Microsoft announced via a blog post on Thursday that it will now discontinue support for Android, iOS, Windows Store and Windows Phone apps in the Application Insights tool for its Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE). The company says that they will now be dedicating all their efforts in the developer analytics sector to HockeyApp.
The Redmond giant acquired HockeyApp, a service that enables developers to build up and roll out beta tests of apps and then receive feedback and crash reports, in 2014. Last November, at Connect(), Microsoft announced that it will transition to HockeyApp the next chance they got for mobile and desktop app developers.
Application Insights is not even an year old and is still under the beta phase. So, this revelation from the software giant comes as a surprise to many developers.
The company announced that on April 15, 2016, they will stop accepting new apps for iOS, Android, Windows Store and Windows Phone in Application Insights. Existing apps will continue to be shown in the Azure Portal. Around this date, developers will be given an option to transition their instrumentation key to HockeyApp.
The next key date is June 15, 2016, when the data from Application Insights will no longer be shown. You will be able to access this data using HockeyApp instead.
“We realize this transition is a turning point from our previous strategy and may cause some additional work for you,”
Microsoft Application Insights group program manager Thomas Dohmke wrote in the blog post announcing the development.
“Our goal with this shift is to provide you with the best experiences possible for you to distribute, test, monitor and manage your mobile apps. HockeyApp is the solution to provide you this experience.”
The company added that certain data that integrate with the Application Insights software development kits (SDKs) will work with HockeyApp SDKs.
