windows 10, Android, iOS and Invoke speaker.
A lot more was discussed in the keynote, these are just the main highlights, to get the full details, you can check out the official Microsoft website here.