Delivering design, project management and engineering consultancy services, Atkins is at the forefront of change when it comes to the future of infrastructure development.

We caught up with Matt Sanderson, Charlie Rogan and Dan O’Connor, members of the team working on Atkins’ DynamicObjects system, to learn about how they’re using Azure to reduce the carbon footprint for their clients and their infrastructure projects.

Sara: What is DynamicObjects?

Matt: We’re a design and engineering consultancy, and a portion of the work we do includes the design of assets that follow fairly strict design codes and standards. Designing such assets involves constantly looking up figures in design tables and referring to reference designs. This is not the most interesting work and probably not the most efficient use of our time. Because of this, Dan and a few others started thinking about how, if these projects are following particular rules, we could capture those rules and automate the design of these standard assets. So that’s what we did – we built a system called DynamicObjects, and it’s the second version of this that we’re moving to Azure. It also frees up our staff to concentrate on more creative engineering challenges which is why they wanted to be engineers in the first place!

Our legacy systems stored engineering rules in spreadsheets. This was well intentioned – we wanted people to create their own content, and when we built it a few years ago, there weren’t so many people in the company who knew how to code. A spreadsheet could capture all the algorithms and rules in a spreadsheet version so that all of our engineers would be able to join in.

Unfortunately, it didn’t work out this way! Creating a new asset was very complicated, and not only did it mean that new people didn’t join in, but it also meant that it was actually very difficult for the people who were creating assets in it because it made development more challenging. If you used a comma instead of a full stop, or had a stray capital letter or space, you could spend a whole day just trying to chase what happened and where the error occurred.

Our first version was supposed to have a no-code philosophy for the people creating the assets, but we realised that was a mistake and moved to a code version. By putting it on Azure and using Azure Functions, our users can call upon those functions to create their own assets, all in C#.

Charlie: Yeah, it’s an awful lot easier to capture the logic in C# than inside a spreadsheet. Ultimately people weren’t able to capture the logic if they weren’t capable of thinking like a coder, so we weren’t able to turn them into coders by giving them a simpler tool. All we were doing at that point was depriving the coders of a better tool.

Matt: Yep. So now that we’re in a .NET environment with tools like Intellisense, you can do development and debugging while receiving suggestions as you type. It’s one of those little things that makes development, not just the platform, so much faster.

Sara: Why did you choose Azure?

Matt: Rather than spread ourselves thin across different cloud platforms, we decided to stick with the one, that way we could become more familiar with it and take advantage of any interconnectivity within the provider’s ecosystem. Atkins already has a strong relationship with Microsoft and its products, so we decided to go with Azure.

We had a previous version that was hosted with a private cloud hosting company, mostly providing infrastructure as a service. Our solution was fairly monolithic, so when somebody pointed out Azure Functions and the fact that you can write serverless code that you can put endpoints too, that became a big driver as well.

Sara: Can you give us some context around the project – what was the challenge you were facing and what did you build to address it?

Dan: Because our legacy system stored engineering rules in spreadsheets not in code, this made development and debugging extremely limited and extremely challenging, with negative knock-on effects on reliability and development time.

There were no proper cloud-based CAD solutions available at the time of development (2012), so our legacy system used desktop CAD software installed on dedicated “CAD servers”. We had separate user-facing “web servers” that received job requests and queued model builds to be processed one at a time on the next available CAD server. This was very slow and a massive bottleneck, which had the negative knock-on effect of the UX feeling un-interactive.

The stability of our desktop CAD software (Autodesk) was also a significant problem. Many builds suffered from geometry failures (such as ambiguous geometric results), which when added to everything else meant we had unscalable architecture. We were also spending significant maintenance time on our web servers (x3) as well as the CAD servers (x4).

Sara: Why do you use Function Apps versus web apps?

Dan: Function Apps allow us to get some benefits typically associated with a microservices architecture versus the traditional monolithic web app – for example allowing us to maintain/upgrade a single Function App whilst everything else is unaffected.

Our DynamicObjects platform is comprised of a small set of Function Apps that provide the core platform services and a growing library of Function Apps uploaded by our mechanical and civil engineering community that encode the design logic for specific assets. For example we have an app for designing air-conditioning units and an app for designing sewerage overflow chambers. The DynamicObjects platform provides generic core services for auth, version control, assembling and delivering 3D content directly to a user’s CAD application and for providing a generic, dynamic user interface. This leaves our mechanical and civil engineers entirely free to focus on the bit they understand – the design logic specific to their asset. Azure Function Apps permits our community to write their asset logic in any of Python, JavaScript, .NET and more, and yet still integrate seamlessly with the core services of our Azure ecosystem which is written in C#.

