Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2015 - Day 1 Keynote

WPC is Microsoft's way of kicking off the new fiscal year, and in today's post I'll give a summary of some of the System Builder, OEM and Reseller related portions of the Day 1 keynote, with more information to come over the next few days.

Satya Nadella, CEO, discussed the role on-premises infrastructure plays in a world that is embracing the cloud, with a focus on those that need on-prem for things such as data sovereignty. Importantly, these servers were positioned as the edge servers for the public cloud servoces that customers are consuming. The second portion of his spech was on the reinvention of business process and productivity, bringing them together rathar than treating them as seperate things. This blending, such as Office 365 and Dynamics working more closely together, is possible via the extensibility that third parties can perform. Category definitions have started impeding solution deliveries and customer capabilities, and these artificial walls need to be broken down.

Windows 10 coverage was obviously a major component of the keynote, with the July 29th deadline looming. Stimulating demand, driving innovation, new form factors, and new usage scenarios are key to this. There was a great Hololens demonstration, as well as a Windows 10 user interface demonstration that covered things that WIndows users should love. These included the Start Menu, universal apps, jump lists, new Alt_Tab view, virtual desktops, and some huge improvements in Snap for those of you with high resolution displays.

New capabilities in Cortana, were also a focus, and while we don't have final confirmation of the date for Cortana inside of Windows 10 for the Australian market, which was a popular topic during the recent Windows 10 webcasts that we did with our distribution partners, we do know that it's coming. Many of us have changed the region on our PCs to expose Cortana functionality, but stay tuned for more information for local availability. WIndows As A Service was also discussed.

Office 2016 realtime collaboration in desktop apps was shown, and Universal Apps scaling from PCs to Windows phones was also shown, and the user interface enhancements and new capabilities were very well received.

I'll be able to dig into more detail on these topics in more details as the breakout sessions start later today, so say tuned for more.