The following is an excerpt from my remarks at our annual developer conference, Microsoft Build, this morning.
Every day, the world’s 31 million developers build products and services that reach every corner of the world and touch everyone. And we all now have a more profound understanding of how impactful all of the technologies they build are to navigating the challenges of people and planet.
What developers dream and what they build is changing how we live and how we work. So, we all have to answer two questions: What can we build? And perhaps more importantly, what does the world need us to build?
It reminds me of our own story as a company. When Microsoft was founded 47 years ago, it was a time of both opportunity and crisis. The same month that Popular Electronics featured the Altair 8800, Newsweek’s cover featured the three-headed dragon of inflation, recession, and the energy crisis.
Our company’s founders grabbed Popular Mechanics and ran with it, creating some of the world’s most beloved developer platforms and tools. And today, in 2022, we all need to pick up both these magazines and relate them to each other. That is our collective opportunity and responsibility.
Microsoft Build is about helping developers realize these opportunities. And there are 10 technologies that are coming together as a powerful platform to help build what’s next.
Developer flow
It all starts with developer flow. And when we think about flow, it’s more than the speed at which developers work. It’s about getting in the zone and staying there. We want to make it easy for developers to go from idea to code, and code to cloud, and cloud to the world.
Last year, we introduced GitHub Codespaces. It’s your entire developer environment, including the full power of VS Code, hosted in the cloud and accessible via the browser. You can spin up a new Linux-based dev environment for any sized project with pre-built images in seconds.
While Codespaces is a great environment for web development and building cloud-native apps, if you’re building for the PC, embedded, mobile, or console, you often need a Windows dev box and other client apps to do your development, and you often need a solution managed by IT.
That’s why we’re introducing Microsoft Dev Box. It’s a fully managed service built on Windows 365 to spin the beefiest of VMs with all the tools, connected services, and network resources you need pre-provisioned so you can get to code quickly, while ensuring that your dev box always stays secure and compliant.
Now, let’s take it one step further to help you stay in your flow: What if you had an AI pair programmer that you could collaborate with and would help you learn new frameworks and best practices?
That was our motivation for GitHub Copilot. It draws context from the code you’re working on to finish the lines you start or even suggest entire functions. It’s incredibly powerful, as you can see here:
Copilot will be generally available for developers later this summer. We’re also making Copilot free for students, as well as verified open-source contributors.
Cloud ubiquity
The next technology is the cloud and in particular the ubiquity of the cloud. We are seeing a major acceleration in the buildout of a highly distributed computing fabric, from the cloud to the edge, as we embed computing everywhere.
Azure is the world’s computer, with 60-plus datacenter regions, connected by over 175,000 miles of fiber and over 190 points of presence. This delivers faster access to cloud services, while addressing critical data residency requirements.
And we’re not stopping there. With Azure Arc, we’re bringing the power of Azure anywhere. Customers can now run mission critical data workloads in their own environments, while meeting latency and regulatory requirements.
With Azure for Operators, we’re partnering across the telecom industry to bring computing to the 5G edge through both private and public MEC.
We’re extending our infrastructure beyond our planet, bringing cloud computing to space. Azure Orbital is a fully managed ground station as a service for fast downlinking of data, and we are partnering broadly across the space industry.
A great example of a developer bringing together the power of Azure, Azure for Operators, and Azure Orbital is Ferrovial, which builds and manages some of the world’s largest, busiest airports and highways, from Dallas to Madrid:
App ubiquity
Now, let’s talk about apps, and in particular how they will be distributed in the future.
With Windows 11, we also announced the new Microsoft Store, which we rebuilt from the ground up to give developers maximum openness and flexibility. We want developers to bring their apps to our store, regardless of whether they were built as a native Windows app, a Progressive Web App, or any other app framework. Last year, we announced our waitlist for Win32 apps, and today, I was happy to share that the wait is over.
And we continue to innovate with the best app store economics. Developers have the choice to use our commerce engine with industry-leading revenue share, or they can bring their own commerce engine to their apps and keep 100% of the revenue.
And, remember, if you’re targeting Windows, you’re effectively targeting every device.
With Windows 365, we are bringing Azure computing to Windows computers, removing the boundaries between the device and the cloud, so your Windows applications can be accessed on any device.
We’re also further integrating Windows 365 and Windows 11 with new capabilities announced just last month. You can now switch between your local PC and your cloud PC with just one click.
The real magic happens when you accelerate Windows Cloud PCs with Azure Public MEC. We are testing these scenarios today, as I showed this morning:
What’s happening with Windows is also happening with Xbox. We are bringing Xbox everywhere with Xbox Cloud Gaming. As a game developer, you can publish to the Xbox store and your game can be accessible on every device.
In fact, Epic Games is doing exactly that with Fortnite. Fortnite is now available to stream with Xbox Cloud Gaming via an iOS device, Android phone or tablet, or Windows PC through the web browser for free. We’re starting with Fortnite, and we’ll look to add more games people love in the future. And one of the coolest things is that as a game developer, there’s no need to change your code.
You can break free of device restrictions that too often get in your way. You can get started today by building on Windows to take your apps everywhere, or Xbox to take your games everywhere.
