SharePoint is Back: Recapping Microsoft Ignite 2016 [On-Demand Webinar]

Hi Ya’ll! Last week, we hosted an interactive, question-and-answer webinar session in which we recapped lessons learned from Microsoft Ignite 2016.

Our goal was to bring clarity to the news that came out of Atlanta and help you cut through information overload from the biggest show of the year – all in one hour.

Not an easy task. But our guys killed it!

In this post, I’m going to give you the top observations and takeaways from our panelists, and also explain the topics you wanted us to cover during our webinar.

Check it out for yourself with our on-demand recording and ask any questions you may have in our comments section below:

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Dux’s Top Takeaways from Microsoft Ignite 2016: @meetdux

#1: Microsoft Is Better Than Ever!

• Ignite 2016 was much, much better than the first Ignite in 2015. I think from the feedback both from the customers and people we talked to who attended had a great experience, but more importantly, had a clear vision and clear picture of where Microsoft’s headed.
• First and foremost, Microsoft is back. And what I mean by that is if you look at all the innovations and introductions that Microsoft is doing, really, they are forward thinking and looking forward to how they can help the enterprise.
• In the keynote of day one, Julia White, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft, who looks after Azure, talked about the meaning of IT has now changed. IT today stands for “innovation technology.”

[Check out my interview with Julia White, as she and I talk innovation and transformation at Microsoft Ignite 2016]

• Microsoft and the new are both exciting and inspiring. And the reason being is that all these suite of technologies that Microsoft offers in the cloud, we can truly innovate and help the business grow and more importantly not worry about keeping the lights on.

 #2: SharePoint Is Back!

• SharePoint is back. Kudos to the SharePoint team, SharePoint OneDrive team to be more specific.
• The team put in a lot of innovations, but more importantly, they listened to the customer. In the past few years, one may say that, “Look, we haven’t really heard anything from SharePoint or OneDrive,” but with the leadership of Jeff Teper and Seth Patton, they’ve done a lot of innovation and they’re a lot more transparent in communicating as to what the roadmap looks like.

#3: Customers are Ready for Office 365

• Customers today are ready for the cloud. And it’s not just us, you know, small customers or commercial customers, customers across the spectrum around the world, they see the value of the cloud, they understand what Microsoft brings to the table.
• And not only for me but for us as AvePoint, that’s very exciting because being able to partner with Microsoft, supporting our customers to drive better business value with their technology and investments, it’s really an exciting thing.

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Our Experts Top Observations from Microsoft Ignite 2016

Observation #1 from Microsoft Ignite 2016:

My biggest observation was the amazing sort of response and interest in both SharePoint and Office 365 Groups was really, really powerful and I thought, you know, great news for us, obviously, because that’s a space we play pretty hardcore in. – John Peluso, Sr. VP of Product Strategy at AvePoint

Observation #2 from Microsoft Ignite 2016:

My biggest observation there was at the first Ignite, everyone was shocked at how much Office 365 was being pushed down everyone’s throat. It was a replacement for the SharePoint Conference and everyone was like, “What about SharePoint Server?” And this time, we actually didn’t get that feedback at all. Almost every customer we talked to either had part of Office 365 deployed today or was ready to dive all in on Groups in a way that we’ve never really seen before. So definitely the temperature of the market is changing. – John Hodges, VP of Product Strategy at AvePoint

Observation #3 from Microsoft Ignite 2016:

My biggest takeaway from Ignite was just how broad the privacy and compliance implications are becoming as we move into this new hybrid taxonomy and how we’re going to handle that moving forward. – Ben Oster, Product Analyst at AvePoint

Observation #4 from Microsoft Ignite 2016:

I think my most interesting thing was to see Microsoft’s commitment to Groups as well as defining a clear strategy with PowerApps and Flow for where they’re going to be going for extension on top of the Office 365 and SharePoint platforms. – Shyam Oza, Senior Product Manager at AvePoint

Observation #5 from Microsoft Ignite 2016:

My biggest at Ignite, there’s two things really, SharePoint is back, and second is the conversations are very mature now in terms of the cloud, right? People aren’t kicking and screaming about going to the clouds. They have accepted the fact, they’re now looking at ways to better innovate and grow their business in the cloud. – Dux Raymond Sy, Microsoft MVP and Chief Technology Officer of AvePoint Public Sector

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Our Audience’s Interest about Microsoft Ignite 2016:

How do you make a webinar about Microsoft Ignite 2016 more interesting? Ask your registrants what interests them!

With over 1,000 registrants interested in a live question and answer webinar, we thought it would be best to ask what topics our audience would like us to cover to get the most out of their time with us! Nearly 200 respondents let us know what topics they were interested in and also what specific topic they would like us to cover.

