Build // Day 2 – Server, Azure, Visual Studio, Ballmer.

Posted Thursday, September 15, 2011 at 4:01 am by Jason Cartwright

It’s day 2 of Microsoft’s Build Conference and today the focus turns onto Server, Azure and Visual Studio. The first demo of the day showed how a game ‘Tankster’ could write data back to an Azure backend, so PC and Mobile gamers can play against each other cross platform.

Developers we also treated to a number of announcements regarding Visual Studio 2011, demo’d by Scott Guthrie.

• .Net 4.5
• New MVC4 template
• jquery mobile will be part of Visual Studio 2011
• Web sockets
• TFS on Azure

Windows 8 will use a synchronised password vault for single sign-on. Leveraging the SkyDrive syncing discussed yesterday, signing into a service or website on one machine is then associated with your LiveID. Every subsequent machine you log into using that same LiveID will also bring with it the passwords stored in the secure Password Vault.

Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer made an appearance to discuss Microsoft’s future. Ballmer re-iterated that they are “all-in” with the cloud. Every part of Microsoft is looking at how to leverage Cloud services as a key fundamental of their business model. Ballmer says there has never been a better time to be a developer and that there is no other product that there is nothing that has the install base of Windows.

During his presentation Ballmer said Microsoft are in the process of pivoting the business to move with the evolving needs of users and business. From the slides below, you can see the products and services that Microsoft is focusing on.

With consumers goodies taken care of yesterday, today was very much focused on developers, that now wraps up the keynotes for the Build conference. There is still a couple of days of sessions for Build attendees to sink there teeth into. Yesterday created just as many questions as it answered, so expect more information to be release on Windows 8 as we move closer to its release.