Cloud-native
Today, all cloud-native app development starts by writing a microservice. Microservices help teams build and deliver and scale apps faster than traditional architectures.
Containers have emerged as the industry standard to go from code to cloud native and to scale from zero to infinity, as your load and business requires.
I’ve been super excited about the response to our preview of Azure Container Apps, a fully managed serverless container service for building and deploying modern apps at scale. It allows developers to create modern apps based on open standards. It’s all built on Kubernetes, so you can get the benefits of the open ecosystem, but no prior Kubernetes experience or knowledge is required. You can easily deploy containerized apps from Docker containers or source code repos, without having to worry about managing your own infrastructure. And your apps can scale in response to HTTP traffic or event triggers. And, today, we announced the general availability of Azure Container Apps.
And for those who do want to access the flexibility and the power of the full Kubernetes ecosystem, we also announced updates to Azure Kubernetes Service. It’s the fastest way to spin up managed Kubernetes clusters, so you can focus on developing your apps using the open source Kubernetes APIs and the community tools like Helm, Customize, and of course, GitHub Actions. You get the best DevSecOps. You also have managed Kubernetes available to you in more regions than any other cloud provider.
Another game changer is Azure confidential computing, which helps you build not just for scale, but also for confidentiality. It protects data when in use, as well as at rest and in transit, thanks to enclaves that encrypt and isolate code and data in a Zero Trust environment, where even Azure as a cloud provider doesn’t have access.
We are now the only cloud provider supporting the latest confidential capable CPUs from Intel and AMD, as well as confidential GPUs with Nvidia, and we are the only ones with a confidential code to cloud serverless offering. We are seeing fantastic applications built with Azure confidential computing across regulated industries, including healthcare.
For example, Beekeeper AI, a UCSF spinoff, used our tools to create a unique platform for clinical AI that allows developers to access datasets from multiple institutions where AI models are validated and tested, without moving or sharing the data or revealing the algorithm. This eliminates the need to de-identify or anonymize protected health information because the data is never visible or exposed in the first place.
Unified data
Now, let’s turn to data. When you step back, it’s really the most important architectural consideration for a developer. We are moving to a world where every app will be intelligent and adapt in real time. Analytics won’t just be a backhand process; it will become a critical part of the product experience.
Today, though, developers struggle with the silos that too often exist between databases, analytics, and governance. Data engineers, data scientists, and business analysts struggle with the complexity of making data integration, data warehousing, ML ops, and BI all come together. And data and privacy officers struggle to meet regulations when governance is not deeply integrated into the products they’re supposed to monitor. That’s why instead of thinking about databases, analytics, and governance as separate things, we are architecting these pieces together as part of one intelligent data platform.
Today, we announced the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform. There is no better example of why this matters than e-commerce. Take, for example, a shopping website that needs to create personalized experiences, including product recommendations:
This is about bringing together all of our data products into one architectural fabric so you, as developers, can shift your focus to your creativity, to what you can uniquely do, instead of spending time integrating data services and governance.
Models as platforms
We are seeing a paradigm shift of large AI models becoming powerful platforms themselves. In Azure, we have built the most powerful AI supercomputer in the cloud, and we’ve used it to train large, state of the art AI models.
But it’s not enough to talk about these models. It’s all about applying them, because the real power for developers comes when they can build upon and embed them in their applications. That’s why we are building models as platforms in Azure.
With our Azure Cognitive Services, you can embed these capabilities in your own applications. We are announcing updates this week at Build, including summarization for documents and conversations.
We’re also seeing customers in many industries use our Azure OpenAI service to do transformative things. CarMax, for example, has used the Azure OpenAI service to generate new marketing content based on thousands of customer reviews that would have otherwise taken someone years to summarize.
Similarly, inspired by GitHub Copilot, we envision a world where everyone, no matter their profession, can have a copilot for everything they do. In fact, I shared how we are working with Autodesk to fine tune the Azure OpenAI Codex model to add such an interface to 3D workflows in Maya:
We’re just beginning to explore what is possible in this new realm of human machine interface and no code development.
Hybrid AI
We just talked about the progress we’re making with our AI supercomputer, but if there’s one thing that I believe will surpass the AI supercomputer, it’s the supercomputing capacity that will be distributed across all the devices we carry and use throughout our lives.
In the last two years, we have created 50 times more GPU compute on Windows compared to the biggest AI supercomputer. And with the advent of NPUs, this will only grow.
We’re entering a world where every Windows computer will draw on the combined power of CPUs, GPUs, NPUs, and even a new co-processor, Azure compute.
In this hybrid cloud-to-edge world, you will be able to do large-scale training in the cloud, and do inference at the edge and have the fabric work as one.
We want developers to build cloud-native applications with these rich AI models where they can offload for local inference wherever NPUs are available. Whether that’s Android, iOS, or Windows, you should be able to optimize for the device and the local capability you have. It’s why we’ve built a powerful, cross-platform development pattern for building AI experiences that span the cloud and the edge.
