Microsoft’s recent announcement of Azure Container Instances, a new service designed to run software containers in the cloud more easily, is yet another example of how the company is interested in attracting Node.js  developers to join the party.

“We want to make it a much easier for developers to move on from their existing paradigms to these new cloud-native paradigms,” said Microsoft Corp. expert Gaurav Seth (pictured) of the Javascript runtime built on Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine.  “We have this mantra that we’re trying to follow, which is ‘any app, any developer, any platform.’”

The principal project manager at Microsoft and a board member at the Node.js Foundation visited with Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s mobile livestreaming studio, during Node Summit in San Francisco, California. They discussed Microsoft’s engagement with the Node community and the role of open-source in the Azure platform.

Implementing Node.js across different models

Microsoft is encouraging Node.js developers to take full advantage of Azure-based opportunities, including serverless functions, containers or virtual machine technologies.

“We’ve been working to make sure that Node.js has a great story across all the different compute models that we support on Azure,” Seth said.

Through Seth’s participation in the Node.js Foundation, he’s become more engaged within the Node community, along with his colleagues, he explained. A number of Microsoft engineers are working with different Node groups, and one outcome has been making Node.js work with Chakra, Microsoft’s JavaScript engine.

Part of Microsoft’s mission is to help the open-source community have a productive experience on the Azure platform. “The actual fact today is that Azure has a great story for Linux and for open-source tools,” Seth said. “We want to make sure that open-source developers who come and work on our platform are successful.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Node Summit 2017.

Photo: SiliconANGLE