The first day of Build 2017 was packed with exciting announcements and great content, such as the announcement of IoT Edge, new stuff on .NET Core and .NET Standard, a lot of work on AI and ML, and much more; see Peter’s write-up for some more detail (in Dutch). So let’s see if the second day can top this :).

Keynote

The Thursday keynote was pretty much centered around Windows 10, and more specifically the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, that will include new features such as OneDrive Files On Demand and Windows Timeline. With OneDrive Files On Demand, your files in OneDrive will be available for you to work with, regardless of whether or not they are actually present on the device. If they’re not, they’ll be pulled from the Cloud when needed. And with Windows Timeline, your work on these documents or whatever else you have going on, will travel with you from device to device, including Android and iOS devices. All this is made possible by combining Cortana and the Microsoft Graph to track your data and your activities. And how about copying something on your PC, and pasting it on your iPhone? You can do that with the Cloud Powered Clipboard. Obviously a lot more was covered during the keynote, which is available at Channel 9.

Discussing All Things Azure

An interesting new session format this year is the Open Q&A, and for me the one with Mark Russinovich and Corey Sanders was a must-attend. They discussed upcoming features in Azure, such as the future possibility to deploy most of the storage options, including Azure SQL Database, in a private network to cut it off from direct Internet access; or the expansion of Azure AD to include identity information for compute objects such as VM’s with roughly the same capabilities as computer objects in on-prem AD’s; or upcoming support for encryption at rest for all storage services. They also touched upon the state of Cloud Services as pretty much the oldest service in the book: it’s not going anywhere as long as customers depend on it, but don’t expect a lot of new innovations coming to it anymore.

Serverless, Containers, Service Fabric

Of course, serverless architectures are also among the top-ranking topics during the conference, as well as container services and Service Fabric. Some highlights in the serverless computing area are the availability of the Azure Functions Runtime for on-prem deployment of Azure Functions, increased Visual Studio tooling support for Azure Functions an so on. Service Fabric becomes increasingly integrated with all sorts of related technologies, such as Azure Networking, API Management, containers and .NET Core 2.0.

Presenting As A Form Of Art

And in closing this post, a honorable mention goes to the Anders Hejlsberg session on TypeScript. He did one of those sessions where it’s just a very experienced presenter with a microphone and a code editor, and he showed off some very cool stuff that’s made possible just by layering a type system on top of JavaScript. It’s impossible for me to do it justice here, so just watch out for the session to appear on Channel 9, and treat yourself to an hour of entertainment.