Bots, Bash... and Build: just what is Microsoft up to?

Our key takeaways from this year's Microsoft Build Conference

Microsoft's Build conference has gone through an interesting transformation over the past few years.

While it used to feel like the geekiest coding party in town (to the point where it became obvious ex-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had little clue what was going on as he pranced around the stage hefting laptops and tablets, shouting superlatives), the arrival of Satya Nadella at the helm has made this San Francisco nerd-fest feel like the place to be for anyone interested in the future of digital technology - which is actually pretty cool.

Nadella - with his hands-on programming background and love of wearing t-shirts whenever he has to take to the stage - has injected Microsoft with the kind of Valley cool that tends to make the world sit up and take notice.

Although... maybe not so much this year. I have to say, compared to previous visions of cross-platform APIs, augmented reality for the enterprise or even the full-on reveal of Windows 8.1 back in 2013, the big reveals this year felt a little underwhelming, and that was especially the case with arguably its biggest announcement - "bots".

Bot's up?

I'm not sure when a "bot" became something to brag about. After all, "botnets" remain one of the most despised menaces in IT. It transpired that what Microsoft was basically referring to is chat bots - something I dimly remember people rolling out as a laugh for AOL Instant Messenger or Yahoo in the late 1990s, and still haunting the odd insurance comparison site to this day.

But why bring this idea back now?

Well, Microsoft seems to be positioning bots as the fulcrum on which much of its mobile, cloud and even Internet of Things strategies will pivot.

Nadella described the concept as "conversation as a platform", which Microsoft predicts will be "powerful in its impact".

It's a focus I don't altogether understand given that Cortana remains pretty unpopular (I'm taking a Twitter poll as I write, which currently indicates that only nine per cent of customers use Cortana regularly), while Microsoft's experimental teenager-simulating chatbot "Tay" went off the rails just a day or so before Build, turning into a racist, cussing idiot in full view of the public.

While I understand that bots are essentially another manifestation of machine learning - bots talking to machines talking to bots, and all of these agents working to return relevant information back to the user - I'm not sure Microsoft brought anything really new to the party at Build.

Bots are very much in vogue in Silicon Valley right now, with Facebook also announcing its own chatbot, for its Messenger app. But what we're essentially talking about here is age-old search engine technology with a few trendy new APIs opening the door to voice activation, typed phrase recognition and advanced learning abilities. There isn't an awful lot more to it.

"Human language is the new AI layer", according to Satya Nadella, and to support this contention Microsoft has launched the Microsoft Bot Framework, and you can already have a go at having programs "talk" to one another across text messages, Office 365, Slack, Skype and many other services. The framework will also enable you to take a website, app or anything and "turn it into a bot, effectively," VP of Windows and Devices Group Yusuf Mehdi told me.

I'm a big fan of the general cross-platform nature of Windows 10 and Universal Apps. All this bots business just seems to be another angle on that whole ecosystem, and is perhaps more a marketing gimmick than anything truly revolutionary.

Next: Linux, Xamarin, the dread Windows Store

Bots, Bash... and Build: just what is Microsoft up to?

Our key takeaways from this year's Microsoft Build Conference

Linux-a-go-go

To my mind, the "Windows Anniversary Update" we're promised later this year will offer something more valuable than bots - native Linux Ubuntu running on Windows via the Bash Command line.

Microsoft says the move came after it was "inundated with feedback" to include Linux, and the advantages for system or applications managers are obvious - no more having to use Macs or - worse - dial back to DOS systems and emulate Linux systems on there just to connect back into Windows through Secure Shell. Now whether Microsoft was motivated by a genuine desire to provide freedom and openness for all, or simply realised that not putting this facility into Windows 10 would be a mis-step, is open to interpretation.

In a similar vein, the open sourcing of C# mobile app development environment Xamarin got a hugely enthusiastic response from the audience.

Slightly less welcome news, in some ways, is Microsoft's "Desktop App Convertor". Yet another spin on the "build once, deploy many" playbook Microsoft has been touting since Nadella first uttered the "Mobile first, cloud first" mantra, it's basically another attempt by Microsoft to get more people to use the ever-unpopular Windows Store to push their software.

Microsoft has been demonstrating various methods to easily build out applications into Universal Windows Platform apps - to run inside the Modern sandbox - for ages, even plugging it into Microsoft Office at one point. But it's not changed much - people really aren't incredibly interested in abandoning Win32.

Meanwhile, amid strongly denied allegations of "forced" Windows 10 upgrades and accusations from a high profile games developer criticising Microsoft for strong-arming developers and consumers into the Windows Store ecosystem, there's an air of FUD around the Windows Store - and Microsoft's arguably "walled garden" designs on users - that isn't likely to abate, no matter how much developers are enabled to take part. It didn't feel to me like anyone walked away any more convinced than any year before.

Unanswered questions

Microsoft's still banging that platform-agnostic drum, and it's still a compelling message. As the years have passed, we're now seeing some cold reality behind the marketing hype.

But what's going to happen after Windows 10's "free upgrade" statusruns out at the end of July?

"We're still figuring out the exact plans of what happens. We'll share that as we get closer," Mehdi said.

And for me, that's the great "unreveal" of Build 2016. If Windows is now simply a service, what does that mean for Microsoft's traditional business model?

Turbulent times to come, perhaps. But for now, enjoy your bots.