Microsoft Build: Developer tools unveiled for Windows and Azure

ANAHEIM: Microsoft has rounded off an eventful Build conference with new developer tools, including preview releases of Visual Studio 11, .Net 4.5 and ASP.Net, plus the Windows Azure SDK version 1.5 for its cloud computing platform.

Visual Studio 11 provides an integrated environment that lets developers flesh out the structure of an application or service, as well as write, test and deploy code, all from one screen.

The suite is available from the end of this week as a developer preview download.

Meanwhile, Microsoft .Net 4.5 adds many features requested by developers, such as support for asynchronous programming in C# and Visual Basic, which makes it easier to create applications and services that can scale to handle thousands of concurrent network connections, according to the firm.

For Windows Azure, Microsoft announced the Azure SDK version 1.5 and Azure Toolkit for Windows 8, the latter allowing developers to build Metro-style applications that use Windows Azure for connectivity and notifications.

Microsoft also announced that the Azure cloud platform now supports 'georeplication', which provides replication of customer data between two Microsoft datacentres on the same continent as insurance against failure.