This pattern allows developers to make late binding runtime decisions on whether to run inference on Azure or the local client. It can also dynamically shift the load between client and cloud. We are calling it the hybrid loop. We’re bringing this to you as a cross-platform capability through the Onnx Runtime and Azure ML, along with an AI toolchain to make heterogeneous targeting easy.
And to bring this to life, we are also announcing Project Volterra. It’s a Windows dev kit with an ARM CPU and NPU, and it includes native ARM64 Visual Studio and .NET support to provide the same fast, familiar, and highly productive experience that you’re used to:
Low-code/no-code
Now let’s talk about low-code, no-code. In a digital-first company, the developer workflow influences how the entire company works. Fusion teams of pro developers and domain experts integrate across all functions and disciplines, enabling closer collaboration. And we’re continuing to innovate to make this even easier.
Today, we announced Express design in Power Apps. I showed how you can upload a PDF or PowerPoint or even a hand-drawn sketch, and Express design will convert it into an app within seconds:
And we’re not stopping there. Today, I was very excited to announce Power Pages, which enables anyone to build modern, secure and responsive business websites fast. Power Pages offers a wide set of design, development, and security options, along with simple authoring and advanced admin options.
We’ve already seen people use Power Pages to do meaningful and much needed work, including Edgar Simoes in Portugal:
Collaborative apps
Now, let’s talk about the future of work and how we’re making apps more contextual and people centric so you can build a new class of collaborative applications.
It starts with the Microsoft Graph, which underlies Microsoft 365 and makes available to you information about people, their relationships, and all of their artifacts.
With Graph connectors, ISVs can extend their applications and have them be discovered as part of the user’s everyday tasks, whether they are writing an e-mail, meeting on Teams or doing a search.
Another way to create interactive experiences is by building live, actionable, Loop components using adaptive cards, like our partner Zoho has done. Users can make decisions and take action, like updating the status of a ticket, right in the flow of work, and updates are always live.
When you combine the Microsoft Graph with Microsoft Teams, you combine the data that describes how people work together with the place they work together. It’s incredibly powerful, and developers are extending their apps into Teams and embedding Teams in their apps.
At Build, we’re introducing new capabilities to help developers design rich, collaborative experiences. One of the updates I’m most excited about is Live Share in Microsoft Teams.
Working on apps in meetings should be multiplayer. With Live Share, apps can go beyond passive sharing so end users can actively co-watch, co-create, and co-edit content together, making live meetings truly interactive.
Our partners are reimagining meetings with Live Share. During my talk, I shared how Hexagon is using Live Share to reimagine engineering reviews, and Skillsoft is doing the same for interactive trainings:
Metaverse
Finally, let’s talk about the metaverse. In the last two years, we’ve seen how immersive experiences in gaming can help create community and connection. And we’ve also seen the proliferation of HoloLens scenarios across industries, transforming everything from telehealth to remote maintenance, to collaborative design and training.
We are building out a diverse set of platform capabilities to help developers build even richer applications that transcend both business and consumer scenarios and extend across all device platforms.
Our approach starts with Teams. With Front Row in Teams Rooms, we are bringing people face to face, placing remote attendees at eye level like they are in the same room. And with the latest AI in Teams Rooms experiences, we’re dissolving the walls between digital and physical participation so people can present a PowerPoint together as though they were in the same location, even when they’re apart.
Presence is the ultimate killer application. When you and I can remotely join the same meeting, but feel like we are in the same room to create and collaborate together, that’s finally within reach. I’ve been using Mesh for Teams internally, and I’m very excited. With personal expressive avatars, my digital twin looks and interacts like me. It represents me the way I want to be seen, even when I don’t have my camera on. I can interact with all of the artifacts in the meeting. Think about what that unlocks with product design as an example, or I can drop into a persistent immersive space for more serendipitous meet up. Think of this as the office watercooler. And we will have more to share as we open up these experiences in the coming months.
We’re building Microsoft Mesh as a platform service in Azure to enable you to build your own immersive worlds. You can build metaverse experiences on Mesh that are accessible from anywhere on any device, whether it’s HoloLens, VR headsets, phones, tablets, or PCs. We are taking this approach to ensure that developers are not bound to any one device platform.
The same paradigm shifts, the digitization of people, places, and things and their interactions, are also happening in the industrial metaverse. We’re helping companies optimize their operations and automate, simulate, and predict every business function and process, using IoT, digital twins, Mesh, and the HoloLens platform.
We see this in action today across every industry. Kawasaki Heavy Industries, for example, is using our platform to create an industrial metaverse solution that brings their distributed workforce together with their network of connected equipment:
***
Ultimately, everything we’re showing at Build this week is about maximizing the opportunity for every developer by providing the richest set of technologies and platforms that empower them to dream and build what is next, breaking free of arbitrary restrictions and removing friction, so they can reach every person and every corner of the planet.
Our Imagine Cup competition is a great example of the possibilities. For 20 years, students have shown what’s possible when they come together to apply technology to help solve the world’s challenges. More than two million participants have had awesome impact with our technology:
Our vision for developers and what they can build is ambitious. And I’ll end where I started: The questions to answer are not just what can we build, but what does the world need us to build? I’m excited about the impact this community of developers will have for every community and every corner of the globe.