We are using the function apps consumption plan. This suits us well because it means that as our community upload more and more apps to our platform, we do not have to be concerned about the cost of hosting them. If a Function App is perhaps only experimental or seldom used, then it will pick up a corresponding very-low monthly charge, if there’s any cost at all. Conversely, if an app proves very popular, it incurs a higher monthly charge. Azure monthly charges are itemised per Function App and allow us to easily identify and apportion charges back to our community fairly, so this cost model encourages our community to experiment, which is very important to us.

Sara: What was the biggest thing you learned and why?

Charlie: I’d been coding for a while before coming to Microsoft Azure, but honestly the concept of there being different services in the cloud was something I didn’t know existed. There’s been a learning curve but it’s been good – not overwhelming. It’s been pretty eye-opening, and even outside of DynamicObjects we’ve been looking at their potential for other projects.

Matt: Absolutely. I think once you become aware of things like Function apps, it changes your mindset on how you can solve problems. It’s like you suddenly have a better toolbox which allows you to think differently about how you can solve things.

It’s also helped with our speed to market. Starting a new Azure Functions app can be done almost instantly, whereas previously, if you didn’t have the infrastructure to put it on, you’d be waiting quite a long time. In some cases, the infrastructure itself would have to be set up before you could even start to write a word of code.

Sara: What would you do differently if you did the project again?

Dan: Set up Azure Active Directory earlier! We implemented our own JWT token-based security but in hindsight we could have used the ready-rolled AAD.

Charlie: I went on a few learning courses as there’s so much available in Azure. We initially knew about function apps, but going on the courses made us aware of existing functionality, tools and services that we could just get off the shelf. Active Directory was was a good example of that, as well as Cosmos DB. Definitely do some of the Azure fundamentals courses early – they won’t make you an expert in any of those things, but they’ll make you aware of them and point you in the right direction.

Sara: Do you use DevOps practices? If so, how has that changed the way you work/what impact has it had?

Matt: Yeah, we use Azure DevOps Git repos. We use the Azure DevOps boards and run them through agile scrum methodology for development, which has proven to be very handy. All the information you need is in one place, so coordination, pipelines, code and so on can all be managed from one location.

Sara: Python’s important to you – why is that?

Dan: We have many graduate mechanical and civil engineers with Python coding experience. This is probably the most popular “hobbyist” language within our engineering community, with some 3100 members in our Python User Group.

Matt: .NET and Azure Functions apps work perfectly as mini apps as they can be written in many languages, including Python, and integrate seamlessly with the rest of the Azure ecosystem. At the moment we’re focused on the C# version, but there’s no reason why we couldn’t write tools so that people can develop apps in Python on the same platform as an app in C or JavaScript.

Sara: How has the DynamicObjects project impacted the company from a sustainability perspective?

Dan: The DynamicObjects platform allows our mechanical and civil engineering community to consider and compare the carbon footprint of many more alternative solutions than they would traditionally have time and budget to consider. This means we are contributing to greener infrastructure, and since most of our civil infrastructure has a lifespan of 50 years or more, helping our project teams make more informed choices can end up making a significant contribution to society.

Matt: Traditionally, we’d have to win work by pricing competitively. This means that when you’re working on a design, you don’t have a lot of time and budget to present lots of different options. But when you start to automate designs like with DynamicObjects, you can produce a number of different options, which means we can bring things like carbon impact into the conversations we have with our clients.

We can also provide reports in the cart to weigh up different options for the client. There are different lenses you can look through, from CapEx and OpEx to carbon and health and safety; all sorts of factors. Certainly over the last year and a half carbon has become one of the main considerations behind how we’re designing things.

Sara: What’s next for DynamicObjects?

Matt: We’re currently looking at client plug-ins to support other CAD apps like Autodesk Revit. This new version of DynamicObjects will be accessed through a plug-in to a CAD application called Civil 3D, which is an Autodesk product, but there are other CAD applications that we want to be able to access it through.

Learn more

• Changing an industry by design with Microsoft Azure
• Sustainability and Green Software Engineering
• How to measure and reduce the carbon footprint of your application
• The Principles of Sustainable Software Engineering

The post How Atkins and Azure are helping reduce the carbon footprint of infrastructure development appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

There are hundreds of amazing Microsoft-focused technical communities you can get involved in (yes, even during lockdown!), with focus areas from .NET to data science and SQL and everything in between. Many communities are running regular online meet-ups where you can hear from expert speakers and network with members. Below are some of those groups sorted by topic, plus communities that are for women currently working in or interested in coding/software development and data.  

