Seattle – May 10th 2017 – Washington Convention Center – Satya Nadella
Satya Nadella kicks off the Build 2017 keynote: the Microsoft developer conference. The starts with a slide of years ago where Windows NT was introduced including connectors to every kind of applications. It was all about technology. In 1992 the total amount of internet traffic was 100 Gb per day. And now we have per second 17.5 million of that amount. 90% of all the data is generated in the last two years. By 2020 there is estimated that there will be 25 billion connected devices. Satya mentioned that there is a big opportunity for developers to make impact for the society. It is also about responsibility. The choices that developers make will have impact. It is in the foundation. It is not just to solve problems with technology. Satya said that the believes that it is up to developers to ensure that some scenario will not come through. It is about meaning and purpose. What are the practical ways we can make progress? Satya mentioned that it is about some design principles and choices to create timeless value:
- Empower people
- Inclusive design
- Build trust in technology
These principles grounds Microsoft in her mission. Microsoft started as a dev tool company and she want to empower developers. Developers could make great solutions with the tools offered by Microsoft. “That is what we should celebrate” (Nadella). The opportunity is amazing:
- 500 million Windows 10 devices
- 100 million commercial Office 365 users
- More than 140 million users that uses Cortana
- 12 million organizations in Azure Active Directory
- More than 90% of the Fortune 500 are using Microsoft Cloud
The above numbers are on a slide where “Mobile-First, Cloud-First” is in the center. Developers are creating apps. The feedback is very important between the apps that are build and the platform. Last year Microsoft was talking about conversations as platform. It is about agents & bots, natural & conversational user interfaces, mixed reality, artificial intelligence, advanced analytics & workloads and Internet of Things. Again: “Mobile-First, Cloud-First” is in the center. Microsoft workflows and machine learning is in the core of applications. That is a big change how we could use applications and data. Satya mentioned: “We are moving from what is today a Mobile-First, Cloud-First world to a new world that is going to made up from an Intelligent Cloud and an Intelligent Edge”.
Build 2017 is all about this shift that will happen. There are three fundamental characteristics about this new application pattern and world view:
- Multi-device
- Artificial intelligence
- Serverless
The Intelligent Cloud and Intelligent Edge are in the center of this new world view. For example: your personal assistant is available on very device. Not just your smartphone or any other specific hardware device. It is about the user experience. And not only about input. The platform should be powerful enough to support AI. It is about continuous development and continuous deployment. More things are distributed. It is not static. So one application on one virtual machine is not the real world any more. Serverless is future of the core of distributed computing. Intelligent Cloud and Intelligent Edge are important for the future developments of Office 365, Windows and Azure.
Microsoft announced a new capability of Azure: Azure IoT Edge. This is done in a demo. Azure IoT Edge runs on Windows and Linux. It enables cloud functionality to be exported to f.e. an Azure IoT Event Hub. It even runs on devices smaller than a Raspberry PI.
Satya takes it to the extreme in the next part of the keynote. He starts with a story about the search that is done and available on the internet. It would be great to connect all the available information and use it for example for workplace safety. Workplace safety in a factory, healthcare, etc. Microsoft made a demo for this scenario with Azure IoT Edge.
The next person on stage is Andrea Carl, Director Commercial Communications at Microsoft. She will show a demo with a combination of Microsoft technology: AzureStack, Azure, Cognitive Services and commodity cameras. This is needed for the workplace safety demo. People and object recognition is available in real time. The solution could detect more than 27 million objects (or people) per second.
End user computing
Satya moves on to end user computing. Bill Buxton from Microsoft Research is mentioned. It is about the social complexity of our devices. To make it less complex you need to have a new architecture. From notification to agents to task completion. It starts with Office 365. In Office 365 workloads like Exchange, SharePoint and Skype are migrated to the cloud. But beneath it there is much more. It is about the data. The people and the relationship with other people is the first class thing in the cloud. The documents, the relationships, the tasks, etc. are the basic elements of Microsoft Graph. With Microsoft Graph you will have a view on people, relationships and activities. All with build in security functions. Azure Active Directory is the fundament for this. Intelligent meetings is an example for Microsoft Graph. A meeting is not a single event. It is about the preparations, relationships, etc. Microsoft gives a demo for Office 365 and Microsoft Graph to show the vision of productivity by Microsoft. Intelligent meetings are central in this demo. The new Harman Kardon invoke speaker with build in Cortana is part of the demo. Microsoft Teams is also part of the demo. The new Microsoft chat based collaboration platform in Office 365.
This is the end of the keynote done by Satya Nadella. The next part of the keynote is done by Scott Guthrie (Executive Vice President Cloud & Enterprise).
