Recently, Consensys pushed out a press release announcing the support of Ethereum’s high-level programming language, Solidity, within Microsoft’s Visual Studio.

Solidity will be supported within Visual Studio as a Decentralized Application project type. Readers will remember other Consensys/ Azure integrations from the not so distant past.

Concensys, as you will remember, is part of the Ethereum family. A quick refresher on the gist of the Consensys group:

“ConsenSys is a venture production studio that specializes in building core components, decentralized applications (DApps), enterprise solutions and various developer tools for blockchain ecosystems, focused primarily on Ethereum. Powered by smart contracts, and secured through encryption, our applications provide the benefits of transparency, auditability, and immutability that are unique to blockchain-based solutions.”

The article explains the Solidity language by describing it as “a javascript-like programming language” configured for the specific purpose of developing smart contract programs that will run on the Ethereum protocol (Ethereum Virtual Machine, EVM). The purpose of Solidity is to provide developers a method to construct “self-enforcing business logic embodied in smart contracts.”

It’s no secret that Microsoft is a big fan of Ethereum. To see further integration at this level is quite exciting considering Ethereum’s market momentum and the massive launch platform that Microsoft can offer for Ethereum based product development opportunities. Simply, the infrastructure and community has already been built by Microsoft.

Joseph Lubin Co-Founder of Ethereum and Founder of Consensys said regarding the integration

ConsenSys has been working closely with Microsoft to bring Ethereumfocused development tools to the immense and diverse developer community of Microsoft. Solidity is a high-level language for programming the smart contract elements of decentralized applications on Ethereum. Today we are pleased to announce that it is now possible to program Solidity smart contracts in one of the industry’s most pervasive, capable and elegant integrated development environments, Visual Studio.

He goes on to say that this partnership will allow developers to construct and launch smart contracts on Ethereum in a variety of contexts. To accentuate his point Lubin emphasizes, “With single click deployment of Ethereum blockchains on the Microsoft Azure cloud available, and integrated development in Visual Studio, smart contract and decentralized application developers can get to work on their applications immediately without having to deal with the complexity of first standing up a development blockchain.”

All parties will be in attendance Build 2016 Conference where they will officially announce the partnership.

The vigor with which Microsoft is shoring up its relationship with Ethereum is substantial. Many referred to the Bitcoin protocol as the “internet of money“, it is quite possible that Ethereum may ultimately be positioned as the “internet of business” considering the dev platforms that are being created and cultivated. Recently, Andreas Antonopolous opined on the two protocols briefly

Recently, Andreas Antonopolous opined on the two protocols briefly comparing and contrasting. Because industry titans like Microsoft are throwing their weight behind these initiatives, they will take flight. Why? With these systems scale is crucial to prosper, and one thing Microsoft has is scale.

Featured image from Ethereum.