Microsoft Ignite 2018: Celebrating the Office 365 Community

by Jeremy Gatson on October 18, 2018

As we recover from all of the fun that was Microsoft Ignite 2018, we’re also energized by the growth of the Microsoft community. For us, one of the best parts of the show was meeting our amazing customers. From the bustling, vibrant show floor to our more personal customer happy hour, we love seeing the Spanning family grow each year.

As we mentioned in our pre-event blog post, there were many things we were looking forward to attending. How did it actually turn out? Catch up on the rest of our Ignite adventures below.

Top Topics

Listening and learning to experts from Microsoft allowed for us to stay on top of all the exciting innovations soon to debut. Embracing all Office 365 has to offer was the key objective for many sessions. Groups and Teams allow for more collaboration and employee engagement, and Microsoft is making these tools easier to use and administer throughout your organization. Groups and Teams Groups now offer more, and more robust, integrations with popular apps like SharePoint, Outlook, Teams, and Yammer, making it even more valuable for collaboration.

Another top topic was throttling. Microsoft shared that they had built-in protection — throttling — for massive loads, background processes, and similar high-demand work. To reduce the impact of throttling, they suggested that ISV partners like Spanning take specific actions they’ve reviewed with us, and use this new guidance.

Spanning has been working with Microsoft closely in order to improve backup times. By implementing their new recommendations, we’re seeing incredibly massive performance improvements. For example, one large Spanning customer has seen their backup time reduced from 24 hours to two minutes. Our relationship with Microsoft was made even stronger at Ignite, and I’m excited about how our partnership turns into benefits for our customers.

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Intelligent Cloud

Microsoft’s focal point of the Ignite expo was their Intelligent Cloud display, in which they showcased Microsoft’s goal to use AI to increase farming food production over the next 20 years. The large gyroscope display was truly impressive, as it towered two stories tall in the middle of the show floor, and had many interactive portions. Show attendees learned how Microsoft is developing a plan to use a combination of AI, real-time big data analysis, drones, and new techniques to enrich farming soil to increase the production of farmed food. We also learned that within the next 20 years, the world will need 70% more food than we currently produce, so, increasing farming efficiency is incredibly important. After completing the interactive demo, Microsoft gave attendees a t-shirt (who doesn’t love free swag?).

Best Practices

Based on our conversations at the Spanning booth, there are still a lot of people who are not aware that third-party backup for Office 365 is a best practice. Some thought that since Microsoft is making it harder to lose data in OneDrive and SharePoint, there’s no use case for solutions like Spanning.

Although Microsoft continues to harden their Office 365 apps against data loss, a rogue Global Admin can still wreak havoc by changing permissions or passwords. (Don’t just take my word for it. One of my coworkers shared this report on exactly how that could happen.) While Microsoft is secure, third-party backup is still what’s needed to protect your tenant and your data. That’s why more than 2,000 people came to our booth to learn more about Spanning.

Customer (Family) Happy Hour

Food, drinks, great conversations, and a special gift for our brand champions brought us even closer to our customer and partner family. We hosted a happy hour where various people from the Spanning community came from different parts of the world to celebrate. During the festivities, we were able to capture some of the love from our customers and partners in live interviews.