When Microsoft announced that Convergence was being replaced by Envision many people were left confused. Why the name change? What does this mean for the conference itself? Who should attend? How does this effect the focus?
If you attended Convergence in 2015, you could tell that Microsoft was ready for a change. Satya Nadella was pushing the idea of "One Microsoft", and Microsoft’s ERP offerings were only a portion of the focus.
Flash forward to this week - all of our questions surrounding Envision have been answered. Here are our takeaways from the new tradeshow...
Focus of the Conference
If you had any lingering ideas that Envision would still be like Convergence, those should be gone now. The focus of this conference has massively shifted, as has Microsoft's vision in general. Attendees included top company executives, department managers, and other decision makers.
While many are quick to dismiss this new gathering, don't expect Microsoft to get cold feet and bring back Convergence.
The Audience
Microsoft Envision brought together a good mix of Microsoft customers and partners. This opens up opportunities to see how the vision of "One Microsoft" can be achieved through the use of many products. For example someone attending because they are a Microsoft Dynamics AX customer had the opportunity to see how they could leverage PowerBI, Office 365, and Azure to create a more connected and efficient business environment.
What to expect in the future? Microsoft knew the radical change in conference structure would ruffle feathers, but Satya Nadella and the rest of Redmond will, for the most part, stick to their vision. That being said, there may very well be an attempt to beef up some of the session content surrounding Dynamics AX and other product specific content. While this could make it more enticing for customers who currently do not intend to go back next year, we could see even lower attendance and a smaller expo if the message isn’t big enough or released early enough.
The fact is that very few partner products were showcased. While many of the top partners (like Ellipse Solutions) had a booth, the expo floor was much smaller with very limited product selection. The attendance and the expo traffic was significantly lower than Convergence. The truth is that the top executives are not typically involved with the selection of "add-on products", so they focused on strategic, visionary sessions – not deciding what third-party product would be a good match for their requirements.
At this point and time, the go-to conference for Microsoft Dynamics AX end-users is without a doubt the AXUG Summit, while Microsoft Envision should be attended by decision makers wanting to learn more about the latest technologies offered by Microsoft.
