Microsoft Visual Studio, IMSA Expand Partnership For 2015
The partnership includes title sponsorship of the Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge event at Sebring International Raceway. The Microsoft Visual Studio 150 will be held on Friday, March 20 as part of the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring Fueled by Fresh From Florida weekend. In addition, Microsoft and IMSA have partnered to develop a new IMSA mobile app that will debut later in the 2015 season.
Visual Studio also will continue to present the “Team To Win Award" for TUDOR United SportsCar Championship teams. The Visual Studio “Team to Win Award" – a fan-voted award given to the team that demonstrates the best example of teamwork in each race of the TUDOR Championship – debuted in the 2014 season.
“We’re thrilled to extend our relationship with IMSA for the 2015 season," said Matt Nunn, Director, Developer Tools Product Marketing for Microsoft. “Participating in the excitement of race weekend at Sebring with the Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge is a great opportunity to introduce Microsoft’s solutions to a very savvy audience."
Visual Studio is a suite of component-based software development tools and other technologies for building powerful, high-performance applications. The tools are currently being used to build the new, multi-platform mobile application for IMSA.
“We are excited to work with Microsoft Visual Studio, such a prestigious partner," said David Pettit, IMSA Vice President, Marketing. “Microsoft is a great supporter of our race events and our teams, and we look forward to debuting our new and significantly enhanced app with such an innovative technology partner."
Visual Studio is no stranger to the world of sports car racing. In 2013, the technology brand was presenting sponsor of the Visual Studio Ultimate Grand Prix of Atlanta at Road Atlanta.
“Sports car racing provides an excellent metaphor for what Visual Studio offers to application developers," Nunn said. “Our product is designed to enable teams of developers to work together in an agile manner. This allows for applications to be designed more quickly. Teamwork, speed and agility are core attributes of successful race teams as well as successful developer teams."
Microsoft’s partner in the development of the new IMSA mobile application is InterKnowlogy. The California-based development firm has built high-profile applications for CNN and NBC among others. Their use of Visual Studio, Azure and other Microsoft solutions is key to making IMSA’s new mobile platform as robust as the content demands.
“IMSA has amazingly rich content including live audio and video streams. This makes building apps for phone and tablet across iOS, Android, and Windows an interesting challenge." said Rodney Guzman, Founder of InterKnowlogy. “Visual Studio and Xamarin enables us to share code across all these platforms in a seamless and efficient way."
The Visual Studio 150 is the second event in the 2015 Continental Tire Challenge season. It will be streamed live at 1:05 p.m. ET, March 20 at IMSA.com. In addition, the race will be televised on FOX Sports 1 at 9 a.m. ET, April 5.