Microsoft Build 2015

Yday, I had the chance to participate Microsoft Build conference 2015 at Bangalore. Just a recap, Microsoft runs this yearly campaign to reach their latest technology to the developers community. This year theme, is upcoming Windows 10, general availability on 29 July 2015.

Recently Microsoft announced the first year free upgrade for genuine Windows 7 & 8.x users. It is already popping up in the user's desktop to accept/roll back the auto free upgrade. Unlike earlier versions, Microsoft is pushing the upgrade without the traditional installation process. Njoy it at your Windows desktop, laptop, mobile, pad.

Back to the annual conference, couple of Redmond visitors ran the whole day hands on coding demo awesome sessions. Top-5 Game changing evolutionary upgrade list:

1. One App in One store to One Windows for any device 
2. 2500+ new platform features with pure API strategy 
3. IoT (Internet of Things) adoption, ready for 25 billion devices by 2020
4. Next generation browser - Edge, to replace Internet Explorer regime
5. As phone becomes unified device, Continum for phones to feel desktop experience

Just wanted to share other highlights during this demo:

Window Holographic
Windows Holographic is a mixed reality computing platform by Microsoft, which enables HD holograms of real-world elements. This emerging technology/artificial intelligence device is yet to PROD ready and so they didn't expand this topic. Of course, no demo on this space. Eager to see soon.

Machine learning
Microsoft has quietly built up its machine learning expertise over decades, transforming academic discoveries into product functionality along the way. Windows 10 platform is ready for the machine learning process using Azure Cloud solution. Sample App is available at how-old.net, which guesses the age of uploaded picture.

Unified Windows Platform (UWP) 
Universal Windows Platform is a single App platform that is available across all Windows device families, enabling you to reach a new user base and open up new revenue opportunities. For existing Android™ developers, ”Project Astoria” will enable you to build apps using Android code to target Windows 10. For existing iOS® developers, ”Project Islandwood” will enable you to build a universal Windows app from within Visual Studio 2015 using your existing Objective-C code.  Sample code is available at https://github.com/Microsoft/Windows-universal-samples

Big Data 
Azure HDInsight is their advanced big data solution by leveraging Hadoop, Cloud - Azure, Big Data DB-DocumentDB.  HDInsight uses the Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP) Hadoop distribution at Azure cloud.

App Recommendation 
Windows 10 has the high degree of coupling with low cohesive among its applications. As the result, it provides the smart recommendation with the available resources prior to connect the external links. Example: when user looks for weather update, Win10 smartly connects the existing local App if any, prior to external request.

Development Strategy 
Microsoft is aiming for one billion users of Windows 10 by next 2-3 years. It is promising to achieve by shifting their development strategy.  Instead of their own traditional effort, Microsoft is adapting the open source/community strategy for the bigger participation from the developer communities.

Action Centre 
Windows 10 is unified for any kind of application notification and seamless response actions. It is applicable not only for traditional Windows updates but also for any application like social media Facebook, Whatsapp, etc.  So, Microsoft makes Action Centre as the separate application for One-Stop notification.

Last couple of years, I'm so privileged to build the products by coding the undiscovered disruptive technologies like Big  Data, IoT, now Windows 10 SDK.  Will share my hands on experience soon.