Microsoft Inspire 2017: The Twitter Recap
- Complete Microsoft Inspire 2017 coverage here.
RCP Editor in Chief Scott Bekker upheld his yearly tradition this week of live-Tweeting his way through Microsoft's annual partner conference. Here are the highlights from this year's keynotes:
Presiding over the kickoff presentation was Ron Huddleston, head of Microsoft's One Commercial Partner business, which was created just this year. Huddleston shared Microsoft's vision for the new unit.
Up next was Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who began with a sweeping overview of Microsoft's focus areas for the next year.
Nadella also announced the new Microsoft 365 solution, which had undergone two previous name changes.
Microsoft marketing executive Alysa Taylor took the stage to demo new Dynamics 365 apps, including a just-released sales solution that's integrated with LinkedIn.
Nadella also shared more details about the long-awaited Azure Stack, which is now in the preorder stage.
Brad Smith, Microsoft's chief legal officer, discussed Microsoft's place in today's era of nation-state attacks.
Smith noted that 90 percent of all security attacks start with an e-mail.
He also urged partners to wean their customers from the 16-year-old Windows XP for clear security reasons.
In discussing the rise of state-sponsored security and privacy incursions, Smith advocated for a "digital Geneva Convention" and made Microsoft's stance clear.
Gavriella Schuster, head of the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Group, followed Smith onstage and described Microsoft's reasoning behind its recent sales reorg.
She then shared the top partner questions that Microsoft hopes to answer with the restructuring.
Microsoft provided some Microsoft Partner Network (MPN) stats:
Some key themes emerged over the week.
And finally:
Posted by Scott Bekker on July 14, 2017