Microsoft is making some changes to its event lineup for 2017, with the biggest one being the cancellation of the Envision conference for business leaders previously slated for February. EVP and CMO Chris Capossela made the announcement—and gave Microsoft's rationale—in a blog post on Thursday:
As always, our goal is to provide high-quality event experiences that deliver impactful guidance and enable our vibrant communities to network, grow and learn from each other.
[W]e are shifting Microsoft Envision, our event for business leaders previously planned for February, to become part of Microsoft Ignite Sept. 25-29. The partnership between business and IT leaders has never been more important, so Microsoft Ignite will now cater to both audiences and help foster collaboration between the two. We’ll have more details to share in the coming months.
Microsoft is also renaming its Worldwide Partner Conference to Microsoft Inspire, a title that "reflects how Microsoft and our partner community inspire each other to innovate and deliver powerful new solutions to customers, Capossela wrote.
As for Envision, the move represents a further interweaving of Microsoft's Dynamics business into the rest of the company. The first Envision event was announced in January and held in April, replacing the long-standing Convergence event for Dynamics business users and IT administrators. Technical Dynamics content was pushed to this year's Ignite conference.
Now all Dynamics content will end up at Ignite, which becomes an even broader-based conference comparable to the likes of Oracle OpenWorld. (Microsoft's developer-focused Build event remains on the agenda for 2017.)
The Bottom Line
It's not clear whether economic considerations played any role in Microsoft's decision to drop Envision as a standalone event. But overall, the move does make strategic sense.
"Microsoft is consolidating its event strategies to address the tech buyer, the business buyer and partners," says Constellation Research founder and CEO R "Ray" Wang. "It's part of the extension of the One Microsoft strategy as they work towards better alignment of customer needs, partner needs, and the product portfolio."
"As the product portfolios converge, customers will want to gain a bigger picture of what Microsoft will do," Wang adds. "So as long as Microsoft balances the product needs and the larger themes, then customers will start to see how it benefits them. Microsoft has made strides in trying to bring business and IT together, and this is what the objective of the combined Envision and Ignite conferences should accomplish with better programming and alignment to the larger issues of the day."
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