Cloud & Enterprise keynote
Scott is going to talk about the tools and platforms that are available for developers. IoT, AI, micro services and serverless computing are trends. There are a lot of tools available but it could be very overwhelming. The business is expecting a lot from developers. New digital experiences should be delivered by developers. All to drive new revenue streams. Security is also an important item. Azure is built for those purposes and to give developers a rich development platform. The core values of Azure are: innovation, trust and results. Not only the developers tools but also the management tools are based on those core values. A demo follows about Azure and the integration with Visual Studio. In this demo Azure Cloud Shell is announced as part of the Azure portal. With this a real Bash shell is available in Azure. PowerShell is following soon. Azure CLI is also announced. In the demo the Azure Mobile App for iOS and Android is announced. With this app you could manage Azure from a mobile device. The cloud shell is also available in the mobile app. Visual Studio for Mac is another announcement in the demo. It is general available today.
At Build 2017 the new Azure Database Migration Service is announced. With this services it is possible to do an automated migration of on-premises (SQL Server or Oracle) database to Azure SQL Server database. This is done without any code changes or changes in the database. DocuSign used this service to migrate databases to Azure. Scott announced also the availability of two new database types – Azure Services – on Azure: MySQL as a Service and PostgreSQL as a Service (all GA today). Right after this announcement Scott do another announcement: Azure Cosmos DB. This is the first globally distributed, multi-model database service. It is also available today.
The next part is about application modernization when bringing application to the cloud. Containers like Docker and Azure Service Fabric (micro service based architecture) are part of those modernization journey. In Visual Studio 2017 Docker support is integrated. Microsoft point out that containers and micro services are not only available for new application but it is also available to add those technology to existing .NET applications to make them “cloud based”. You can containerize those application. Visual Studio 2017 will help you with such an application migration. The following container services are available in Azure: Kubernetes, Mesos DC/OS, Docker Swarm. Microsoft announced Visual Studio 2017 serverless computing support through tool addition: Visual Studio 2017 support for Azure Functions and Logic Apps and Azure Application Insights for Azure Functions.
Scott talks about AzureStack in next part of the keynote. AzureStack will become available soon. AzureStack could be used for scenarios where Azure in not available: f.e. because there is no internet connection or when an organization doesn’t want to use a public cloud service. At this moment there are 38 Azure regions in the world. Julia White is showing a demo about AzureStack.
Artificial Intelligence
Harry Shum starts the Artificial Intelligence part of the keynote. Harry mentioned the Intelligent Edge and Intelligent Cloud vision of Microsoft. Central here is Artificial Intelligence (AI). He will go further on this topic in this part of the keynote. AI is becoming more reality. A few years ago Microsoft launched Microsoft Cognitive Services. AI is now promoted to the Build keynote. AI is possible because:
• Big compute: a lot of computing power in the cloud
• Powerful algorithms: amazing progress in deep learning
• Massive data: there is enough data available now days
Microsoft is offering the Microsoft Cloud, like Azure to have unlimited compute power. Microsoft Research is providing algorithms that are available for all Microsoft customers. Microsoft Graph give user access to their data. This vision of Microsoft is: “Bringing AI to every developer”. Harry mentioned that Microsoft is a platform company and that developers are in the center. Microsoft brings AI to the developers in different ways. For example through Cognitive Services. Microsoft Cognitive Services elements: vision, language, speech, search and knowledge. More than half a million developers are using Cognitive Services. There are total 29 API’s available in Cognitive Services. Harry announced deeper customized services within Cognitive Services through REST API’s without the need of designing complex models.
Satya was talking at the Build keynote last year, about Conversation as a Platform. It represents the new user interface. It’s a paradigm switch. Just like the beginning of Microsoft as a company where the GUI was introduced. With Conversational AI the interface is also changed. A Conversational AI – f.e. custom vision – demo from Cornelia Carapcea will follow in the keynote. She announced Adaptive Cards. Adaptive Cards is already on Github. With Adaptive Cards you get one framework with multiple canvases. You can use the same JSON script on different canvases like Teams and Skype. Harry mentioned the tools that are available today: the new Cognitive Services, an updated Bot Framework and Azure Batch AI Training.
Microsoft redefines also homes with AI. A demo will follow about Microsoft PowerPoint and AI. Microsoft announced the presentation translator build in PowerPoint. This is a real time translation feature. The PowerPoint translation add-in is bi-directional and supports 60 languages. Microsoft announced that Intel and HPE are delivering Cortana enabled devices. Harman Kardon was already doing that.
Organizations could redefine their business with tools like Microsoft Graph and the availability of the data that organizations have now days. When you combine external data with organizational data you could build powerful applications. A Microsoft Graph demo follows: Microsoft Teams will use AI with external data to see if we worked before with a new executive. Sentiment analysis is built in. Harry wraps up: disrupt or be disrupted: industry verticals will change and also horizontal business processes through data and AI. “The best way to predict the future is to invent it”, Alan Kay.