If your event is missing please let us know and we’ll include it.  

Hope you enjoy any sessions you attend! 

Azure/Cloud

Azure Sentinel Open Forum: This is a Meetup Group for anyone who is keen to chat everything Azure Sentinel! We hope the discussion can cover both business and technical elements, so all interested parties are welcome. 

Azure Thames Valley: Azure Thames Valley is a group for anyone interested in Microsoft Azure Cloud Computing Platform and Services. We aim to provide the whole Microsoft Azure community, whatever their level, with a regular meeting place to share knowledge, ideas, experiences, real-life problems, best working practices and many more from their own past experiences. Professionals across various disciplines including Developers, Testers, Architects, Project Managers, Scrum Masters, CTOs and many more are all welcome. 

Azure London: This group is dedicated to helping developers, engineers, architects and everyone in between better understand and benefit from the Microsoft Azure public cloud. 

Cloud Family: Welcome to a new initiative called the Cloud Family and we are made up of a number of community members around the globe, we are here to help grow the Azure Community. 

Cloud Security London: A regular Meetup for those currently working in Cloud Security or interested in getting into the field. We will be covering all major cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP), sharing best practices, and experiences in implementing Cloud Security.

Edinburgh Azure User Group: A community driven user group based in Edinburgh that focuses on Azure. The user group was founded as an independent body in mid 2017 and it looks to bring the IT community within Edinburgh and surrounding areas together. The group is a community driven group delivering the type of content, speakers and experiences that the IT community in Edinburgh wants. The group is open to developers, architects, consultants, engineers and enthusiasts. 

Glasgow Azure User Group:  This user group was founded as an independent body in early 2017 and it looks to bring the IT community within Glasgow and surrounding areas together. The group is a community driven group delivering the type of content, speakers and experiences that the IT community in Glasgow wants. The group is open to developers, architects, consultants, engineers and enthusiasts. 

Midlands Azure User Group: The aim of the MAUG is to bring the I.T. community within the Midlands (Birmingham and surrounding areas) together to learn and discuss the Microsoft Azure platform. 

Northern Azure User Group: The aim of the NAUG is to bring the IT community within Leeds, Manchester and surrounding areas together. The group is community driven delivering the type of content, speakers and experiences that the IT community in the above areas want. The group is open to developers, architects, consultants, engineers and enthusiasts. 

UK Azure User Group: Andy Cross and Richard Conway from Elastacloud and Chris Parsons and Joe Hancock from Hancock & Parsons established the UK Azure Users Group in 2011. Together they have built a thriving community of Azure users and developers with the help of Microsoft UK.  

UK Cloud Infrastructure User Group: This user group is a group for everyone who wants to learn from another cloud enthusiasts sharing their knowledge and experience about the latest cloud technologies, best practices and use cases. It does not matter if you are an advanced user or the beginner, everyone is welcome as we are here for the same purpose – learn, network and expand our knowledge. Come and join us! 

Welsh Azure User Group: Welcome to the Welsh Azure User Group, the home of Microsoft Azure in Wales. Join us for learning and networking! 

Azure Groups on Meetup – global directory: Find out what’s happening in Azure Meetup groups around the world and start meeting up with the ones near you. This isn’t an exhaustive list but if you aren’t based in the UK or want to try some international groups whilst meetups are online, take a look here! 

.NET

Birmingham .Net & MAUI (Xamarin) User Group: This is a group for anyone interested in or involved with .Net, C#, Azure or Xamarin Mobile Development. 

DotNetNotts: A monthly user group for passionate .NET developers in Nottingham 

DotNetNorth: A meetup group for the .NET developers of Manchester and beyond. Technical talks by visiting speakers, community get-togethers and more! 

.Net Oxford: .NET Oxford is a user-group based in the UK aimed at .NET developers. It’s not just .NET, but anything of interest to a .NET developer – which nowadays encompasses a wide variety of topics! It was founded by Dan Clarke and Matt Nield, and has grown into quite a large community in the Oxfordshire area. 

DotNet Sheffield: dotnetsheff is a monthly user group focused on software development, particularly in the .NET ecosystem. We welcome people with interests in software development of all ages and levels of experience. 

dotnet York: dotnet York is a .NET user group looking to focus on .NET and anything related to .NET ecosystem. We encourage developers of any skill level to come join in on our events to either learn or share. 

.NET Cambridge: The Cambridge .NET User Group is a community of professional .NET developers with a strong passion for building high-quality software using Microsoft platforms and technologies. 

