
A look at the announcements from Microsoft Build 2022
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 OpenAI Service helps customers accelerate innovation with large AI models; Microsoft expands availability
- Azure Machine Learning responsible AI dashboard is now in preview
- Azure Form Recognizer has new capabilities in preview, including updates to Azure Bot Service, Power Virtual Agents and Azure Metrics Advisor.
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 Container Apps, now generally available, enables customers to run microservices and containerized apps on a serverless platform.
- The Azure Communication Services Mobile UI Library, now generally available.
- To reflect the expanded scope of the service as a platform for all types of Spring apps, Microsoft is renaming Azure Spring Cloud to Azure Spring Apps.
- Several key enhancements have been made to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) to aid the developer experience.
- Service Bus Explorer capabilities are now generally available in the Azure portal.
- Azure API Management provides a hybrid, multicloud management platform for APIs across all environments.
- Several updates to Microsoft Azure App Service are either generally available or in preview.
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:
- For the first time, anyone can download the SQL Server 2022 preview to test the new features in the release.
- New features for Azure Cosmos DB, now in preview, enable developers to build scalable, cost-effective cloud-native apps and add enterprise-grade features to their apps.
- Azure SQL Database is releasing new features that help simplify and expedite app development and reduce time to market.
- Azure Synapse Analytics has new updates to the service are now in preview.
- The Azure Database for MySQL Flexible Server Memory Optimized service tier improves mission-critical workloads with lower input/output latency, higher availability service level agreements, higher resiliency and faster recovery from database failures.
- Microsoft Purview Data Policy for SQL DevOps roles is now in preview.
- Microsoft Purview’s multicloud and extensibility capabilities are expanding.
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:
- GitHub OpenID Connect (OIDC) with Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) workload identity federation is now generally available.
- .NET Multi-platform App UI (.NET MAUI) is now generally available.
- Microsoft is sharing updates on the investments in large language models and is providing a glimpse into the next generation of AI capabilities.
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:
- The Azure DCsv3 VMs with Intel Software Guard Extensions is generally available.
- AIOps powered Smart Maps in Application Insights is now in preview.
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:
- Express design capability, now available to all Power Apps makers, leverages Azure Cognitive Services object detection models.
- Power Virtual Agent’s new intelligent bot authoring experience, in preview soon, will unify the sophistication of Azure Bot Framework Composer’s pro-code capabilities with the simplicity of Power Virtual Agent’s low code platform.
- Datamart in Power BI, now in preview, is a new Power BI Premium self-service capability that enables users to uncover actionable insights through their own independent and dependent data sets.
- Unattended robotic process automation (RPA) and virtual machines (VMs) in Power Automate are now in preview.
- Low-Code Trend Report 2022: Building a learning culture on a low-code platform
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.
Useful Links
- Tune into Microsoft Learn TV!
- Check out the sessions you might have missed in the Session Catalogue
- Follow the conversation on the UK Twitter channel, @MSDevUK, as well as on the #MSBuild hashtag!