Microsoft Build 2016: Day 2 focussed on cross platform app tools, cloud and developers

After a long first day at Microsoft Build 2016, day 2 was all about Azure, Enterprise services and how developers could tap into the tools available with Visual Studio.The keynote of day 2 kicked off with Scott Guthrie, Executive Vice President, Microsoft taking on the stage. The focal point of the discussion shifted towards its cloud service Azure.https://twitter.com/nashpd/status/715562139948191744Microsoft loves open sourceThe Redmond-based company’s love for the open source community was reiterated several times during the course of the day. At times through spokespersons, and even via the videos showcased at the event. “Microsoft is the only cloud vendor that supports the diverse needs of every organisation and developer — from core infrastructure services to platform services and tools to software-as-a-service — for any language, across any platform,” Guthrie said.https://twitter.com/nashpd/status/715563457613959168He added, “With 30 regions worldwide — more than every major cloud provider combined — Azure’s massive scale means developers and businesses alike can focus on creating the next generation of amazing applications, not their underlying cloud infrastructure. This makes our cloud the de facto choice for enterprises of today and tomorrow — and today, more than 85 percent of the Fortune 500 agree.”Guthrie announced that Azure was present in more regions across the globe than AWS and Google put together. He added that Azure saw 1,20,000 new subscriptions every month.Xamarin is the enabler for cross platform app developmentMicrosoft announced that its latest acquisition – Xamarin – the cross platform app development framework which it acquired earlier this year will be available for free with Visual Studio. In fact, Microsoft is offering it for free with all editions of Visual Studio such as Professional, Enterprise as well as the free community edition. In addition, Visual Studio Enterprise users would get access to enterprise capabilities of Xamarin at zero cost.https://twitter.com/nashpd/status/715564692815486977Microsoft also announced that the Xamarin SDK including its runtime, libraries and command line tool as part of the .NET Foundation would be made completely open source.In addition, Microsoft announced the following at Day 2 of Build 2016:Azure Service FabricThis is a microservices application platform that developers could use to design apps and services that are available 24x7 at cloud scale. Battle-tested supporting Microsoft cloud services, Service Fabric seamlessly handles application lifecycle management for constant uptime and easy application scaling. Previews of Service Fabric for Windows Server were revealed by Microsoft, which enables deployment of on-premises and other clouds, and Service Fabric for Linux and Java APIs. Similar to Xamarin, the programming frameworks of Service Fabric for Linux would be open sourced later this year.Azure FunctionsFunctions lets developers easily handle tasks that respond to events common in Web and mobile applications, IoT, and big data scenarios. Functions works with Azure and third-party services, automatically scaling out to meet demand and only charging for the time functions run. With an open source runtime, developers will be able to host Functions anywhere — on Azure, in their datacenter or on other clouds.Azure IoT Starter KitsMicrosoft announced that new Azure IoT Starter Kits were available for purchase Thursday. These kits allow anyone with Windows or Linux experience to quickly build IoT prototypes that leverage all Azure’s IoT offerings, for anywhere between $50 and $160.Power BI EmbeddedMicrosoft demoed a preview of Power BI Embedded, which allows developers to embed fully interactive reports and visualizations in any application, on any device. Guthrie also disclosed that applications can now easily communicate with the fully managed Azure DocumentDB NoSQL service, using existing Apache License MongoDB APIs and drivers.Disclosure: The author is attending Build 2016 at the invitation of Microsoft. Travel and accommodation has been arranged by Microsoft.