.NET Thames Valley: This group is for anyone living or working in or around Reading, Berkshire and the Thames Valley area who would be interested in talks and events around .NET development. If you’re a developer or a company in the local area then it would be great to see you at one of our events. 

.NET groups | Meetup: Global Directory of .NET groups on the Meetup platform. 
 

Umbraco

Thames Valley Umbraco User Group: Join us for talks and socialising with friendly Umbracians. Whether you’re new or a veteran supporter of Umbraco, you’ll receive a warm welcome. We will aim to have a mix of talks of both technical and non-technical. 

The London Umbraco Meetup: The London Umbraco Meetup Group is for Umbraco devotees and newbies to learn and share their knowledge, and to also gently spread the Umbraco love to all. 

Manchester and North West Umbraco Meetup: The Manchester and North West Umbraco Meetup is a networking group for Umbraco developers, end-users, technical project managers and business decision makers in the North West. 

Umbraco Leeds Meetup: Umbraco Leeds is a monthly meetup group for anyone involved or interested in Umbraco. Whether you’re a developer, content editor, project owner or just curious to hear about what it’s all about – come along to one of our meetups and you’ll be sure of a warm and friendly welcome. 

Glasgow Umbraco Users’ Group (GLUUG): The Glasgow Umbraco Users’ Group (GLUUG) is a networking group for anyone interested in Umbraco. We have regular social meetups where people can come and chat to friendly and like-minded Umbraco folk. We also have more formal presentation-based meetups where experts in the community share their knowledge and usually kick-start some lively debates! 

Umbraco groups | Meetup: Global Directory of Umbraco groups on the Meetup platform. 

Dynamics 365 and Power Platform

Dynamics 365 & Power Platform User Group: We’re all about sharing knowledge and meeting new people at the Dynamics 365 and Power Platform user group. 

Power Platform Birmingham: Formed in 2016, the Birmingham User Group is a friendly community who share knowledge, best practices, ideas and skills. We have bi-monthly sessions, every odd numbered month, from PowerPlatform and Office 365 experts, MVPs and local speakers. We meet-learn and share the knowledge. 

Microsoft Power Platform User Group Belfast: A community event that brings some of the best professionals in the Power Platform community together to share knowledge and ideas and demonstrate Power Platform Functionality and techniques. Focused at End Users & System Administrators and Developers alike, this event is the ideal opportunity to learn and become part of the Power Platform community in Northern Ireland. 

Power Platform School: The Power Platform Summer School works with adults from the BAME community, providing training on the Microsoft Power Platform as well as mentorship from industry professionals, during an 8 week program. 

Microsoft Power BI UK: This group is founded for all UK Microsoft BI specialists to share and gain knowledge and insight of Microsoft Power BI. Keeping true to our mission of advancing awareness and knowledge of Microsoft Power BI, we monitor all submissions to the group and will only accept conversations related to the industry. We can learn from each other through constructive and insightful discussions. 

DevOps

London Microsoft DevOps Meetup: This London-based group hosts everyone interested in ALM and DevOps with Azure DevOps and GitHub, whatever the technology of choice. 

Sheffield Devops: Sheffield Devops is a meetup hosted (usually) on the second Thursday of each month. 

WinOps London: (DevOps on Windows): The UK’s first dedicated meetup and conference on ‘Windows in a DevOps World’. 

Data and Data Science, Machine Learning and Analytics

Data Science London: We are one of the largest Data Science communities in Europe. We are a community of data scientists, machine learning geeks and data hackers that meet regularly to discuss data science projects, methods, topics, tools & technologies. We promote free, open, dissemination of knowledge. Over time we’ve grown to a diverse community of talents and minds. Expect fun meetups and hacks on everything Data Science, from NLP, IoT, Recommendation systems, deep learning, industry use cases and application, Data Science using Azure, AWS, GCP and more.

Data Toboggan: Data Toboggan strives to be an event where we welcome speakers from all backgrounds and disciplines, and from novice speakers to experienced presenters. We welcome anyone to attend to learn new skills and network alongside their peers regardless of gender, sexuality, race, disability, gender identity, appearance or religion. 

Data Relay: Welcome to the home of Data Relay. We are a free community driven series of conferences that cover the whole spectrum of the Microsoft Data Platform. 

UK Data Platform & Cloud Virtual Meetup: This is a collaborative meetup, hosted by the organisers of Microsoft Data groups around the UK. It’s a space to share news, updates, events and, when one of the groups hosts a session online, we’ll keep you in the loop! Expect a range of topics across Azure, Data Science, Data Engineering and the Power Platform! 

