The way organizations build software has changed dramatically. The software development lifecycle is morphing from a series of independent steps – gather requirements, write code, test code, build, fix, build, and ultimately deploy to production — into a series of interconnected, continuous loops that bring all stakeholders in from beginning to end.
Why has this happened? Agile development and DevOps have given organizations the ability to change software literally on the fly to take advantage of changing market conditions, or simply to stay a step ahead of the competition. New architectures such as containers and microservices give organizations a way to make changes to their business-critical applications without having to retest a large, monolithic application each time a change is made, making time-to-market shorter and leaving less room for error.
Another huge shift has been the cloud and mobile application consumption. Organizations are taking advantage of better security, lower IT infrastructure costs and the proliferation of software services in the cloud to create secure, componentized applications. Meanwhile, the “consumerization” of apps has raised the bar for all development, as users demand great experiences from high-performance, data-driven applications.
In discussing the March release of Microsoft’s IDE, Visual Studio 2017, with director of program management for Visual Studio and .NET John Montgomery, he described software development today as “a team sport.” The tooling Microsoft and its partners offer for individual developers has been enhanced in this release, but Montgomery made a point to say that the IDE can do a lot for developers working in teams – especially those teams using modern agile techniques and DevOps workflows.
Visual Studio 2017 embraces database DevOps with the ability to configure a CI/CD pipeline directly from within the IDE, Montgomery. Integrations with software created by Microsoft’s partners extend the robustness and ease of use of the offerings.
Welcome to Build 2017. If you’re at the conference, take the time to speak with Microsoft’s partners. If you’re not here, we hope you enjoy this look at Microsoft’s developer ecosystem and the solutions that have come to market.
Caphyon: Desktop Apps in The Windows Store
Flexera: Ensure Safe, Secure Software Products
GrapeCity Builds on Mobile Leadership
LEADTOOLS: The Ultimate Imaging Development Multitool
OpsHub Enables Rich Collaboration
Redgate Leads Database DevOps
Sauce Labs: Automate Testing with Confidence
Syncfusion Eases Mobile Development
Tasktop Enables Agile and DevOps
And more Microsoft Build Partners
