What You Missed at Microsoft Inspire 2020

12 augusztus 2020
Christopher Rozzi
1.8 min minutes to read

For the last 18 years, Microsoft hosted tens of thousands of individuals in one of the IT industry’s largest partner conferences. This event known as Microsoft Inspire pivoted to an all-digital format due to the global pandemic. In three month’s time, Microsoft pulled together a virtual partner experience like no other.

Microsoft opened the digital event to it’s entire channel ecosystem at no-cost and offering access to corenote sessions, on-demand content, breakouts, and partner to partner networking. The production quality and session coordination was of the highest quality.

Respond, Recover, Reimagine

Gavriella Schuster, Judson Althoff, Nick Parker and of course Satya Nadella headlined the opening address to partners. It was extremely clear that the theme throughout the event was going to focus on surviving and rebuilding from the pandemic. The stage was set as Gavriella addressed remote work, business continuity and recovery, and the future of digitally enabled companies.

Through many customer use cases, Microsoft impressed upon their partners that digitally enabled companies were much more prepared to deliver work from home operations for their employees. Industries such as telehealth, retail, manufacturing and education drastically changed the way they operate and technology played a critical role in their transformation. The term “business resiliency” emerged and the obligation we have to all our customers to help them in their response, recovery and reimagining the future.

Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, addressed the mission of Microsoft and the corporate social responsibility of the organization. He did not shy aware from the difficult topics of public health, economic crisis, racial injustices, inequality and sustainability.

“Global issues require a global response”

Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft

The Partner Opportunity in FY21

Corporate Vice President, Gavriella Schuster, highlighted the partner opportunity by partner type. Value-added resellers, Hosters, Telecom partners, SI’s, MSPs and ISVs respectively received their marching orders for the next fiscal year. Microsoft flagship solutions such as Teams, Azure, Windows Virtual Desktop, Data Analytics and AI all received their due attention.

Microsoft marketing, investments, incentives and partner program announcements helped to solidify the mechanics by which the core solutions are being brought to market. The Data Center Migration and Azure Migration Program were presented as value drivers for customers in their migration to the cloud.

Microsoft’s Digital Inspire 2020 had hundreds of sessions that an individual could attend. The content will likely remain active on the Inspire website in the weeks ahead for previously registered users. We encourage you to visit the site to continue viewing the content. For a further breakdown and analysis of the event, please watch SoftwareONE’s Unite session as Paul O’Connor and Chris Rozzi share more insights.