Microsoft Data Platform Group – Birmingham: Microsoft Data Platform Group – Bringing the West Midlands Microsoft data platform community together. 

IoT 

Notts IoT: We’re a monthly user group, meeting up and learning all about the Internet of Things (IoT). We talk about everything from Arduino to Hololens, from Micro:Bit to Artificial Intelligence! In the past we’ve had meetups learning about the BBC Micro:Bit, Particle Photon, Amazon Alexa, Microsoft Hololens and much more… 

IoT North: Now part of the IoT North Community, welcome to the 3500+ strong IoT community, sponsored by GOTO50.ai an Adlink Edge IoT AI Vision Community and Newcastle University. Our meetups will focus on the challenges facing Hardware and IoT Engineers today. Come hear from top IoT professionals about their successes, failures, best practices, and lessons learned. Every talk will have dedicated time to promote an open discussion on the topic being presented. 

#HacktheBase IoT Hub: The #HackTheBase IoT Hub is a collaboration hub that opens a whole new series of IoT events that will create an area to collaborate for technology developers, industry representatives, and investors interested in IoT opportunities. We organize a series of IoT events such as regular meetups, workshops, and hackathons to the community members. 

IoT & Data Science Innovators UK: Everyone who has a firm interest in Internet of Things and Data Science technologies. This meetup is about all things device and server-stack for IoT.

Internet of Things Milton Keynes Meetup: The IoTMK Meetup is a place to connect things. What gets connected? Maybe it’s the next few objects of the billions that will supposedly be connected to the internet in the next few years. Maybe it’s you, to suppliers or customers, to knowledge and to the opportunities that go along with this expansion. Maybe it’s your thinking. We’re all working this out as we go along and hearing how other people are making sense, or not, of all this might be just the insight you need. Our aim is to develop and promote MK’s involvement in IoT. Come along to learn, challenge and maybe redefine what IoT means. 

Communities and groups for female coders and data experts

Ladies of Code Glasgow: Are you a lady? Do you code? Are you searching for a similar bunch of ladies to develop your code skills with? You’ve come to the right place. We meet monthly to hear technical talks from leaders in the field, dive into the terminal in our expert workshops and hack whilst developing our code skills in the process. 

Ladies of Code London: Do you code? Do you work with people who code? Are you searching for a similar bunch of people to discuss code and tech with? You’ve come to the right place! We meet regularly to hear talks about experiences, share lessons learnt and, of course, develop our code-fu in the process. Everyone is welcome at our events though they are focused toward women-identifying folk.  

Women Who Code London: Women Who Code is the largest and most active community of engineers dedicated to inspiring women to excel in technology careers. We envision a world where women are representative as technical executives, founders, VCs, board members, and software engineers. Our programs are designed to get you there. 

CodeHers in London: This group is to bring women together who have a mutual interest in coding/ software development. You will enjoy sharing ideas and experiences. Open to anyone:

• Who identifies as a woman, trans and non-binary inclusive and
• Can either code or has a strong interest in software engineering 

Microsoft Data for Women: Welcome to Microsoft Data for Women! We want to encourage and support women who are working within data and especially with a focus on the Microsoft BI stack. Our goal is to close the gender gap in tech. 

London Women in Machine Learning & Data Science: WiMLDS’s mission is to support and promote women and gender minorities who are practicing, studying or are interested in the fields of machine learning and data science. We create opportunities for members to engage in technical and professional conversations in a positive, supportive environment by hosting talks by women and gender minority individuals working in data science or machine learning, technical workshops, networking events and hackathons. We are inclusive to anyone who supports our cause regardless of gender identity or technical background. However, in support of our mission, priority for certain events and opportunities will be given to women and gender minority members. 

 -=-

If you run a community, we can help with Microsoft speakers and resources! Visit our Technical Community Resource page for more information.

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PlayFab and Microsoft joined forces three years ago, and this week we’re celebrating by honouring the amazing community we’ve built together. I spoke with James Gwertzman, General Manager for Gaming Cloud at Microsoft and co-founder of PlayFab, about his time in the industry, the story behind PlayFab, and where gaming is heading in a post-Covid world.

Sara: You have a long, impressive history in the gaming industry. What is it about gaming and game development that excites and inspires you?

