SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today, Xamarin announced an expansion of its global relationship with Microsoft Corp. to help organizations accelerate the entire mobile development lifecycle, from planning and building apps to maintaining them in production. The collaboration includes: integrations between Xamarin and Microsoft’s Office 365, Microsoft Azure, and Microsoft Intune, and an enhanced DevOps workflow that integrates Xamarin Platform and Xamarin Test Cloud with Visual Studio Team Services (formerly Visual Studio Online) to allow efficient development and continuous delivery. Xamarin and Microsoft are also launching joint education initiatives, including offering exclusive training benefits for Microsoft Visual Studio subscribers and building on Xamarin’s existing Microsoft Imagine relationship. With today’s announcements, Xamarin and Microsoft make it faster and easier for new and experienced developers to get the skills they need to succeed in a multi-platform world.
A complete solution: from delivering high-performance apps to the data that powers them
Gartner predicts that by the end of 2017, demand for mobile apps will grow at least five times faster than internal IT organizations' capacity to deliver them (source). With Xamarin and Microsoft Visual Studio, developers build fully native iOS, Android, and Windows apps, using a single C# codebase to design, develop, debug, and release apps quickly.
To further accelerate development, today’s release includes Xamarin integrations with Microsoft Office, Azure, and Intune:
- Xamarin integrations with Azure Active Directory and Microsoft Office 365 services, including OneDrive, SharePoint 365, and Exchange. These integrations allow customers to easily add scenarios to their apps, such as Azure Active Directory’s single-sign-on, sending email notifications, scheduling Office 365 calendar appointments, and accessing OneDrive or Sharepoint 365 files.
- Enhanced Xamarin integration with Azure App Service, including file sync support and Azure Storage library (Preview).
- Xamarin Component for Microsoft Intune, allowing Xamarin apps to take advantage of Microsoft Intune’s Mobile Application Management capabilities. Microsoft Intune helps protect corporate data on mobile devices and enables data sharing with Office and other Intune managed mobile apps.
A complete workflow: from design through development, testing, deployment and maintenance
Visual Studio Team Services and Xamarin Test Cloud now have a tighter integration, making it easy for organizations to continuously build and test applications in an agile mobile workflow. Xamarin Test Cloud automatically tests apps on 2000+ devices, and, now, teams can view Xamarin Test Cloud results directly from their Visual Studio Team Services portal, including test run passes and fails. Developers are able to troubleshoot quickly, addressing bugs before apps are released and correct faulty code before it is used as the foundation for additional functionality.
Comprehensive education and training: from onboarding new mobile developers to honing existing skills
Xamarin joins Microsoft for the launch of Visual Studio Developer Essentials, a new Microsoft initiative to improve developer onboarding and accelerate release timelines. Visual Studio Community subscribers are now eligible for exclusive Xamarin University mobile training modules at no cost, preparing them to deliver high quality, native apps quickly. Eligible developers receive on-demand access to expert-led training videos and course materials from Xamarin University and can take advantage of the Xamarin offer at anytime. Gartner predicts that organizations will increasingly look to deploy existing, skilled staff for mobile projects (source), and Microsoft and Xamarin position organizations to utilize these in-house teams’ skills to quickly meet demand.
Xamarin and Microsoft have also weaved together their student offerings, allowing university and high school students to learn mobile development free of charge. Through Microsoft Imagine, eligible students receive complimentary Xamarin and Visual Studio subscriptions, allowing them to build fully native iOS, Android, and Windows apps quickly. Students get everything they need to build, deploy, and debug native apps, transitioning from novice developers into mobile app publishers before graduation. In a 2014 global survey, only 6% of organizations have enough app developers on staff (source); Microsoft and Xamarin help students acquire the highly in-demand skills necessary to fill this growing shortage and meet enterprise staffing needs.
Now, students request Xamarin licenses directly through the DreamSpark catalog and automatically receive Visual Studio 2015, which comes bundled with Xamarin. Additionally, Xamarin and Microsoft have collaborated to provide Microsoft Student Partners (MSP) with mobile training modules to deliver at campuses worldwide. The program includes two paths: “Introduction to Xamarin and Azure” and a hands-on workshop, which allows attendees without any mobile experience to leave the sessions with a simple app to share with and inspire other students. Combining mobile development and Azure skills gives students a significant advantage over other graduates, as they gain exposure and familiarity with enterprise-level complexities, like data sync and mobile backend systems management.
With this announcement, Xamarin and Microsoft provide a complete mobile development lifecycle for enterprises and equip the next generation of mobile experts with tools and training necessary to define and deliver successful mobile strategy. Students will gain the skills necessary to compete in competitive job markets, allowing future employers to go mobile quickly. Microsoft and Xamarin customers will gain competitive advantages through faster time-to-market, better app quality, and the ability to continuously innovate.
To learn more about Xamarin and Microsoft’s collaboration, visit xamarin.com/microsoft.
Additional Resources -- Quotes for Media
- “Microsoft is working to help developers apply as many existing skills and resources as possible to reach any platform they choose,” said Julia Liuson, Corporate Vice President, Visual Studio, Microsoft Corp. “Our collaboration with Xamarin gives .NET developers an end-to-end workflow to deliver native, enterprise-ready apps for all platforms.”
- “Our customers aren’t building one app, they’re building comprehensive solutions for multiple audiences: employees, customers, and vendors,” said Nat Friedman, CEO and cofounder, Xamarin. “This app proliferation requires a scalable mobile infrastructure, and, with today’s announcement, Xamarin and Microsoft give enterprises the training, tools, services, and workflow that they need to succeed.”
- “Mobile allows us to create a whole new experience for our employees and, with Xamarin and Microsoft, we’re able to achieve our cloud-first, mobile-only vision,” said Mike Lorengo, Director ITS Architecture and Strategy at Alaska Airlines. “Microsoft and Xamarin help us quickly deliver business value, getting high quality apps that perform in any scenario, on any device, to our thousands of staff members, while remaining confident that our internal data is safe and secure.”
- “As the largest independent Coca-Cola bottler in the United States, we have a responsibility to provide the best experience to our customers, and that includes seamless performance and production in our apps," said Igor Kleyner, Applications Manager, at Coca-Cola Bottling Consolidated Co. “Now, we’re able to manage our entire development, test, and release process in one place, which allows us to resolve any potential issues before release. We’ve seen an increase in mobile quality, and, with Xamarin and Visual Studio Online, are able to release faster than ever before.”
- “Outback Steakhouse is the first casual dining steakhouse to test a pay at the table app thanks to the partnership with Xamarin and Microsoft,” said Bryan Hooper, Senior Director, IT Enterprise Architecture at Bloomin' Brands, Inc. "Mobile training helped accelerate our development cycles and contribute to the excitement that’s driving our mobile innovation strategy.”
About Xamarin
Xamarin is the new standard for enterprise mobile development. No other platform enables businesses to reach all major devices—iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows—with 100 percent fully native apps from a single code base. With Xamarin, businesses standardize mobile app development in C#, share on average 75 percent source code across platforms, and take advantage of their existing skills, teams, tools and code to rapidly deliver great apps with broad reach. Xamarin is used by more than 100 Fortune 500 companies in 120 countries, and has over 1 million unique developer downloads. For more information, please visit: xamarin.com, read our blog, and follow us on Twitter @xamarinhq.