Lately, Microsoft product news has focused things being retired: Internet Explorer, Windows 10X, and the earlier, non-Chromium version of Edge. We can nevertheless hope to see new products, features, and technologies unveiled at this year’s Microsoft Build developer conference.
As with every year, the conference will provide plenty of tech training opportunities. But unlike in the days of in-person tech conferences, you can skip the four-figure attendee fee and watch everything for free online.
The show kicks off on Tuesday, May 25 with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s keynote at 8 a.m. PT/11 a.m. PT. Tune in then at the Microsoft Build news site or by signing up as an attendee on the Build Registration page.
Just as we do for all these big tech trade shows, we analysts can often divine important topics based on the titles of scheduled sessions. Nadella, for example, will “dive into our work to build Developer Velocity, deliver intelligent cloud-native apps, and assist in productivity in the hybrid workplace.” Naturally, Microsoft isn’t going to just give away any big announcements in the agenda description, so a wildcard or two is always possible.
The agenda doesn’t mention the Surface, but announcements there usually get their own dedicated events. Microsoft also has its partner-focused Inspire trade show coming up on July 14-15. At March’s IT pro-focused Ignite, the company announced its Cloud for Retail offering. So what can we expect to see? Read on for our predictions.
Cloud, Cloud, and More Cloud
Microsoft’s cloud and software-as-a-service (Saas) offerings center on Azure, a set of intelligent cloud services for developers to use in their apps. You get a hint of how central this theme is to Build 2021 from session titles like “Build cloud-native applications that run anywhere,” “Build differentiated SaaS apps with the Microsoft Cloud,” “Harness the power of data in your applications with Azure,” and “Securely managing sensitive data in the cloud.”
In fact, no fewer than 101 sessions use the word cloud in their title or description. We can also expect to hear more about the hybrid cloud, a technology that uses off- and onsite computing power. Microsoft’s early lead in this technology was why it beat out Amazon for the Pentagon’s $10 billion Jedi cloud computing contract.
Imagine Cup
As in years past, Build will feature the Imagine Cup, in which young coders compete for the best product idea. Past competitors in this “Olympics of technology” ranged from new video games to medical devices. Prophetically, a 2019 winner presented a “pollution mask for Asthmatic and other chronic respiratory patients.” Another clever winner used fixed cameras to help low-vision people find lost items using an iPhone app.
Speaking of learning to code, expect to hear about low- and no-code solutions for developing applications in sessions like “Low-code – The unlikely Developer superpower.”
What About Windows? Sun Valley? Fluent?
Two sessions address Windows directly: “What’s new for Windows desktop application development,” and “What’s new in Windows 10 for ALL developers,” which is better than what we’ve gotten in some recent Builds.
A new look for Windows codenamed Sun Valley has been the talk of the Microsoft pundits over the past year. The visual UI refresh is expected to include rounded window corners and floating system dialogs, and a more consistent Fluent look, as well as new fonts and icons.
We could get a better look at these changes and info on its release timeframe during Build 2021. Will it arrive this year? Or will it be slip-streamed in between feature updates the way the News and Interests widget was? We may also learn more about plans to integrate Windows 10X capabilities within the main Windows 10 versions.
Will Windows get a new version name? At its release, Microsoft pronounced Windows 10 to be the last version number of the OS, with SaaS-style updates, and it’s lived up to that so far. But maybe with Apple making the leap from OS X to macOS, Microsoft will want to keep up.
We should expect to hear more about the Fluent Design System, which is far more than an interface design system: It’s a set of frameworks that can be used to build connected apps not only for Windows, but also for Android, iOS, macOS, and the web. Once the design is created, developers can code it up using JavaScript and Fluent React.
Teams
Microsoft’s answer to Slack, Google Meet/Workspace, and Zoom had a good run during the pandemic, rising from 20 million users to 145 million. This will get a company to invest in and improve a product, and Microsoft has been adding new functionality to Teams all the while, including meeting recaps, a smart display, polls, live transcripts, an appointment scheduler, virtual meeting rooms, and AI-powered background noise removal, plus integration with its new Viva employee experience.
Many Build sessions focus on how to build apps that integrate with Teams, use Teams data, or build bots for the communication tool. We’ll also hear more about the Microsoft Graph and using that store of corporate data in Teams. But it’s worth mentioning that not a single session mentions the venerable Skype communication app, which Redmond acquired 10 years ago.
Mobile Integration and Cross Platform
Since the demise of Microsoft’s mobile OS, the company’s strategy has been to produce Android and iOS apps. Visual Studio has long enabled developers to build cross-platform apps that run on Android and iOS as well as Windows. And the company has long been offering tools for converting Android and iOS apps into UWP apps, though none of that has taken off.
With a Linux system now part of Windows 10, will Microsoft someday offer the ability to run Android apps (especially since Android is essentially Linux underneath)? Incidentally, we’ll definitely hear more about WSL—the Windows Subsystem for Linux, either way.
Office
With the keynote description’s use of the word “productivity,” we can surely expect to hear plenty about Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365). In fact, all of the sessions on the schedule that concern Microsoft 365 tie in with other themes of the conference: the cloud, Azure, and Microsoft Graph. I expect, however, well be treated to demos of what this technology means in terms of new capabilities in Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and the rest.
AR, MR, VR, and XR Are Still Things
A tweet by Aryzon, which makes headsets, indicates that coding (or rather programming without code) for augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR), virtual reality (VR), and Extended Reality (XR—which encompasses all the preceding) will happen at this year’s Build.
What about HoloLens? Only one session in the conference schedule only mentions HoloLens 2, but it’s a pretty cool sounding one: “Connect IoT data to HoloLens 2 with Azure Digital Twins and Unity.” Digital twins are a fascinating IoT concept that allows software to model results based on digital versions of real-world objects, in this case windmills for power generation.
Both Edges
We’re likely to hear more about both edge computing—in which AI is done on local hardware—as well as about the Microsoft Edge web browser. The software company has been busy improving the latter, to the point that it now includes most of my desiderata from earlier versions—fully customizable toolbar buttons; a share icon; vertical tabs; a password manager; and a tool for capturing, marking up, and sharing web content.
