What to expect from this week's Microsoft Build 2017: Cortana speakers and skills, more bots and Edge extensions, Windows 10 update, but no new Surface hardware
Microsoft is hosting its annual Build developers conference in Seattle this year. The first keynote kicks off on Wednesday …
Context & Ripple Effects
This is a pre-keynote read on what Microsoft will stage in Seattle, and the expected lineup — Cortana speakers and skills, more bots, Edge extensions, a Windows 10 update — marks Build 2017 as the year Microsoft pushes its assistant and bot platform beyond the PC. The absence of any new Surface hardware keeps the spotlight entirely on software and developer platform.
The arc matters when you line this up against later editions: the Build 2019 preview already centers on Azure and AI rather than Cortana, and by the Build 2025 announcement the agenda is AI, Copilot, and Surface. The 2017 slate of assistant-and-bots announcements is the early data point in that migration.
First-order effects
- Developers attending this week's sessions get new surfaces to build for: Cortana skills, a bot framework getting more emphasis, and an expanded Edge extension catalog alongside a Windows 10 update.
- Surface customers expecting hardware news leave Seattle empty-handed — Microsoft is explicitly not using its developer conference for device launches this year.
Second-order effects
- Cortana-branded speakers move Microsoft's assistant off Windows and into the living room, forcing the skills platform to compete on third-party developer adoption rather than OS install base.
- More bots and Edge extensions push partners and ISVs to allocate engineering time to Microsoft's channels, raising the bar for what the next Windows 10 release must support out of the box.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds across subsequent Builds — Azure and AI headlining by 2019, Copilot by 2025 — the consumer-assistant bets announced this week become way stations on Microsoft's pivot to enterprise cloud AI, with Cortana's speaker ambitions as the experiment that tests how far the brand travels beyond Windows.
The trend: Microsoft's Build agenda is drifting from consumer assistant features like Cortana and bots toward cloud AI platforms, a shift visible in each successive edition of the conference.