Welcome to Microsoft Build, the event that’s all about celebrating the developer community! The work you do has the power to transform entire industries and keep critical businesses and services running through innovative solutions and applications. I couldn’t be more honored to champion this entire dev community as you create the future.

Microsoft was founded as a developer company and almost 50 years later, nothing has changed in that regard. From our earliest products to the powerful developer tools available now through Visual Studio, GitHub, and Azure, we keep development teams top of mind. Today our full Microsoft Cloud stack brings an incredible platform for developers to use and build apps and solutions. I like to say, we’re the platform and you bring the innovation.

I take great inspiration from the innovative things you’re already building with our platform and tools. Development teams at companies big and small are choosing Microsoft to code and modernize. Gjensidige, the largest insurance company in Norway, is just one great example—they chose Azure and the combined capabilities of GitHub to modernize applications at enterprise scale. And I’m always amazed by the creativity and ingenuity that student developers are bringing to the platform.

The developer experience today

Whenever I talk to customers and my colleagues who code, a few themes emerge about what development teams need to be successful and how it’s evolved—especially in the last couple of years.

Security shifts left. The world’s reliance on technology continues to grow and so does the importance of security. With cyberattacks on the rise, we want to equip developers with the tools to shift security left, into code, so problems and concerns can be identified and fixed before a security breach even happens.

Collaboration, anywhere. In the age of hybrid work, it matters less where you sit and work. It could be in a home or traditional office setting or even in your local coffee shop. With dispersed development teams using different languages, devices, and networks, developers need to interact and connect with their teams—and have confidence they can deliver their best work from anywhere and that it will be secure.

Agility and productivity. With a hybrid work environment, teams need to stay agile and onboard new team members quickly and efficiently. Ideally, developers can focus on code instead of spending time setting up dev environments and managing infrastructure.

Today, I’m proud to share some news and updates designed to address these needs and improve the overall developer experience even further with our beloved tools and the Microsoft Cloud platform—all designed to help you quickly code and ship from anywhere with confidence.

Modern solutions and apps for hybrid teams

Through GitHub, we’re already delivering the developer environment of the future. GitHub Copilot is an AI programmer that empowers you to write code faster and with less work. Another way the development experience is changing is work moving to the cloud. GitHub Codespaces is a cloud development environment that works great for web app, cloud-native applications, APIs, or backend development. But what if you’re working on a different workload, like desktop, mobile, embedded, or game development? Or if you’re using a different version control system other than GitHub?

Enter Microsoft Dev Box. Microsoft Dev Box is a cloud solution that provides developers with self-service access to high-performance workstations preconfigured and ready-to-code for specific projects. Developers can get started coding quickly, without worrying about security, compliance, or cost control. It is tailored to meet the needs of today’s developers and integrated with Windows 365 so IT administrators can manage Dev Boxes and Cloud PCs together in Microsoft Intune and Microsoft Endpoint Manager. Microsoft Dev Box will soon be in preview.

With Microsoft Dev Box, leads can quickly create projects, configure images, and assign team members so they can get straight to code in seconds, from anywhere. No matter where in the world you’re working, the onboarding process for a new team has never been easier.

Start secure, stay secure

How we all work has forever changed after the last several years. Security is essential in a world of increasing cyberattacks, global uncertainty, and with distributed teams sitting in different locations using different platforms, languages, and devices.

As I mentioned, I’ve heard from many of my developer colleagues about the need to identify and fix problems before they result in a security breach. The push protection feature in GitHub Advanced Security proactively protects against secret leaks. For another layer of security and added peace of mind, today we’re announcing the general availability of GitHub OpenID Connect (OIDC) with Azure AD workload identity federation to minimize the need for storing and accessing secrets. With this integration, developers can manage all cloud resource access securely in Azure.

Increase your app resilience

As you build apps, you need to know the app can handle traffic and scale before it launches. We recently launched a preview of Azure Load Testing, an Azure service to help teams test and meet scale and performance goals with confidence. And since launch, we’ve seen customers of all sizes using the service to simulate high-scale load for apps running anywhere and catch performance bottlenecks early. We’ve heard you loud and clear about some additional features you’d like to see—testing private endpoints, using custom plugins, and more Azure regions. These features and more will be coming soon so be sure to visit Azure Updates frequently.

Start with Microsoft for an ideal developer experience

When you’re ready to take your next idea from code to the cloud, we want you to start with us. The session Rapidly code, test, and ship from secure cloud development environments is where you can learn more about these announcements and how we’re delivering a great developer experience to you—no matter where you’re working from or what you’re using to build. I also encourage you to view the session about Scaling cloud-native apps and accelerating app modernization to learn about what’s new to help you build cloud-native apps.

There’s no shortage of great content throughout the Microsoft Build experience this week; new innovations, technical demos, learning opportunities, and plenty of fun with our After Hours sessions. I encourage you to take it all in and keep sharing with us so we can deliver an even better experience for you.

On behalf of the Azure team here at Microsoft, thanks for inspiring us with what you build.

Learn more about Azure at Microsoft Build

• Deepen your skills with hand-picked learning modules, documentation, and community content.
• Watch all the sessions you loved, or catch up on any you missed after the event with Build On-Demand.
• Continue learning! Join Microsoft experts through live technical content and events to keep your learning going post-Microsoft Build.
• Read the latest on how Azure powers your app innovation and modernization with the choice of control and productivity you need to deploy apps at scale. 
• Read how you can Innovate faster and achieve greater agility with the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform and turn your data into decisions.   

Azure. Invent with purpose.