We had the opportunity to attend Microsoft’s combined Ignite and Envision events held in Orlando, taking place from September 24th till 28th2017. It was the first time Microsoft merged the two events, resulting in a conference that was attended by almost 30k people. As usual with Microsoft, analyst, influence and press attendance was massive.
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Want to read on? Here you go:
Microsoft is serious about Quantum – During Nadella’s keynote, the Microsoft CEO unveiled the vendor’s ambition in the field of quantum computing. Not too specific on what and when will be available hardware wise, but clear enough that Microsoft is serious on the investment. The most tangible parts of the overalls strategy that materialized in Orlando were with Visual Studio and Azure. Microsoft will provide a new programming language to build Quantum applications – and with that position itself early in the Quantum programming race. Likely this will not get enterprises to soon to build them, but the early platform will help Microsoft in research and academia. On the Azure side, Microsoft will provide a simulator for up to 30 Qubits, system wise that would be the largest system / simulated system out there as of now.  |
| Nadella talks Digital Transformation |
Cosmos DB gets air time – Cosmos DB, the former DocumentDB, got a lot of air time in the keynotes. And the database has a lot to offer: Easy setup, admin, data migration, global consistency and now has access to Azure functions to build serverless applications. A key component to consider for global next gen applications, with a strong NoSQL profile.
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| The three graphs at Microsoft |
Visual Studio gets a push – Though Ignite and Envision are not developer conferences, there was plenty of attention and airtime for Visual Studio. Not only does Visual Studio support a brand-new programming language for Quantum applications, it’s remains the developer platform for building next generation applications in the Microsoft ecosystem. That means that Microsoft is making it easier for developers to access the interesting innovative technologies of these days – speech recognition and machine learning. The bot framework is now well integrated and makes it easier for developers to build bot / chat based applications. The inherent fear of developers to be left behind, be eclipsed by other functions (e.g. Data Scientists. AI Pros etc.) is being addressed this way. And of course, Microsoft plays the DevOps, CI / CD and now – continuous innovation game. Putting more intelligence (and automation) in the development process will certainly be welcome by developer as well as enterprises. And Microsoft keeps building out capabilities that it has acquired with Xamarin, probably one of the best acquisitions Microsoft has made with a direct impact in developer and enterprise productivity.
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| Microsoft Hybrid Cloud Pillars |
Azure Stack is now GA - After a pivot from own hardware to partner hardware, Azure stack is now (finally) available for enterprises. The over one-year delay is a proof how complex the traditional architecture and technology roll out in the partner model is. But now Azure stack can be offered (alphabetically) by Cisco, Dell, HP and Lenovo. And with that Microsoft has the partners that are still planning to make substantial revenue on premises, and are grateful for Microsoft to offer Azure Stack. Likewise, are enterprises who still want / need to deploy on premises … with the option to move some or all that load to the (Azure) cloud later.
MyPOV
A good event for Microsoft, that showed Microsoft’s broad push across all its products. Customers will welcome that more pieces fit together (for instance CosmosDB and Azure Functions – even the brand-new ones in this case) and that existing products are strengthened (e.g. Visual Studio). But the even lacked the very big announcements, maybe because Build earlier in this year was announcement rich. Maybe because even the GA of major achievements, like GA of Azure Stack get consumed with continuous talk and announcements. Good to see Microsoft being early and laying a foundation for Quantum computing. This architecture is likely going to be the first computing architecture that will no be deployed in the enterprise - at all possibly. Key for all IaaS providers to have it early in the arsenal, especially given the novelty and challenges of Quantum computing.
