Microsoft partners with Telefonica to provide BlueVia SDK for .NET developers

Microsoft will use its Windows Azure platform alongside Telefonica’s application programming interface (API) project, BlueVia, to provide a free software development kit (SDK) for .NET application developers.

The BlueVia SDK targets six million .NET developers and includes Windows Azure, Microsoft’s open cloud platform, for the creation of apps. The SDK also supports real-time social networking capabilities and provides access to BlueVia APIs, such as short message service (SMS), advertising and user contextual information.

In a blog post, Telefonica said: "The BlueVia SDK for .NET is a set of drag and drop controls and templates for Microsoft’s Visual Studio, making BlueVia powered app development super simple for any .NET developer who wants to build applications for Windows Phone 7, Windows, Internet Explorer or Xbox."

Vivke Dev, director of global new services, Telefonica, said: "By extending our partnerships, in turn, we are offering Microsoft’s developer community easy access to operator services for the first time."

".NET SDK will be available across assets. It is a powerful platform for developers to come and create lots of apps," said Dev.

Companies such as Medianet are using the BlueVia SDK for Taxistop, a passenger booking and fleet management app for smartphones using the .NET framework and Windows Azure. Medianet believes BlueVia allows it to cut development lead times by up to 30%.

Gideon Clifton, CEO at Medianet, said: "It is really easy to create apps and deploy to the cloud. [Windows] Azure allows us to scale from 10 to 10 million users without dealing with complexities of anticipating users for services."