Updates from European SharePoint, Office 365 & Azure Conference 2018

Our team consisting of OfficeExpert Product Manager, Stefan Fried, Consulting CEO, Henning Kunz, and our friendly sales team, Arne Bergmann, Karin Ackerl and Dominik Lübbe arrived in Copenhagen on November 26th for the European SharePoint, Office 365 & Azure Conference 2018. First things first, we set up our gold sponsor booth pictured. Located at booth number 13, we were just opposite the Microsoft booth and right next to the coffee machine.

Day 1 started with a bang… literally. A Danish group of drummers was the opening act before the official welcome which was followed by the first keynote session by Corporate Vice President – Microsoft Office, Jeff Teper. After his session, people dispersed into the hall to meet the many vendors exhibiting here. Toward the end of the day, the attendee’s satisfaction with the organization of the event was very apparent. As a result of frequent directional signage, excellent communication with one another as well as speakers and vendors through the event app, the logistics have been a dream.

The sessions at the European SharePoint, Office 365 & Azure Conference that we have attended show how the evolution of Office 365 functionalities like SharePoint and Teams have improved the end user experience. This explains the interest at our booth in regard to not only data analytics of Microsoft Teams but also user adoption – how to bring more users to utilize the many services that Microsoft offers. Companies are ready to take the next step. It was particularly exciting too, to see promises made at Ignite, realized and presented at ESPC.

Some more session takeaways include the 2nd generation access to the data objects in the cloud as well as services offered by the cloud thanks to the recurring discussion of the emergence of the Microsoft Graph API. The obvious benefit here is for the customer who is able to use this. What is exciting for us though, is in slowly moving away from PowerShell, the API can be implemented in our products in order to improve them even further and at a faster rate.

Wednesday was another jam-packed day. A highlight for us was Stefan Fried’s case study presentation. In the recording below he explains how he was able to help an Office 365 customer with around 150k users in an international automotive enterprise with Skype user simulations and monitoring. This day, just like the first, offered so many knowledgeable speakers sharing their expertise to attendees. Rencore’s CEO, Matthias Einig, for example, shares his favorite keynote in the final video below.

During conversations held with speakers, vendors and attendees alike, one question always came up. Why are you here? The responses were also similar. After Ignite in the US and next to the European Collaboration Summit in Europe, it is THE European Microsoft conference to be a part of. Vendors have the opportunity to showcase their product developments, meet existing customer face-to-face and introduce themselves to potential business partners.

Toward the end of the conference, the location for ESPC 2019 was revealed. For panagenda HQ it is a little closer to home and we are already looking forward to meeting many of you again in Prague.

We are so overjoyed by the interest that was shown in OfficeExpert and the conversations had with potential customers at our booth but also the knowledge transfer with a potential business partners. If other vendors feel we would be a good fit when analyzing and monitoring enterprise O365 environments, then please get in touch. Until Prague, we welcome our next personal conversation with you and hope you enjoy watching our videos.