At Microsoft’s Build Conference, Some See New Openness To Open Source And Cross Platform

An atmosphere of openness and cooperation seemed to run through presentations at the annual Microsoft developers conference, something observers attributed to the company’s new CEO.

Though Satya Nadella did not appear during the keynote on the second day of Build, a certain spirit of openness some attribute to the new Microsoft CEO seemed to pervade the announcements. On Thursday, in a keynote centered on advancements in the company’s tools and cloud services for developers, the executives onstage at the annual conference also made sure to emphasize the cross-platform capabilities of its offerings and even made open source one of its largest pieces of code.

To be sure, many of these projects were going on under former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, said analyst Al Hilwa with research firm IDC. “But it seems to have accelerated under Satya,” Hilwa said. “There’s a change in attitude toward other platforms. They’re changing their business model more aggressively.”

Among the announcements Microsoft made Thursday...