TechEd NZ 2014

TechEd NZ 2014 is over! This year was my first time at TechEd New Zealand and I really enjoyed it! We recently moved to New Zealand from The Netherlands and together with a bunch of colleagues from Datacom Wellington we visited TechEd. It was an amazing experience, I'll try to write a blog post on the interesting sessions I attended.

Azure, Office 365, cross platform and open source

The key topics of this TechEd were in my opinion: Azure, Office 365, cross platform and open source. The bags given away at registration had "Microsoft Azure" on it, in every session Azure was mentioned as THE hosting option. From Azure Websites to Intelligent Systems Services (ISS, not to confuse with the space station...), from SQL in the cloud to creating VM's based on Linux, Windows Server, etc.

Every major server Office product of Microsoft (Dynamics CRM, SharePoint, Project Server, etc.) is available in Office 365 and a lot of sessions discussed creation of applications in Office 365, how to migrate to Office 365 and how to integrate Office 365 with on-premises software.

Microsoft has moved away from "Microsoft only" and more towards cross platform and open source. ASP.NET vNext is open source and can be hosted on Linux and Mac OS X, Cordova (the platform to create mobile applications cross platform) is integrated with Visual Studio and as said before, Azure supports creation of Linux VM's using built-in templates!

Data

According to James Whittaker (what an amazing, enjoyable speaker!!) data is the new oil. Think about the success of Facebook and Google, it's all about the data they possess and are selling to advertisers. They earn lots and lots of money with your data and this will only increase the next years. Data will become more and more important, not only "created" by us using "free" services, but also because of "The Internet of Things".

Internet of Things

Hot tubs will take over the world if we may believe (yes, again) James Whittaker. He has programmed his hot tub to automatically order ingredients for his hot tub and call a mechanic if it detects it needs a repair. How awesome!

According to some statistics the "Internet of Things" is currently over hyped, but it is something that will really change our lives. Every device in our household will become more intelligent and generate a bunch of data we can build intelligent systems on.

This is the overview of TechEd NZ 2014, more posts will follow with more details on specific sessions!