James: Oh my gosh, that goes back to when I was as young as I can remember. I’ve always been fascinated by the intersection of art and technology, and that has been a thread throughout my entire life. Back in highschool I was on a stage crew for my theatre programme working as a set designer and a light designer, and for a while I thought I wanted to work on visual effects for movies. But I also loved computers, and being both a computer science major and a theatre nerd meant I had to figure out how I was ever going to combine the two. It wasn’t until a couple of years out of college that I stumbled into the game industry.

While I’d always loved playing games, I’d never really thought of gaming as a career. It was when we were launching Xbox back in 2001 that I suddenly realised, wait, I can make games for a living? This could be a thing? So I ended up quitting Microsoft to go and make my own game studio, that was how I got started. I’ve never looked back; I love the pace of innovation, that art and technology intersection, and being at the bleeding edge of everything. The people in the games industry are phenomenal, and I’ve been lucky to have made a lot of friends across my 20 years of working with games.

This is sort of a segue into why I started PlayFab. I’d been in China for five years running a game studio for PopCap Studios, and this was right on the cusp of the transition of games as products to games as a service. Watching the games industry meant seeing some big stumbles, with games being launched that didn’t do very well because the technology couldn’t keep up with the games. I remember thinking, wow, if there are billion dollar companies that can’t successfully roll out the technology necessary to run these games, what hope do small indies ever have? That was really the inspiration to create PlayFab, that there might be an opportunity to build a next generation cloud platform for gaming that would solve these problems at scale, not just for small indies but for the big studios too.

It was audacious at the time but we did it, and we actually got to be fairly successful. The run up since we got bought by Microsoft has been phenomenal because if you’d told me that one day all of Minecraft would be running on PlayFab, or Halo, or Gears of War or the new Flight Simulator, that’d have been crazy to imagine. With some of the work we’re doing now, sometimes I have to pinch myself.

In my new role, I have an opportunity to not just look over PlayFab but Microsoft too, to figure out where we take technologies like Azure, Teams and Visual Studio for example, and how we can use them to craft these amazing end-to-end experiences and solutions for game developers help them to realise their dreams.

So taking this all full-circle, I now have a massive set of resources I can play with in order to deliver on the vision under which we founded PlayFab in the first place.

S: What has been the impact of Covid-19 on gaming?

J: I’m one of those people who doesn’t believe that we’re going to go back to the same “normal” – I think life has fundamentally been altered, but not in a bad way. Covid has shown us that we can, as a society, behave differently. For example, I don’t expect to ever be spending five days a week in the office again, rather that I’ll be mixing my time between the office and home. I want to go back to the office at some point, I miss my colleagues, but I’ve also really enjoyed working from home and I think we all recognise that it’s actually a viable way of working in ways that we hadn’t before. I think there will be some fundamental changes happening in the game industry because of this.

In the case of gaming, I think there’s going to be a couple of ways there are going to be lasting impacts. The first is on the creative side, looking at the game creation process. Every game developer has had to struggle and figure out how to make games from home, and games are especially challenging to create from home because of the sheer size of the data involved. Halo, a flagship franchise, delayed its launch partly because of the work from home impact and how hard it is to build this massive game outside of the office.

There’s a lot of ways in which the cloud can help with that. We’re learning how to do things such as, instead of moving all the data down to the worker at home, having the worker at home work inside the cloud to keep the data and workload there. There’s also Teams; we’ve all now mastered Teams and understand the opportunity for online collaboration. I don’t think anything will ever truly replace being in a room together with your colleagues, but we’re getting pretty close.

The second is on the consumer side. People spending more time at home due to Covid has been meant that all of the numbers have gone up – people are gaming more than usual. Part of what we’re recognising from this is the power these online experiences have to bring people together. People are playing games with their friends, and while it might not be as much fun as being able to go to the pub with them, it’s not bad either.

Social experiences like concerts and big events that attract thousands of people may still be a long way out in coming back, but there’s an opportunity here for online versions. Fortnite is famous for putting on online concerts that have had tens of millions of players log on to experience a concert together in real time. That’s amazing, and it’s not a surprise we’re seeing gaming heralding these experiences.

S: How do you see Microsoft helping developers retain players when lockdown ends?

In terms of retaining players, I don’t think that we need to do anything especially out of the ordinary to do that. Gaming continues to grow as a source of entertainment – we’re now the second largest form of entertainment, second only to paid TV, and if you look at the numbers I think it’ll pass paid TV in just a couple more years. One of my own predictions is that traditional media entertainment and gaming are on a convergence of paths, and I’ll give you two examples of where they’re converging.

