Amber Hickman |
At a large technology event such as Microsoft Ignite, many attendees seek a hands-on experience with new tools and solutions. There were over 140 lab sessions available for guests at this year’s Ignite, but what goes into the delivery of these?
Virtual lab provider Skillable has provided lab environments for Microsoft events for the past 20 years including Ignite, where it delivered a range of practical sessions focusing on different topics and new features in Azure, Microsoft 365, Copilot and more.
The labs are delivered in various formats, including ‘hands on’ pre-booked labs and on-demand labs where attendees can visit the drop-in area and start a session readily available on the Skillable platform.
“In the weeks leading up to the event, we’ll get given a list of labs that will be here, and we will work with the content owners to get everything staged and ready to go,” said Kyle Rosenthal, director of business development at Skillable. “We also have to be prepared for any last-minute updates to the products that need to be uploaded to the Skillable platform, and we have content owners that are updating the step-by-step instructions right until the very last minute.”
One of the lab sessions hosted at Microsoft Ignitet
Satya Nadella, CEO and chairman of Microsoft, revealed several major announcements in the Ignite keynote. This resulted in a spike in demand for labs that the Skillable team had to navigate.
“We often push Azure to its limit, especially during an event like this,” said Barry Martin, executive vice president of platform, infrastructure and cloud at Skillable. “After any announcement there is usually a surge of attendees that want to get a hands-on experience and see what the hype is about, and we do sometimes get calls from the Azure capacity teams asking us to slow down.”
Behind the scenes, there is a team of Skillable’s cloud experts monitoring the labs 24/7 to ensure that everything is running smoothly and the connection with their data centres is stable, shifting content around if necessary.
Meanwhile, in the lab rooms, multiple experts are available to support attendees if needed, but everything the user needs to know and do is presented through the Skillable platform, which directly connects to Azure and walks individuals through the steps with real-time updates and feedback.
The Skillable team working behind the scenes
“It’s been fantastic working with Skillable on all the labs and the last three days have gone very well, even with the range of new technology we’ve included,” said Sanjay Soni, director of global analytics sales enablement at Microsoft, who was presenting a lab on improving data workflows with Microsoft Fabric, Copilot and Azure Databricks.
Following the event, Skillable will continue to work with Microsoft to maintain the new content and ensure its users have access to the most current updates and use-cases for their training needs.
“All the content that gets created and deployed at this event will get reused on road shows and in seminars and training for the next 12 to 18 months, until the next major event which will introduce a whole new round of content,” said Corey Hynes, executive chairman of the board of directors at Skillable. “In the current era of technology everything is changing so fast, so it is good that we have this relationship with Microsoft that provides us with the content and resources we need to provide updates as and when necessary, to ensure our users are getting the most up to date information.”
Discover more news from the event on our dedicated Microsoft Ignite page