Here are the results:

 Popular Topics from Microsoft Ignite 2016

#1: SharePoint 2016 & Hybrid – 35%

“We’ve got a number of great SharePoint announcements coming. Everything if you’re on-premises, or in the clouds, or somewhere in-between with hybrid, we announced Feature Pack 1, which includes a ton of new grade hybrid value, a ton of new value we accrued directly back from Office 365.”

Bill Baer, Senior Technical Product Manager for SharePoint, Microsoft – @williambaer from AvePoint Dux Quax Interview at Microsoft Ignite 2016We covered the following topics and answered your questions:

We covered the following topics and answered your questions:

• SharePoint Feature Pack 1
• OneDrive for Business User Experience (UX)
• SharePoint App Launcher custom tiles
• Enhanced Min Role
• Unified auditing
• Unified Taxonomy with Hybrid Managed Metadata Services (MMS)

#2: Office 365 Groups – 22%

“Office 365 Groups is a key ingredient for group collaboration 365. Whether you’re working on files, whether you’re sending emails, whether you’re meeting with people, Groups is one of the key ingredient to help you move from task to task.”

Christophe Fiessinger, Program Manager on the Office 365 Groups Team, Microsoft – @cfiessinger from AvePoint Dux Quax Interview at Microsoft Ignite 2016

We covered the following topics and answered your questions:

• Group Lifecycle
• Soft Delete
• Team Site and Yammer Integration

#3: Migration and FastTrack – 18%

“The SharePoint community is an incredibly passionate group, I think we gave them a lot of what they wanted this week and the feedback has been terrific. Lots of reasons to go to the cloud, like FastTrack Migration for free, migrating people, basic SharePoint sites to the cloud.”

Jeff Teper, Corporate Vice President – OneDrive and SharePoint, Microsoft – @jeffteper from AvePoint Dux Quax Interview at Microsoft Ignite 2016

We covered the following topics and answered your questions:

• Free migration for 150 licenses
• Exchange, SharePoint, File Shares, Box
• Online vs. Drive Shipping

#4: PowerApps and Flow – 10%

“Do PowerApps do everything that InfoPath used to be able to do? No, but PowerApps do so many other things, because out of the box you can connect to four dozen different data sources. So, we think it does so many more things. We’re really pumped.”

Chris McNulty, Senior Product Manager for SharePoint and OneDrive, Microsoft – @cmcnulty2000 from AvePoint Dux Quax Interview at Microsoft Ignite 2016

We covered the following topics and answered your questions:

• Answer for InfoPath
• InfoPath Supported Until 2026

#5: Security and Compliance – 6%

“We are delivering to our IT professionals the controls they need to govern, to manage, to secure and to ensure compliance of their SharePoint service.

Jeff Teper, Corporate Vice President – OneDrive and SharePoint, Microsoft from Office Blog

We covered the following topics and answered your questions:

• Aggregated collection model
• Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) and Threat Intelligence
• Advanced Data Governance
• All data to live in a single Activity Management API
• Easy integration with external systems
• Activity Management API integration with Azure Machine Learning

#6: General Announcements – 5%

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What Are You Waiting for?

Go watch our On-Demand Webinar recapping Microsoft Ignite 2016 now!

More from AvePoint about Microsoft Ignite 2016:

Dux Quax at Microsoft Ignite 2016!

Watch as AvePoint Public Sector CTO Dux Raymond Sy interviews Microsoft leadership and community influences on the latest announcements from Ignite live from the show floor.

• Microsoft’s Julia White Talks Innovation and Transformation
• Microsoft’s Jeff Teper Rounds Up the Top 8 Innovations Added to SharePoint in 2016
• Microsoft’s Bill Baer Talks SharePoint Announcements at Microsoft Ignite
• Microsoft’s Chrisophe Fiessinger Shares the Elevator Pitch for Office 365 Groups
• Microsoft’s Mike McLean Gives the Scoop on Office 365 Planner
• Microsoft’s Rachel Braunstein Gives Insight into the Microsoft Partner Network
• Microsoft’s Jeremy Thake on Why Azure is More than Just Infrastructure as a Service
• NBCUniversal’s Charles Williams on Transforming a Deployment in the New Age of Microsoft
• Microsoft’s Dan Holme Shares Customer Feedback on SharePoint’s Comeback
• Microsoft’s Anna Chu Connects IT Pros Through the Microsoft Tech Community
• Constellation Research’s Alan Lepofsky on How Microsoft AI Will Change the Way We Work
• SharePoint Consultant Susan Hanley on Sustainable Adoption and the Future of Microsoft

Join the Conversation with AvePoint’s Blogs About Ignite 2016!

• 3 Takeaways from Microsoft Ignite 2016
• AvePoint’s Take on Tech: Microsoft Ignite News Roundup
• Microsoft Ignite Keynotes and News: What We’ve Learned So Far