Build 2017: The IT Pro Perspective

This week is Microsoft's Build 2017 developer centric conference which is being held from 10 to 12 May in Seattle, Washington.

The event, which is the venue used by the Redmond company to provide developers a look into their long range plans and new/updated tools, is not usually thought of as an IT Pro heavy show. However, if you dive into some of the sessions in the schedule there are a few tidbits that will be of interest to IT Pros and System Admins.

Note: The official Build 2017 app was released last week for Windows 10 PC, Mobile, plus iOS and Android platforms. This app has teh Build 2017 Sessions Catalog so you can dive in and start looking for key sessions as well.

Build will kick off Day One with a keynote that is expected to be hosted by Scott Guthrie, he is Executive Vice President for Cloud and Enterprise at Microsoft, so that means this keynote will be all about new and updated offerings in the companies cloud based services. In addition, that also means we will likely hear about DevOps during this initial keynote.

A quick review of the sessions catalog shows several DevOps sessions are scheduled throughout Build including a Q&A Panel to talk about Microsoft's migration to their One Engineering System for 65,000 employees using Visual Studio Team Services and Microsoft Azure.

I then did a search for the term IT Pro and that results in a long list of sessions that could be of interest around the various cloud services offered by Microsoft Azure.

Of course, IT Pros and System Admins are also consumers and usually what lands in the consumer market can sometimes make its way into the enterprise environment.

Last week I wrote over on the SuperSite: Windows about some of those areas including:

-- Mixed Reality. The new Head Mounted Devices from several Microsoft Partners are due this coming holiday season and there are already a handful of sessions listed in the catalog. The Windows 10 Creators Update already has the tools built into the OS to support mixed reality so all that is needed is the hardware and more apps.

-- Microsoft Design Language. This is the new way to build apps and user interface in Windows 10 and there is at least one session that indicates more to follow after the keynote on the 11th of May.

-- Cortana Skills. This package of tools was expected to be released already but has not been made public yet. It looks like there will be a few sessions on using these tools to extend Cortana's capabilities on all platforms. This could also extend to Cortana through other interfaces like the Harmon Kardon speaker tease we saw last fall.

-- Progressive Web Apps. Could these type of apps replace what we know as many apps these days and just give you a framework around a web based service with all the bells and whistles of a Windows Store app? There are also sessions scheduled to talk about Microsoft Edge and what is new for the web and web apps.

-- Bots. There are a lot of bot related sessions ranging from using them on Bing.com and Skype plus the Artifical Tools Microsoft has available to help these bots learn.

I expect many of these areas to be addressed during the Day Two keynote on Thursday which is normally focused on Windows and consumer services.

But, wait...there's probably more so be sure to follow me on Twitter and Google+.

----------------------------------

Looking for an awesome, no-nonsense technical conference for IT Pros, Devs, and Devops? Check out IT/Dev Connections!