Windows 10, mixed reality and AI

Microsoft’s most important annual event is its Build conference, where it pulls together developers and other technology professionals and provides an update on where the company has been and where it’s going. Build provides the best opportunity to gain a glimpse of what technologies are most important to Microsoft, and where we can expect the company to invest its time and energy.

Build 2017 is happening on May 10-12, 2017 in Seattle, and Microsoft has made no secret of what it’s planning to cover in general. At its root, Build is organized for the company’s developer community and it’s all about giving them the tools they need to build solutions around Microsoft products and services. Therefore, much of Build’s content is advertised in advance, which allows the event’s primary constituencies to plan where to invest their time and attention.

At the same time, Microsoft often introduces new products and services at Build that take advantage of the media coverage that surrounds events like this. Therefore, the company is likely to sprinkle in a few surprises.

Build 2016 covered many topics, including the introduction of Windows 10 Anniversary Edition, HoloLens, new developer tools, and more. Another dominant theme involved artificial intelligence, bots, and machine learning, which is no surprise given the rise of those same technologies industry-wide.

Build 2017 looks to continue many of the same themes, and Microsoft will likely weave a narrative around its developer tools and its overarching “mobile-first, cloud-first” productivity solutions strategy. With that said, here are the areas where we expect Microsoft to focus, and where any surprises in terms of products or services will probably arrive.

Visual Studio 2017

There’s a tendency to focus on the unexpected things that a company might introduce at an event like Microsoft Build. Those are the things that make for exciting news, after all, not the boring sessions covering important but well-known topics that make up the bulk an event’s time.

However, Build is first and foremost where developers learn about Microsoft’s newest tools and technologies. Given that Visual Studio 2017 was just released in March 2017, we expect Microsoft to spend considerable time going over the intricacies of its newest development environment.

If you check out Microsoft’s Build 2017 developers page, you’ll note the company lists the following as the conference’s key points:

• Improvements that help you immediately engage your users with beautiful UI and natural inputs

• Team collaboration and connectedness to streamline and improve your development experience

• Services that make it easier to reach customers and learn what they want from your software

• Connected screens and experiences that make your end-to-end experience stickier and more engaging

• Mixed reality and creating deeply immersive experiences

Those five areas touch on a host of different technologies, but Visual Studio 2017 is the core set of tools that developers will use to leverage everything that Microsoft offers in building solutions. They also hint at other areas of focus, such as Windows Mixed Reality and Cortana-powered connected devices.

Windows 10

Windows 10 will be a central topic at Build 2017. Much of Microsoft’s larger strategy involves Windows 10 in one way or another, and so we can expect every aspect of the operating system to be covered heavily both in dedicated sessions and during the various keynotes. The following are some of the Windows 10-specific topics we’re likely to learn more about.