22–24 September 2020, online. First Ignite after COVID forced the Orlando event into the trash. Free, 48-hour headline portion, hub-and-spoke Teams chats for tracks. The year ThreeB IT was three months old.
What we took away
- Microsoft Defender rebrand. The entire enterprise security portfolio consolidated under one brand: Azure Security Center → Azure Defender, Azure ATP → Microsoft Defender for Identity, Microsoft Threat Protection → Microsoft 365 Defender (with Defender for Endpoint / Office 365 / Identity under it). The pivotal moment for SOC tooling positioning in the Microsoft world.
- Azure Communication Services — new PaaS for embedding voice/video/chat/SMS in apps, reusing the Teams stack. Suddenly building a Twilio-style feature inside a customer app got two orders of magnitude cheaper.
- Automanage for Windows Server VMs — auto-applies Azure best practices to Server VMs.
- Azure Resource Mover for cross-region resource moves, Cosmos DB serverless.
- Windows Virtual Desktop Azure Migration Program expansion — well-timed given the remote-work surge.
Why it mattered for us
The Defender rebrand re-shaped how we pitch IT security to Mittelstand customers. Before Ignite 2020 we had to explain four product names to land "you already have most of an XDR in your M365 E5 license." After it, we had to explain one.
"Digital resiliency." — Satya Nadella's framing for the Ignite 2020 keynote, the right phrase for a year defined by pandemic.
The Microsoft 365 tenants we'd later run for Steuerberater Keller and HP Elektrotechnik are configured on this framework.
Microsoft Ignite
Defender
Azure Communication Services
Windows Virtual Desktop