On the concern side Microsoft took an even more notable timeout on the Hololens side. And despite making key announcements that matter to customers (for instance support for Kubernetes, Tensorflow, CloudFoundry), these partnerships were all mentioned in the keynotes but not shown in demos (I may have missed them) or announced in roadmaps. Instead a lot of innovation on Docker came to light, e.g. SQL Server 2017 can run in… a Docker container. The biggest challenge enterprises have with Microsoft is the absence of a holistic PaaS strategy. Microsoft has a strong element with Visual Studio, components with Flow and others, but needs to tie it all together to compete with the other PaaS offerings out there. On the flipside, Microsoft is solving massive problems when it comes to synthesizing the three graphs it has now - the Microsoft, Office and LinkedIn graphs. That takes time to sort out properly.
But for now – substantial progress – it cannot always be fireworks. Product development takes time and sometimes event schedules and product cycles don’t align. The good news is – customers are waiting and genuinely excited about the progress that Microsoft is making. Stay tuned.
More on Microsoft:
- Event Report - July 2017 Microsoft London AI Event - read here
- News Analysis - Microsoft to deliver Microsoft Cloud from datacenters in Africa - Azure learns Afrikaans to Zulu (and 9 more) - read here
- Event Report - Microsoft Build 2017 - Good Housekeeping, laying foundation, deliver on vision - read here
- Down Report – Power failure takes Azure services down - 3 Cloud Load Toads - read here
- Event Report - Microsoft Connect - No April's Fools - Linux, Google and more - read here
- First Take - Microsoft discovers teams - launches Microsoft Teams - read here
- News Analysis - Microsoft announces SAP's choice of Azure to help enterprises transform HR - The SaaS land grab is on - read here
- First Take - Microsoft Ignite - AI, Adobe and FPGA [From the Fences] - read here
- News Analysis - GE and Microsoft partner to bring Predix to Azure - Multi-Cloud becomes tangible for IoT - read here
- Market Move - Microsoft acquired Linked - Tons of synergies, start with Cortana, maybe too many - read here
- News Analysis - Microsoft opens Windows Holographic to partners for a new era of mixed reality - read here
- News Analysis - SAP and Microsoft usher in new era of partnership to accelerate digital transformation in the cloud - read here
- Musings - Will Microsoft's Hololens transform the Future of Work? Read here
- Event Report - Microsoft Build 2016 - A platform vision and plenty of tools for next generation applications - read here
- First Take - Microsoft Build 2016 - Day 1 Keynote Takeaways - read here
- Event Preview - Microsoft Build 2016 - Top 3 Things to watch for developers, managers and execs... read here
- News Analysis - Microsoft - New Hybrid Offerings Deliver Bottomless Capacity for Today's Data Explosion - read here
- News Analysis - Welcoming the Xamarin team to Microsoft - read here
- News Analysis - Microsoft announcements at Convergence Barcelona - Office365. Dynamics CRM and Power Apps
- News Analysis - Microsoft expands Azure Data Lake to unleash big data productivity - Good move - time to catch up - read here
- News Analysis - Microsoft and Salesforce Strengthen Strategic Partnership at Dreamforce 2015 - Good for joint customers - read here
- News Analyis - NetSuite announced Cloud Alliance with Microsoft - read here
- Event Report - Microsoft Build - Microsoft really wants to make developers' lives easier - read here
- First Hand with Microsoft Hololens - read here
- Event Report - Microsoft TechEd - Top 3 Enterprise takeaways - read here
- First Take - Microsoft discovers data ambience and delivers an organic approach to in memory database - read here
- Event Report - Microsoft Build - Azure grows and blossoms - enough for enterprises (yet)? Read here.
- Event Report - Microsoft Build Day 1 Keynote - Top Enterprise Takeaways - read here.
- Microsoft gets even more serious about devices - acquire Nokia - read here.
- Microsoft does not need one new CEO - but six - read here.
- Microsoft makes the cloud a platform play - Or: Azure and her 7 friends - read here.
- How the Cloud can make the unlikeliest bedfellows - read here.
- How hard is multi-channel CRM in 2013? - Read here.
- How hard is it to install Office 365? Or: The harsh reality of customer support - read here.
Want to learn more? Checkout the Storify collection below (if it doesn’t show up – check here). A Storify of Scott Guthrie's keynote can be found here.