One of them is on the production process side. I mentioned that we’re working to move game development to the cloud, but one of the areas where we’re still weak is in managing big digital assets. Things like GitHub are great for source code, but not so great for these large binary files. It turns out that my colleagues in our media and entertainment vertical are working with Hollywood on asset management solutions. They’re working specifically with Disney, Universal Studios and a few other companies specifically to help them manage these large digital assets. Once we combine that technology with existing solutions such as GitHub, there’ll be a really good solution here for managing games.

On the flip side, traditional television production is now using technologies from the game industry in a couple of interesting ways. For example, The Mandalorian is famous for being one of the first TV shows to use virtual sets, where instead of having a green screen for a backdrop, they have giant video walls that use the Unreal game engine to project virtual sets in real-time. This means that when the camera is moving on the set, they’re updating what you’re seeing in the background to keep the parallax and the perspective correct, and as a result you don’t have to do as much post-production as you would with a green screen. That’s especially important on a show like The Mandalorian, where his suit is so shiny that had they chosen to use a green screen, they’d have spent so much time taking the green out of the reflections. Plus with this method, you also get reflections on his suit of the environment around him in a realistic manner.

S: How important are game developers to Microsoft and how are we helping them?

J: One of the headwinds that my team faces at Microsoft is frankly one of awareness. People know about us for Xbox, but I don’t think they know about us necessarily as a solution for cloud gaming, which is a real shame. Because of our long history with Xbox, and because our own first party game studios that are using it exclusively, we actually support some of the world’s biggest games and we continue to invest in making ourselves ever better for that.

One of the biggest challenges my team has is just getting the word out, and letting people realise that Microsoft has this phenomenal set of solutions for game developers. Not just that we have Azure, and everything Azure does around gaming such as traditional infrastructure as a service, raw compute and so on, but we also have PlayFab and these dedicated services custom built for gaming, and all the things we’re doing there such as chat, multiplayer, analytics and so forth. If you haven’t taken a look at Azure recently, take a second to look as we have some really good things coming.

For Microsoft, game developers are incredibly important. Our reputation, justified or not, is that we’re better in the enterprise space than we are in the startup space. I think that’s a shame as we have some great technology here, but I think that as we get better at attracting game developers, we’re also getting better at the self-serve onboarding and discovery motions that we need to get better as as a company.

S: Can PlayFab help indie game developers as well as AAA? What are the differences in approach, and is it recommended?

J: In the beginning, as we were a new and disruptive technology, we were able to attract the developers that really needed our services the most, while the big AAA companies were either waiting on additional features or were more apprehensive due to how small a company we were at the time. The majority of the teams we worked with were indie developers.

That said, the pace of growth has been so fast that we’ve suddenly become good enough for the AAA companies. Almost all of our first party studios are using us, and we’re starting to now land other big companies outside of Microsoft. Doom Eternal from id Software is a famous one, and Hello Games’ No Man’s Sky is another big game that is using PlayFab. Historically everyone had to build their own technologies from scratch in the cloud, but we’re starting to see this transition where more and more of us will simply use off the shelf services like PlayFab, and that creates this great flywheel where the more developers that are using our services off the shelf, the more we can invest in making them ever better.

We have this additional accelerant here at Microsoft where we can also leverage a lot of the investments we make in our Xbox team, to take a lot of those technologies out of Xbox and release it to the world as part of our own offerings. It’s something we’re actively doing as part of this space.

S: What can developers learn from the LiveOps approach?

J: It used to be that you could just build a game, ship it and then you were done. Now you launch a game and it’s just the beginning, a kind of marathon where you continually update, grow and invest in your game.

I think that continual engagement loop, where you’re engaging your players and updating and understanding what they’re doing, is really important. This of course applies to any interactive experience, not just games, so any piece of software that you’re running as a service is going to have this update loop and there’s a lot we can learn from them.

For a lot of developers, data analytics is a lot like flossing your teeth, where you know you should do it, you know other people are doing it and you know it’s a healthy thing to do, but it seems hard to approach if you’ve never done it before. PlayFab has made this process very simple, making it easy to gather the data, put it into a data warehouse, and start running reports on it.

Frankly we could do even more, and we will do even more in the future, making it even easier to get great results, and being able to hook up things like machine learning to start automating the process of looking for insights.

S: What does the future of game development hold for game developers? What’s coming?

J: Games were products, then they became services, and now we’re in this new zone where games are becoming communities. We’ve talked about this notion of the “citizen creator”, the idea that everyone is a creator now. It used to be that the only people that could make games were the game studios – but with software such as Unreal and Unity bringing game creation tools to the masses, it became easy enough that even three-person teams could start making games.

