03.11.2022

Insights from Microsoft Ignite

New features and services that strike a chord with our customers.

We were there at Microsoft Ignite 2022 in Munich! Being able to meet with business contacts in person again at an event was a real highlight.

And as a Microsoft partner, we at Campana & Schott are always eager to see what’s new in the Microsoft 365 productivity suite.

My colleagues Bastian Emondts (Business Area Lead Operations), Madeleine Walter (Expertise Cluster Lead Application Platforms), and Ramón Roales-Welsch (Expertise Cluster Lead Data & AI), and I, Laura Borchers (Senior Consultant), would like to take a look back at Microsoft Ignite. I asked them a few questions to that end.

After so long working remotely, all of us were eager to finally attend a business event in person with colleagues again. What really stuck with you from this year’s Ignite?

This was my first chance to be there in person for a Microsoft event, not just logging in remotely. It was an awesome experience to meet many of my contacts in real life. To me, that made Ignite a big networking event. The venue was perfect for that, with a lot of connection zones and a big lounge.

Ramón Roales-Welsch
Expertise Cluster Lead Data & AI
Campana & Schott

One highlight for me was getting to try out the Microsoft HoloLens in person. I had only seen promotional videos of it before. They reminded me a bit of an episode of a sci-fi series. All attendees had the chance to test the glasses at the HoloLens Demo Lab during the event in Munich. Viewing your own graffiti from all sides in 3D or moving things around the room was super cool. It seemed very real, and the possibilities are practically limitless.

Madeleine Walter
Expertise Cluster Lead Application Platforms
Campana & Schott

As the announcements from previous years already indicated, it’s impressive to see how much Microsoft incorporates individual services and functions from the three Microsoft clouds intelligently, thereby releasing completely new services. Some of the announcements, including at this Ignite, reflect the same pattern: Microsoft Places is various existing functions incorporated into a new service.

Bastian Emondts
Business Area Lead Operations
Campana & Schott

Which features do you think will have an especially big impact on us and our customers?

Two main things stood out to me: first, the cooperation between Microsoft and SAP on integrating SAP data into Azure Synapse Analytics, and second, the integration of additional Microsoft data hubs, like Dataverse and MS Graph, into Azure Synapse Analytics. This shows the prospect that Synapse will become more and more important at any digital business as a central and modern machine. There have already been a number of inquiries that were waiting for this very feature, and now they have a lot of leverage for realization. That’s why I believe these interfaces will be used in many scenarios within our customers’ organizations.

Ramón Roales-Welsch
Expertise Cluster Lead Data & AI
Campana & Schott

Microsoft had a number of things up its sleeve that will be relevant to our customers in the business applications segment. I’m thinking especially of the new Power Platform features that have been announced, like the simplification of low-code development through AI, co-authoring in Power Apps, automatic data formatting in Flows, and the built-in bot that offers support for finding content or experienced consultants.

Madeleine Walter
Expertise Cluster Lead Application Platforms
Campana & Schott

To me, the ongoing evolution of MS Teams as a platform or operating layer is THE subject our customers will need to look at more going forward. Microsoft views collaborative apps as a big evolutionary step in working on processing Microsoft technologies and is really pushing this subject onto the market. In the medium term, there will be no way for IT departments to avoid developing a strategy and governance processes on the topic of Teams as a platform.

Bastian Emondts
Business Area Lead Operations
Campana & Schott

How can you integrate the new features and services into the year-end spurt in 2022? What do you have on your agenda?

We just recently launched a few exciting new projects with our customers in the area of data solution assessments. What we are seeing more and more as we work with our customers is that especially in the field of data, it isn’t enough to simply provide tools. The big challenge is to use them effectively. And that’s where our data strategy offerings strike a chord, of course. We use them to work with customers to analyze where their biggest added value lies in the field of data and analytics and then craft a roadmap for how that added value can in fact be realized with Microsoft solutions. Questions like “How do I get relevant data?” and “How do I use or analyze the data for profitable business decisions?” will always be important.

Ramón Roales-Welsch
Expertise Cluster Lead Data & AI
Campana & Schott

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be taking a closer look at how we can boost the superpower of low-code platforms – using best practices from professional development, meaning integrations with Visual Studio, GitHub and Azure DevOps. We also plan to test and evaluate use cases for the fifth member of the Power Platform family – Power Pages, the latest product for creating advanced business websites.

Madeleine Walter
Expertise Cluster Lead Application Platforms
Campana & Schott

My focus for the final weeks of the year is on exciting projects with new customers. I can contribute the fresh impetus in terms of Team applications in M365, Azure and Power Platform directly in these projects.

Bastian Emondts
Business Area Lead Operations
Campana & Schott

Our takeaway

The combination of a wealth of exciting updates, networking, and fun factors made Ignite a successful event across the board. We absorbed the many new developments and are looking forward to implementing them with our customers. We definitely have plenty of things to work on and explore – and we can’t wait to see what innovations are announced at Ignite 2023!

Author

Laura Borchers

Senior Consultant | Head of Data & AI

Additional links

Microsoft 365
Topnews von der Microsoft Ignite