As some of you know, I am the conference chair for Office 365 Engage, a new conference that emphasizes the need to treat Office 365 as a whole rather than a loose collection of mildy-cloudified on-premises applications. The event takes place in Haarlem, a rather nice town in the Netherlands, on June 19-22 2017.

Apart from the many attractions of Haarlem (good restaurants and nice places to visit), we have a serious intent behind the conference. Instead of viewing Office 365 through the prism of Exchange or SharePoint, which is often the approach taken by conferences that purport to cover Office 365, we have asked our speakers to take a more all-encompassing view and emphasize the value that tenants can gain from Office 365 as a whole, rather than just thinking about moving email or documents or whatever to the cloud.

The conference speakers include 31 MVPs, all skilled in their field and good speakers to boot. They have been selected not because they appear at this conference or that conference, but because they have a really important perspective to communicate. I admire and respect all of our speakers, but I have challenged them to help conference attendees understand and appreciate how to take advantage of the true breadth of Office 365. I think they will rise to the occasion.

I’ll be speaking too. I plan to discuss how Office 365 has changed since its release six years ago in June 2011 and look at some of the challenges that face Office 365 in the future. Thinking about the complexity of this topic makes my mind squirm, but I have a definite perspective that I want to share with attendees.

I also have the great fortune and challenge to quiz industry watchers Mary-Jo Foley and Paul Thurrott about their views on Office 365 and where Microsoft is heading with cloud services. All I can promise you is honesty and insight on Wednesday morning as I struggle to keep up with two of the most important commentators on Microsoft in general. It should be good fun. Here’s an interview that I did with Mary-Jo Foley to talk about the conference…

Interview with Mary-Jo Foley

We cannot promise that we will answer every question that attendees have. No conference can do that. What we can do is promise that we will make experts available to describe their passion, insight, and knowledge about what makes Office 365 tick. Isn’t that enough for you to consider coming to Haarlem in June?

Oh, and by the way, if you use code SPRTR486, you’ll get a nice discount on the normal price. Don’t tell anyone that I said that…

Follow Tony on Twitter @12Knocksinna.