Microsoft's Build 2018 and Everything That We Learned

With throngs of people chattering and rampant idea-sharing in the air, Microsoft's 2018 Build conference represented the sheer eagerness attendees had regarding the futurology of tech. The Washington State Convention Center packed upwards of 7,000 attendees, ensuring that lectures and sessions would be busy, full of learning, and conversant. With Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, dominating the keynote speech, the giant crowd was witness to the overarching ideas behind the conference: responsibility in computer-learning, the advent of Visual Studio Code Live, the hallmarks of Azure, and the cutting-edge opportunities we have to revolutionize work through mixed reality. As Nadella noted, "The world is becoming a computer," and he's right. 

So, What Did We See? 

Between the Expo Hall and the sessions dotting the building's landscape, major players in the industry were showcasing their newest wares and ideas. From GitHub to LinkedIn and from Docker to Citrix, there was information abound for attendees to access. With sessions held about Kubernetes, Azure, Visual Studio Code Live, machine-learning, Microsoft Graph, the HoloLens, and more, Build aimed to command in the area of thought-leadership.  

At the Infragistics booth found near the Client & Web area, we spent three successful days demoing portions of our new Infragisitcs Ultimate 18.1 release. While showing off our updates to the fastest Angular data grid, financial charts, and improved spreadsheet functions, booth attendees were able to join in on our #PinItToWinIt campaign at the Expo and on Twitter. The campaign encouraged attendees to affix the Infragistics pin, and this put them in the running to earn one of our twenty giveaway sweatshirts or our large prize, Beats headphones.  

How Were the Conversations? 

The team found themselves having lengthy discussions about our high-speed Angular data grid features, showcasing the smooth rendering of large-scale data sets and the financial charting capabilities. With a healthy mix of current and new customers arriving to talk, excitement rested primarily on the power of our material-based Angular components. When not discussing Angular, many also came to explore and learn about our WPF and Windows Forms features, particularly for our work with the Excel engine updates. There was also a strong showing of those interested in our enterprise management products, with ReportPlus Embedded dominating the space due to its easy data visuals and cross-platforming.  

Where are We Going from Here? 

Moving forward for 2018, Infragistics is going to set its eyes on the area of rapid application development, promoting WYSIWYG and UI kits for web and mobile app building and delivering a design-to-code workflow across Indigo Studio and Ignite UI. From this design-to-code workflow, we'll have code generation for Flutter and Angular, adding to our innovative features surrounding our Angular grid and charts components.  

Excited to Learn More? 

We have an extensive list of products that make web, desktop, and mobile application development far easier and more streamlined. Since we've spoken so much about Angular recently, be sure to take a look at our Ignite UI for Angular and the Ignite UI for Angular CLI and get to working with the fastest Angular data grid. On top of that, consider making your way to our popular enterprise management tool, ReportPlus Embedded. It enables businesses to create rich, beautiful data visualizations to accelerate ROI and to bring BI to life. Plus, if you're interested in a large-scale solution, learn about our Ultimate developer's toolkit which gives you a single platform for UX design and enterprise application development.