Top 10 most important announcements of Microsoft in 2015

Good afternoon, dear readers!

We celebrate the new 2015 year and remember the main announcements that Microsoft has shared over the past year.
Under the cut, you will find the technological announcements of the outgoing year. We are summing up and want to share with you the most striking of them.

')

1. Windows 10

In July 2015, sales of Windows 10 for computers began worldwide.
A few months after the release of Microsoft's new operating system, the number of devices with a dozen installed approached 110 million. You can also upgrade to the new version of the operating system by reference .

It's no secret that Windows 10 has the ability to be installed on various devices compared to previous versions of Microsoft OS. These devices include personal computers, laptops, tablets, as well as smartphones, game consoles, various boards and Internet of Things devices. And also represents a single platform for the development of universal applications that can work on the above devices.

The Windows 10 Mobile operating system became available with the release of the new Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL phones, and is still available only to owners of new smartphones, however, the release of the new operating system for older Lumia devices is already planned in 2016.

Also this year, the company announced one of the versions of the Windows 10 IoT operating system, namely Windows 10 IoT Core for microcontrollers, microcomputers, and other similar devices.

2. Visual Studio 2015 Release

The Visual Studio tool received as many as two updates in passing 2015 - a new version of the long-awaited tool first came out, and then the first major update Visual Studio Update 1 became available to everyone, which brought a number of important updates that you can read about in our blog . There was enough news for the whole family of tools: this is how TFS Update 1 was released, the online service Visual Studio Team Services (formerly Visual Studio Online) was updated, developers had the opportunity to extend the capabilities of all VS tools using Visual Studio Marketplace , and Microsoft announced new A free support program for Dev Essentials developers.

3. Visual Studio Code in Open Source

After the release of the Microsoft code editor, developers were able to use the Visual Studio family tool on Linux, OS X, and Windows. However, this year the company went further and announced that now Visual Studio Code is an open source project and anyone can take advantage of this; it’s enough to go to the GitHub repository from the VS Code official page : https://github.com/Microsoft / vscode /

4. Office 2016 release

In September 2015, a new version of Office 2016 was officially released, available for Windows, OS X, Android and iOS users. The changes did not affect the interface of the new tool, but influenced the ability of users to work together on one document, as well as on the application deployment models in the corporate environment.

By the way, for developers, there is an opportunity to contribute to an increase in the user's productivity during his daily work, namely with the help of office contextual applications (Office Add-Ins). This year we have devoted an entire column to the Office development area in our blog, which you can find on the #officeplatform hashtag

5. .NET open source

Despite the fact that the news belongs to 2014, in 2015 there was also one important event for the new “open” history of .NET. Previously, the company posted the .NET Core libraries, but it was this year that Microsoft opened the source code for CoreCLR, a key component of .NET Core that is responsible for various features, including compiling into native code.

6. New Microsoft Edge Browser

One of the new Build 2015 was the new browser from Microsoft, which is available to Windows 10 users. Not so long ago, at the JSConf US Last Call conference (Florida, USA), the company announced the opening of the source code of the key components of the Chakra JavaScript engine used by Microsoft Edge . The source code will be available on GitHub as a ChakraCore project.

7. Microsoft Azure

The infrastructure of the Azure cloud platform has grown over the year to 28 large data centers distributed throughout the world. This is twice as many as the other two global public cloud vendors combined.

In addition to the growth of infrastructure, the number of useful services, functions and toolkits for developers and IT professionals available in Azure is growing. Over the past 12 months, over 500 new services and functions have become available to cloud service users.

8. RedHat and Microsoft partnership

The next announcement came to our top not by chance. Such decisions made at the business level, very often lead to technological changes, which certainly affect the developers and IT specialists.

For example, partnerships between Microsoft and Red Hat in the field of cloud technologies and the promotion of the .NET platform will lead to full support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, etc. in Microsoft Azure, and images of virtual machines with Red Hat products can be downloaded through the Azure Marketplace catalog.

9. Devices

This year, the company not only updated its line of branded devices - from the personal assistant of Microsoft Band 2 to the legendary Surface Pro 4, but also introduced a number of new products - and the most unexpected of them, perhaps, can be considered the Surface Book - a delicate combination of a powerful computer and a lightweight tablet , which is able to turn into the first laptop from Microsoft.

10. HoloLens

2015 can safely be called the year of innovative solutions for Microsoft. Another confirmation of this - Microsoft HoloLens, a new, completely independent device, presented by the company this summer, caused a storm of discussions and unrest, both from developers and in the world of users. Not just new glasses for creating augmented reality, but a new technology that allows you to work to manage hologram objects displayed on real surfaces.

2015 was a great year, but the news will remain in the 2016 share, for example, Microsoft HoloLens for developers , as the company announced earlier, will be available in the first quarter of 2016.



However, this is not all the news of the outgoing year, we managed to collect only some of the brightest.
You can add your item or your own list in the comments;)

And our team is in a hurry to wish you a Happy New Year :)

Good Code!