We reflect on our time at the Microsoft Build conference and highlight our top three product takeaways.
While sitting at the Microsoft Build conference in Seattle, I gained clarity on Microsoft’s product goals for the future.
If you’re not aware, Build is the Microsoft Conference that highlights Microsoft product development and priorities for their platforms in the future.
Here are my three takeaways from the conference:
Cloud is Still King
Let’s face it, while Microsoft continues to make on-prem server software, their real driving force is everything Cloud.
Azure becomes more and more of a profit center for Microsoft, and from a development perspective, it’s the center of the universe for Microsoft.
Microsoft is making great strides on promoting the infrastructure side of Azure (Kubernetes support, Virtual Machine support, and more), leveraging the services that Azure provides (machine learning, cognitive services), and proving development tools and processes to run your code in Azure (visual studio, DevOps).
The Microsoft Power Platform
If you are familiar with Microsoft, you’re probably very familiar with PowerApps and Flow.
This year at Build, the power platform (the trinity of PowerApps, Flow, and PowerBI) received a lot of attention, not just in the keynote, but also in the number of sessions around it.
When I first started writing about Microsoft, I saw the potential around the products on the platform. Over time, Microsoft only increases its value.
With Satya Nadella bringing the platform to the forefront in his keynote, this sets the stage for more robust, fully featured products in the near to long future.
Microsoft Teams
Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) continues to make strides in functionality, and for Microsoft the focus has started to sharpen to Microsoft Teams.
With the addition of new support for customization using the SharePoint framework (SPFx), Teams becomes a top tier jewel in the Microsoft 365 crown. I can foresee this product taking the place of tools like Outlook and to a greater extent, SharePoint.
While Teams isn’t ready to replace this today, the ability to create custom applications that can live across the Microsoft 365 ecosystem helps drive Teams faster than ever before.
Finally
This list, by far, is not an exhaustive look at everything presented at Microsoft Build. Areas like Dynamics 365 and Xbox also received plenty of love here. However, from my perspective, these are Microsoft’s focus areas for the next year and beyond.
About the Author
Jo Karnes is a National SharePoint Architect with the Enterprise Collaboration team. With more than 15 years of experience working with Microsoft technologies, Jo not only brings a wealth of knowledge in Microsoft SharePoint but also in enabling technologies that allow SharePoint to integrate and perform well.