This May, Microsoft announces exciting stuff in Build 2022. It’s great to see MS renaissance momentum keeps building up. What is the future hold this Build betting on?
A cloud company
Even though Microsoft(MS) Build has always been an event for developers, it also provides a peek at many things. From what MS has been busying with. To where MS betting the industry is going. Fro example MS renaissance began in Build 2017 when Azure was mentioned 24 times in the keynote, whereas only 12 for Windows. MS is now more an Azure/cloud-first company than a “Windows company” obviously. This Build 2022, there may be 2 other bets shaping the future.
“Apps, Apps, Apps”
MS is unifying its app empire by creating more & better “flow” for web apps, rich desktop apps on Windows & Linux, and Android mobile apps. To be the creator platform, MS has to find a way to recover from its “greatest mistake”: missing the smartphone revolution. GitHub is its front door strategy by serving 31M developers to build what 8B people need. By moving the developer workflow to “cloud-native”, the development to deployment velocity may be accelerated significantly. From there, MS can lock more creators in.
- GitHub Copilot, an AI peer-programmer, Intelligent Data Platform, etc. to augment developers at the scale.
- GitHub Codespaces & MS Dev Box provide a powerful & scalable cloud development environment on demand.
- Microsoft Store & Ads to distribute & monetize apps.
Apple has a head start to unify the rich apps from iPad, macOS to iOS from 2020. Instead of keep fighting the losing smartphone battle, MS is smart to attack from its high ground. MS, good strategy, let’s see how well you execute.
Another stab on x86
MS has been trying to crack Windows on ARM since 2011 with Windows RT. The timing was never on its side, but this time may be different. In 2020, Apple has started a successful phase change to redefine consumer computing with M1 heterogeneous brains. Now, MS is catching up with the Open Hardware Ecosystem & Project Volterra. It’s been a nice surprise that M1 machines build SW significantly faster than Intel-inside computers. I can’t wait to see how faster Project Volterra with native ARM64 Virtual Studio can build.
More importantly, MS also opens the windows for Heterogeneous Computing across CPU, GPU & ML accelerators. For now, x86 may still have advantages over the existing high-performance computing workflows at expense of power. But, x86 has missed the window to capture the new computation with increasing AI magics already. Even it’ll be fine for a longer time to keep computing the existing workflows, the new growth is mostly computed by ARM & friends going forward.
Furthermore, MS Hybrid Loop is a great vision. As a developer, I’ll be more productive when I can easily switch between Local & Cloud development environments to work on any device convenient & from anywhere. Smart companies will want to pay to keep the option of runtime binding open. It’s not only more flexible & scalable to shop around the computation & storage commodities. It’s also easier to course correct in the uncertainty world.
Full Disclosure
The opinions stated here are my own, not those of my company. They are mostly extrapolations from public information. I don’t have insider knowledge of those companies, nor a whatever expert.
