Glimpses of Our Experience at Microsoft Inspire

Microsoft Inspire which can be termed as one of the richest technology carnivals took place in Las Vegas between 14^th – 18^th July 2019. The event threw light on some of the latest technologies and future developments in Microsoft products.

With the enthusiasm to understand about the latest Microsoft technologies, our Exigo Tech team attended the event and gathered several meaningful insights from it. Here are some glimpses from our visit:

Q. How was your experience at the Microsoft Inspire? Did you interact with other Microsoft partners at the event? Would you like to mention any of those experiences?

A. It was a great experience as far as understanding Microsoft’s vision is concerned. We were amazed by the way the technology giant (Microsoft) is focusing on pushing the most collaborative tool – Microsoft Teams in the market. Microsoft currently is stressing partners to innovate and create solutions by keeping Microsoft Teams at the heart of it. We were thrilled knowing about the power that Microsoft is giving in the hands of citizen developers. Citizen developers are those who have little or no coding knowledge but understand what the business requires and how automation can help them with their mundane tasks. Utilising the Power Platform which includes tools like PowerApps and MS Flow has simplified the process of creating applications. We were also shown several stories wherein the citizen developer created an app using Microsoft applications to manage reservations and seat bookings at a restaurant.

Q. Digital transformation was certainly the most talked about the concept at the event. Do you believe that Australian businesses are ready to evolve digitally? If yes, then how Exigo Tech can help businesses to hop on this bandwagon?

A. We do realise that technology takes time to travel from the States to the Australian market. Initially, the time gap was around one-two years but now we can see that this gap is diminishing slowly and gradually. However, the Australian businesses are evolving at a great speed and to keep the wheel of growth paddling this fast, digital transformation is important. There is a resource crunch as far as the IT sector is concerned in Australia because almost 20,000 jobs are generated every year in this domain, as pointed by Steven Worrall – Managing director for Microsoft Australia. He also stated that to bridge this gap Microsoft is depending on its partners to create solutions and bring the wave of digital transformation on the Australian business landscape.

Exigo Tech, being Microsoft Solutions Partner, is definitely supporting this vision of Microsoft of transforming the businesses digitally. Exigo Tech understands the concerns of every business irrespective of their industry, arrange workshops for them and hence can help them automate and digitalise every process right from the starting to the end.

Q. According to you, which technologies or Microsoft applications will bring the wave of change on the business landscape in 2019? Discuss some product roadmaps that will change the way businesses function in 2020.

A. As I mentioned earlier, Microsoft Teams and PowerApps is being pushed in the market by the technology giant. The concept which captured my attention was the use of AI builder with Microsoft Power Platform which will enable citizen developers to create applications and conclude critical tasks in a short period of time with accuracy. For example, an app is developed which when you take a photograph of a business card captures the information stored in it such as the first name, last name and the contact number and enters it directly into the CRM solution. The same combination of artificial intelligence and PowerApps can be used for inventory management and other real-time business scenarios.

It was also interesting to learn about the use of Hololens with Microsoft Dynamics 365 apps. This mixed reality will rule the business landscape in 2020 and will help businesses improve collaboration amongst the employees and accelerate the training process of new joiners. The entire setup will revolutionise the manner in which remote assistance is given and corresponding solutions are designed. Customer insights also remained the most discussed concept. It will help businesses to pull data from various applications, link it with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and tailor enhanced customer experiences with predictive analysis. The year 2020 will be all about creating a modern workplace with the inclusion of AI in meetings, full-fledged integration of Microsoft PowerApps and Flow. Microsoft will also focus on data security solutions such as it will bring innovations on the identity protection front, enhance the compliance capabilities and more.

Q. Any special key takeaways from the conference sessions that you attended.

A. I can quote how Microsoft has transformed over the years is amazing and spell-bounding. Initially, the technology giant was keen on selling and designing solutions which included only Microsoft products. But the times are different now, Microsoft has changed this mindset and is encouraging the integration of its products with the third-party apps. We also came to know about Azure Lighthouse that allows partners to differentiate between managed services and benefit from greater efficiency and governance. We learned that as a partner we have many skills to acquire such as Windows server, migration of SQL server to Microsoft Azure, Linux and Open source database migration to Microsoft Azure, Datawarehouse migration to Microsoft Azure, modernisation of web applications in Microsoft Azure and Kubernetes on Microsoft Azure.