= A software developers kit for Windows Phone 8.

= Launch of a Windows Azure Store where developers can hawk applications to augment Azure cloud services.

= Closer integration between Windows operating systems and Azure to make it easier to write apps that rely on an Azure back end.

= Team Foundation Service, an Azure-based offering that is a tool for tracking software development projects and is free to teams of five or fewer.

To sweeten the pot, Ballmer gave attendees a free Surface tablet/laptop, 100GB of free cloud storage via SkyDrive, a free Nokia Lumia 920 Windows 8 phone and a discounted developers registration to the Windows store.