Microsoft held it’s first Ignite conference this past week in Chicago. Ignite combines previous Microsoft conferences like TechEd and I think SharePoint and others. Unlike Build Ignite is about managing IT and services like Offic365. For me there wasn’t much news but there were still some interesting bits of information.
One of the biggest was the Windows Update for Business. The new Update allows businesses to stagger updates and control which users get which feature. Secondly Microsoft released a public preview of Office 2016. Office featured quite heavily at Ignite with news about Office365 and OneDrive. The news around OneDrive was interesting; for the first time we got a look at the roadmap for coming features and updates. The big news is OneDrive will be consolidating its consumer and business products on both the front and back ends. With Office Office365 is adding the newest Office application, Sway, to 365.
One of the more interesting events, or set of events, was Ignite had multiple sessions around Microsoft hardware. There was one for Windows 10 on phones. The session went over a bit of what was covered at Build, but it also covered Microsoft Lumia. While it was brief the Lumia discussion did confirm that there will be high end hardware (so you with the pitchfork and torchlight can go home). Ignite also held a number of sessions on the Surface.
There were the obvious ones about deploying Surface devices in workplaces. But there were two that were about design and development. One was an overview about the development about the Surface Pro 3. This one was interesting because it went into the cost of development and some of the reasoning behind certain design choices. Now the second one was done by Surface’s Creative director Ralf Groene. It was much more an overview of the Surface brand but it interesting because it describe the history of the Surface and the process by which it was made. (This will be its own post).
Of Spaceships and Boomboxes 