Microsoft ends APC in favour of new Microsoft Summit

Microsoft has shuttered their Australian Partner Conference (APC) and are planning to launch a new event called the Microsoft Summit to bring together their retail channel partners and introduce them to Microsoft’s new strategy and technology.

The APC has been running for 20 years, but Microsoft said the Summit will build on its legacy, by offering  two key experiences for partners, with the Partner Summit for existing and prospective partners and the Tech Summit for IT professionals, developers and TDMs, along with the one day Microsoft Business Summit for C-suite and BDM customers which run alongside the 2 day Partner Summit. offering partners the opportunity to ‘network right off the bat’ with customers across both business and technology roles.

“It also brings you together with customers at the opening keynote and the Microsoft Tech Summit.”

“Overall the goal is for you to leave the Microsoft Summit with the connections, solutions and skills to engage, adapt and grow; today and tomorrow,” said Mark Leigh, Microsoft Australia small and midmarket solutions and partner director. “I think this opens up exciting opportunities for the breadth of ideas, learning and connections to be made.”

“The following sessions over the remainder of the two days will be dedicated to the partner community with structured networking, skills-building, ideas generation and the exploration of the latest solutions and innovation,” Leigh says, the Microsoft Tech Summit offering technical training sessions up to level 400 across Microsoft Azure, Office 365 and Windows 10  and provide access to meet and learn from both international and local engineers and experts who build the cloud services for Azure, Windows 10 and Office 365.

“It is an exciting and daunting time to be an IT professional and developer right now,” said Brett Shoemaker, Microsoft Australia cloud+ enterprise business leader.

“The sheer velocity of innovation around technologies such as the cloud, IoT, artificial intelligence and mixed reality is extraordinary.”