Microsoft announced a great deal at the 2015 Build developer conference, from the new cross-platform Visual Studio Code IDE, to news on Azure, Windows 10, Cortana, and its next-generation browser. Build isn’t all about Microsoft itself, though, as the companies making up the third-party developer-tooling ecosystem around Microsoft products also rolled out updates, new features and services of their own.
(Related: Microsoft introduces free cross-platform Visual Studio Code IDE at Build)
Xamarin announces new mobile and wearable development capabilities
Enterprise mobile development tool provider Xamarin announced expanded Visual Studio support for Android, iOS and Windows developers for Apple Watch app development. The company is also extending its existing SDK support to Android Wear and Microsoft Band application development.
Xamarin also took the opportunity at Build to announce the general availability of Xamarin.Forms support for Windows 8, and a private beta for Windows 10 universal apps.
SOASTA releases Continuous Integration tool for Visual Studio Online
Performance analytics company SOASTA has unveiled a new Continuous Integration solution, extending its CloudTest and TouchTest functional testing tools to Visual Studio Online development.
The integration gives Visual Studio Online developers access to the company’s load and performance testing tools within the Continuous Integration process for Web and mobile applications. The CI tooling integration also enables the use of end-to-end performance analytics.
ProfitBricks launches .NET SDK for IaaS API
Coinciding with Build, cloud infrastructure provider ProfitBricks launched a software development kit for the .NET library.
The SDK gives developers access to the all functionality found in the company’s Infrastructure-as-a-Service SOAP API, and expands ProfitBricks’ support for developers who work with Microsoft technology. The .NET SDK joins ProfitBricks’ recently released Node.js and Ruby SDKs integrated with the company’s REST API.
Mesosphere announces beta availability of DCOS on Azure
The Mesosphere Datacenter Operating System (DCOS), which announced the launch of its public beta during Build, is now available on the Microsoft Azure cloud-computing platform.
During the Build keynote, Azure CTO Mark Russinovich demonstrated a pre-configured 200-node cluster that can launch 2,000 Docker containers in real time on Mesosphere running Apache Marathon and Apache Spark. The public beta is also available on Amazon Web Services.
Unity announces Microsoft HoloLens support
Unity Technologies announced full support for the Microsoft HoloLens platform at Build.
According to the Microsoft and Unity, they are collaborating to create customized tools, workflows and optimizations built on top of Unity’s ability to create 3D and 2D experiences for the HoloLens holographic computing platform. Unity will offer developers features such as spatial mapping, gaze, gesture and voice control, along with the ability to anchor holographic objects to specific locations in the real world.
The Unity tools for Microsoft HoloLens will be available for Unity Pro and Unity Personal Edition users at no additional cost.
Qt announces Windows 10 support
Developers of the Qt application framework have confirmed Windows 10 compatibility with existing Qt applications as of Qt 5.5 and subsequent releases.
Qt Windows 10 support includes Win32 and WinRT applications, with portability between the two APIs. The framework will also support Visual Studio 2015 and its forthcoming compiler, along with full support for the Windows 10 SDK.
IncrediBuild announces expanded Azure support
Continuous Delivery software provider IncrediBuild debuted expanded support for Microsoft Azure at Build. According to the company, developers can leverage IncrediBuild in the Azure cloud platform to accelerate software builds with automation throughout testing, rendering and cloud deployment to increase developer productivity by up to 5x.
Equilibrium announces MediaRich Server 4.0 on Azure Marketplace
Enterprise content-management company Equilibrium announced the latest version of its media server, MediaRich 4.0, will be available on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace. The latest version of the content-tracking server, which also serves as an automation engine, features cache management that enables Web imaging for custom .NET, C#, COM, Java and Web service applications for Web, mobile, .NET and content infrastructure developers.