Now with things like Minecraft and Roblox, 12 year olds are making games within other games. The games themselves are becoming platforms for other games, and that’s really fascinating. Then you start to have communities of players in these spaces that are contributing back to the environment by creating things like texture packs and levels. then uploading them for others to enjoy.

Going back to the earlier point of convergence of entertainment, we’re also starting to see games be culturally relevant in ways they weren’t before. Big game releases, whether they are a success or a flop, are being covered prominently by newspapers, and it’s really telling. This is our generation’s media. Would something like TikTok have happened if it hadn’t been for the comfort the next generation has with gaming technologies and tools? I don’t know, but there’s a fluidity there that my generation doesn’t have and certainly my parents’ generation never had.

Useful Links

• Celebrating Three Years of Partnership Between PlayFab and Microsoft
• New PlayFab Pricing Plan with No Monthly Minimums
• Starting today: Save up to 90% using PlayFab Party
• Migrating Minecraft Realms from AWS to Azure
• Getting started with Azure PlayFab

The post Celebrating three years of Azure PlayFab and the future of game development appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

The best thing about events is seeing the community come together to talk, learn, and share knowledge. You know what else is great? Wearing your comfiest clothes, drinking tea or coffee from your favourite mug at home.

So what do you get when you combine the two? A free 48-hour digital event for developers where they can gain new skills, and learn about the latest technology trends that could deliver better outcomes for your business.

Most importantly, they will have a chance to chat with other devs from around the world and share experiences. This will help them continue their learning journey and gain valuable insight to other people’s experiences to build better apps now and in the future.

Held from May 19-20, our first ever digital Microsoft Build will enable your development teams to jump in and out of channels, join interactive sessions, talk to other developers, and get the answers they need to progress with their latest projects.

There’s so much going on in the 48 hours, but we have a preview of what you and your team can expect from Build and how it can help you drive business goals.

1.      5 talks to look out for

There’ll be lots of interesting sessions and talks on offer, but we’ve pulled out some highlights you can share with your dev team. They can learn about the latest cloud innovation on Azure with Scott Guthrie, explore the modern dev toolkit with Scott Hanselman, and hear from Satya Nadella on the importance of devs.

Take a look at our dev blog to get the low-down.

2.      Gain new skills

It’s important for your team to keep their knowledge fresh and to learn new skills that will help make them better developers. Make it a team goal to leave Build with a new skill, or a learning pathway to one.

Encourage your team to join talks, Q&As, and interactive sessions on building new tools and using Microsoft technologies to improve their DevOps toolkit. They can then use these new skills to build new capabilities to really drive business goals.

Employees could also earn a free Microsoft Certification test voucher and a chance to win prizes by completing some online learning modules on Microsoft Learn.

3.      Learn about the latest trends

Think of Build as a Parisian runway – but for technology. The growth of data science and machine learning is bringing new tech that is changing DevOps. Kevin Scott talks about some of the emerging trends that are reshaping software development.

Inspire your team by getting them involved in in-depth sessions on new tools and processes that will further drive your business values.

4.      Get creative

We get our best ideas when we’re surrounded by creativity. And there’s no better place than Build. When you or your devs hear of new tools or learn a new skill, it could spark a new idea. Live sessions with other devs will get the creative juices flowing.

You could go completely off script by encouraging your team to join our film festival. Not only will it spark creativity in a different way, but it will also get your team working together in new and fun ways, driving collaboration and building strength.

So get your team’s Steven Spielberg on and make a dev-version of Indiana Jones, a space odyssey with your team’s pets, or whatever else you and your team can think of.

5.      Get expert guidance

If your devs have a specific question, or need some help with a particular Microsoft technology, they can go one-to-one with our engineers in specially crafted sessions.

6.      Join your community

At the end of the day, Build isn’t Build without our amazing community of developers. Your team can connect with other devs from around the world in our sessions or social hours. Share tips, get knowledge, and gain new friends.

And it doesn’t stop after Build is over. Our community will keep the conversation and knowledge sharing going. There might even find a new solution shared that you could use to improve something in your business.

Sound pretty amazing, right? Luckily, you don’t have to miss out. Build is for you as well as your dev team. It’s a great chance for you to gain valuable insight into what’s coming, and how you can use new and existing technology in inventive ways to really drive your business goals.

We can’t wait for everyone to get together and share knowledge so we can all innovate for the challenges of tomorrow.

Join us for the 48-hour digital experience, at no cost, May 19-20.

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5 talks to look out for at Build next week

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The post Empower your developer team to learn, connect and code at Microsoft Build appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.