On November 12th, we'll be hosting an online developer event called Connect();. Connect(); will be a chance to have a conversation with developers about what’s coming next for developer tools, developer services and application platforms across Microsoft. Check out the Connect(); event page for the agenda and other details.
Connect(); builds upon where we’ve been, and the work we’ve been doing over the last year. As we prepare for next month’s event, I thought I would share a recap of some of the highlights from the last year.
Where We’ve Been
A year ago, we launched Visual Studio 2013 and announced the availability of Visual Studio Online. Developers have been adopting both at a great rate with over 7 million downloads of VS2013 and over 1.7 million registered accounts in Visual Studio Online so far.
Following through on our commitment to a faster release cadence, in the year since those launches we’ve released 3 major updates to Visual Studio 2013 and 15 updates to Visual Studio Online, with the majority of developers taking advantage of these new updates.
Through these updates and additional technology previews, we’ve talked about how we’re embracing the mobile-first, cloud-first and devops trends.
Mobile
Mobile developers today face a diverse device landscape, with Android, iOS and Windows device platforms, and a variety of device form factors. With Visual Studio, we have been working to enable developers to target every mobile platform, sharing as much code and assets as possible. With C# and Xamarin or JavaScript and the Cordova tools for Visual Studio (preview), Visual Studio developers can target the breadth of devices that their customers and clients demand. And when targeting the Windows platform, developers can leverage universal Windows app projects in Visual Studio.
Cloud
The cloud offers incredible flexibility and new approaches to application architectures and development practices. Over the last year, we’ve broadened the Azure platform for all developers, with support for Windows and Linux, Chef and Puppet, SharePoint and Oracle, Java and PHP, and much more. We’ve also talked about the next steps we are taking with .NET, including the open source ASP.NET vNext and .NET Compiler Platform (“Roslyn”) projects, as well as the .NET Foundation. Developers using any language and platform can also benefit from the many new at-scale platform services offered in Azure – from API Management and Machine Learning to Document DB and Search.
DevOps
Across every part of the software development industry, the one constant is the changing pace of application delivery. With Visual Studio Online, we are bringing together a comprehensive suite of devops services to help developers embrace the agile and dev/ops trends, from team collaboration and agile planning, to Release Management and Application Insights. These developer services build upon an open ALM platform, enabling integration with any other tools and services via REST APIs, OAuth and Service Hooks.
What’s Next
Next month at Connect(); we’ll have a chance to talk about the next wave of innovation and releases across all of these areas. The event will include updates from Scott Guthrie, Brian Harry, Scott Hanselman and myself, as well as deep dives by product team members on a broad array of new Microsoft developer tools and services.
It’s been an exciting year so far for developers, and I’m looking forward to sharing more about the next wave of developer releases with you next month. Save the date now for Connect(); and join us online on November 12th and 13th.
Namaste!