Why choose Microsoft Dev Box?

Bottleneck to agility

Many developers are still constrained by the tools they use to perform their day-to-day work due to the complex setup that they require or to the lack of scalability that they provide.

For example, when onboarding a developer to a new project, there must be communication with the infrastructure team to set up and configure a proper workstation that includes access and dependencies needed for this specific project. This can take up to a few weeks and this manual process is error-prone which may introduce even more delays into this workflow. Developers usually also work on multiple projects at any given time and managing all the required dependencies for various projects (different programming languages or versions) can lead to errors and conflicts.

Adding all of those dependencies and projects to one physical device also means that it is hard for developers to quickly switch between tasks and perform high-demand processes as their device is limited by its static compute resources because it provides no scalability.

On the security front, modern developer workstations also pose several security risks for the organization. As remote work becomes more common, it’s harder than ever for IT administrators to control access to sensitive information or to manage remote workstations in the same way that they would with on-premises workstations putting developers and their devices at risk of exposure.

How Microsoft Dev Box can help

Microsoft Dev Box allows developers to access high-performance, cloud-based workstations that are preconfigured and ready-to-code for specific projects and tasks. The workstations are created in a self-service environment by the developers who can select from a pool of pre-configured Dev Boxes based on images curated by their development teams that include dev tools, SDKs, code repos so that developers can hit the ground running as soon as the Dev Box deploys.

Even though the Dev Boxes are easy to provision, they are managed and secured through centralized governance tools such as InTune/Endpoint Manager. No matter where the Dev Boxes are running, IT admins and Infrastructure teams can track and monitor their usage to ensure security, compliance and cost efficiency.

Ready to code

Dev Boxes make it easy for developers to onboard to a new project by providing them with self-service access to workstations that are purpose-built for their current projects and tasks without having to work with an infrastructure team and waiting for physical hardware to be provisioned.

Developers can also deploy multiple Dev Boxes simultaneously which makes context switching between different projects much easier as their individual Dev Boxes only target a specific project and do not have to support multiple sets of dependencies.

Flexible workloads

Dev Boxes are highly customizable and flexible. They support any dev tool, code repo, SDK and more that developers may need for their project or task. That means that they can be used for any developer workflow such as desktop or mobile development, gaming, IoT and more. Dev Boxes can scale up to support high-demand workloads meaning that you can proconfigure with the right amount of compute, RAM and storage that will fit even your most demanding workflows.

Access to Dev Boxes is based on Azure Active Directory groups making it possible to limit access for certain roles while giving greater permissions to others. For instance, if you need to establish a secure environment for a site reliability engineer, you can setup a Dev Box as a privileged access workstation. Conversely, on large projects where parts of the work are outsourced, you can apply stricter permissions for external contractors.

It is also important to think about cost efficiency and it is possible to set rules to automatically stop Dev Boxes during off hours when they are not in use. Dev Box uses a consumption-based pricing model that charges for storage and compute used, meaning you only pay for what you use.

Managed and secure

Microsoft Dev Boxes are automatically enrolled in Intune and managed by Microsoft Endpoint Manager making it easy for IT administrators to manage Dev Boxes just as they would with any other physical device.

Comprehensive access controls in AAD enable IT admins to organize access by project or user type, making it easy to control permissions and policies on a project-by-project and Dev Box-by-Dev Box basis. For especially sensitive workloads, for instance, you can set conditional access policies or risk-based sign-in policies, such as requiring users to connect via a compliant device or requiring MFA sign-in.

Thanks to Intune integrations, IT admins can easily push out zero-day patches to whatever devices they need to update across the organizations, ensuring all Dev Boxes are kept up-to-date. Should a Dev Box ever become compromised, IT admins can isolate the Dev Box while helping the developer get up and running on a new Dev Box.

Comparing Dev Box

Multiple options are available to you when comes the time to provide your development team with workstations. Here is an high-level comparison when trying to decide if Microsoft Dev Box is the right choice for your organization.

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