2019 Europe: Extreme 365 and User Group Summit review

This year, Extreme 365 and User Group Summit in Europe were held in the same place, almost at the same time - in RAI exhibition center in Amsterdam, 24.03 - 29.03. This is mainly due to the fact that both conferences have joint together and administration will operate them jointly further on. As usual, Awara IT people were there, including myself, to learn latest news and meet with product team representatives.

RAI exhibition center in Amsterdam can accept 20,000+ participants at one time, which is a lot more than both conferences had this time. Honestly the trip to Amsterdam is a lot easier than to Dubrovnik, where the Extreme 365 was last year (I even heard scary stories of 52 hours trip while returning back to Canada from Dubrovnik).

As usual, there has been lot of news, meetings, networking and hot topic sessions.

Christy Spokely, Vice President Partner Strategy Dynamics Communities, made a keynote, announcing latest news:

Christy presented Luc Van De Velde, who will jointly take over Extreme 365 and User Group groups administration topics:

History of Extreme 365 and UG has been demonstrated - exponential growth:

More events to be attended this year as customer events, including 490 local chapters in 55 countries!

Microsoft was presented by Cecilia Flombaum, One Commercial Partner Business Applications Lead, and she gave many valuable insights - both on the stage at keynote and in smaller discussions.

Apart from regular obligatory marketing information, Cecillia made emphasis on upcoming changes to the partner network capabilities and incentives, as well as on Microsoft plans to deliver more efforts in the area of education of new IT pros, assisting partners in on-boarding new professionals.

Microsoft is making a bet for highly capable partners to drive customer success:

In this respect, more changes announced to learning resources, exams and certification. Microsoft Learn content for Business Applications; new functional consultant certification exams, many launched in beta from 31st of March, 2019; many public tech bootcamps, instructor-led trainings and practice enablements:

More changes to Microsoft Business Applications Academic Community:

And plans for Y2020 for Business Applications Enablement and Capacity

More changes to Microsoft Partner Center, including better dashboards and score cards:

Overall, Business Applications ecosystem looks very promising today:

with very promising Market Momentum:

Still, Go-to-Market priorities are the same for the vendor:

Time to invest to fuel the growth: 45% growth on partner-led customer adds:

Finally, exams for #MSDyn365BC are not yet officially announced with the release date, however Cecilia ensured that it is in real progress and exam team is now busy with that - we should wait a little till summer to get more exact schedule.

Stay tuned!