Microsoft Corporation (Microsoft) reinforced its commitment to cross-platform developer experiences by open sourcing the full server-side .NET stack and expanding .NET to run on the Linux and Mac OS platforms. The milestone moment kicked off Microsoft’s Connect (); event in the United States, where the company unveiled Visual Studio 2015 Preview and .NET 2015 Preview, and also released Visual Studio Community 2013, a new free edition of Visual Studio that provides developers with easy access to the Visual Studio core toolset. The announcements build on the excitement of the local Malaysia developer community for Microsoft’s “open” mobile-first, cloud-first strategy.
Community Enthusiastic Over Microsoft’s Commitment to Open Source
Local developers and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) are excited with the traction they are seeing in Microsoft’s commitment to advancing interoperability, open standards and open source. Microsoft Malaysia recently partnered the open source community in Malaysia by sponsoring MOSCMY 2014, which saw more than 300 participants taking part in various workshops, discussions and keynotes aimed at unravelling current and future trends of Open Source Software (OSS) and hardware. Held annually, MOSCMY is also a platform for businesses to leverage the latest open source innovations, best practices and success stories.
Open, Accessible and Cross-Platform
Delivering on its promise to support cross-platform development, Microsoft is providing the full .NET server stack in open source, including ASP.NET, the .NET compiler, the .NET Core Runtime, Framework and Libraries, enabling developers to build with .NET across Windows, Mac or Linux. Through this implementation, Microsoft will work closely with the open source community, taking contributions for future improvements to .NET and will work through the .NET Foundation.
Businesses Reaping Benefits of Interoperable Open Source
Companies in Malaysia are also increasingly turning to technology as an integral component in helping prepare the business for the 21st century. Ikhasas Sdn Bhd, a multidiscipline company in Malaysia specializing in property development, construction, engineering, infrastructural works and turn-key designs, needed scalability and uninterrupted operation to cope with its demands and expansion. With rising IT infrastructure and maintenance costs, Ikhasas turned to open source for a viable yet affordable solution to enhance their values and operational efficiencies.
Visual Studio for Every Developer
Available now, Visual Studio Community 2013 is a free, fully featured edition of Visual Studio including full extensibility. Targeting any platform, from devices and desktop, to Web and cloud services, the community edition provides developers with easy access to Microsoft’s Visual Studio toolset for all non-enterprise application development. Developers can get started with Visual Studio Community 2013 here.
Visual Studio 2015 and .NET 2015: build for any device
Built from the ground up with support for iOS, Android and Windows, Visual Studio 2015 Preview makes it easier for developers to build applications and services for any device, on any platform.
To further support cross-platform mobile development with .NET, as part of their strategic partnership, Microsoft and Xamarin announced a new streamlined experience for installing Xamarin from Visual Studio, as well as announced the addition of Visual Studio support to its free offering Xamarin Starter Edition — available later in the year. In addition, for Web developers interested in building cloud-powered apps that target mobile devices, Microsoft delivered the final release of Apache Cordova tools. Developers can get started Visual Studio 2015 Preview here.
In addition, Microsoft also announced the preview of ASP.NET 5.0, a streamlined framework and runtime optimized for cloud and server workloads. In addition, the new Connected Services Manager in Visual Studio 2015 makes it easier to connect applications to line-of-business API services such as the Office 365 API and SalesForce, among others.
Visual Studio Online: Agility and DevOps in the cloud
Building on a year of service enhancements, Microsoft announced additional capabilities for Visual Studio Online, its online service for development projects, by announcing additional capabilities for the service, including these:
- Release Management as a service, available in preview, to enable customers to automate and manage application releases without the need to set up or maintain any service infrastructure.
- Cloud Deployment Projects, to allow organizations to more easily and reliably provision and configure development, test and production environments in Azure.
Visual Studio 2013 Update 4
Also, Microsoft announced the availability of Visual Studio 2013 Update 4, the fourth fully featured update in the past 12 months, which includes various productivity enhancements and additional capabilities. Download and product information can be found here.