Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) announced on July 21 that it is consolidating a number of its standalone IT pro-focused trade-shows into a single event, which is scheduled in May 2015, in Chicago. The company will be replacing the previous TechED, Microsoft Management Summit, SharePoint, Lync and Exchange conference into a single and new unified tech conference.
“We’re excited to announce the inaugural unified Microsoft commercial technology event the week of May 4, 2015,” Microsoft said in a blog post.
Microsoft Build to remain intact
In short, it is exactly the mega conference, a new event that comes up with all technology updates for all of the Office servers plus MMS, which seems like a curious add-on to the Office fold.
On the Channel 9 blog on July 21, the billion-dollar company announced a new event. The company executive declared that the new conference will be held on May 4, 2015 in Chicago. They declare that they would provide more details in September 2014 about the event.
The rumor have been circulating since this announcement for a while that Microsoft planned to phase out its TechEd conferences the same way that the company discontinued the Microsoft Management Summit.
However, Build, Microsoft’s windows development conference will still happen independent of this new unified event. Also, the company have said there will be a separate Worldwide Partner Conference in 2015, in Orlando. Also, the change affects only the events scheduled in 2015, so, this year’s TechEd Europe in Barcelona 28-31 October, will remain intact.
Pros, Cons of one big event
The decision of Microsoft of consolidating events helps in terms of finance, planning and logistics. Organizing a single large event in a common location will help to acknowledge the technology needs of many people and companies at large. Along with the time management issues, the company will also achieve cost-cutting, given the company is already looking to tighten up its spending, which was highlighted again by last week’s layoffs of 18,000.
Hosting big event like this is always seen along with an array of doubts, namely how to handle very large crowds, arranging for transportation, meals, etc. Another concern is the loss of the group’s identity within the mega conference. One more concern is that the organization of a mega-event would result in schedule clashes as a large number of sessions are delivered simultaneously.
