MS Tech Summit 2017 (27-28 March) offered different sessions covering different topics such as : Azure, Office 365, .Net, SQL Server and Xamarin.

Sessions took place in different rooms at the same place, each visitor attended couple of sessions, and here is a list of the most important points I took from this event.

Citrix ShareFile:

I spoke to the Citrix guys who took me through a quick demo session of their ShareFile product, which I found very interesting :

Data can be kept in the cloud, on prem or hybrid.
Automate documents workflows
Data loss prevention (DLP)
Information Right management (IRM)
Encryption of data

SharePoint Framework:

The new SharePoint development framework was deeply reviewed, the whole development approach has been client side oriented.

The most important bit in this new model, is that it does not really need a .Net developer nor a SharePoint heavy dev environment.

The client side development for the latest SharePoint 2016, requires lightweight tools and IDE such as Gulp, YoMan, React.JS. The context of execution of the new SharePoint 2016 custom solution is the client (Browser), connecting to the SharePoint environment.

Here is a list of good webcasts related to the SPFx
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fxYexlUhe0&list=PLR9nK3mnD-OXvSWvS2zglCzz4iplhVrKq

Xamarin Mobile Development:

Microsoft recently bought Xamarin a software company which invested in developing a Mobile development IDE. Xamarin became part of Visual Studio 2017 and is 100% Free.

Xamarin, being an integrated Development environment, allows to build one solution which will be shared and compile to the three mobile environments (IOS, Android and Windows Phone).

The beauty of Xamarin resides in the fact that it translates the code and controls into mobile native language. In addition to the Emulators offered and different test tools.

Microsoft Flow

Flow is part of Office 365 and allows to automate and create (using its nice and easy Flow design page) workflows which can go beyond the limit of Office 365 and even the Microsoft Products.

Using Flow, we can integrate DropBox, WordPress, Facebook, Yammer …etc and build actions such as notifications (push, emails), interacting with web services …etc.

SQL Server 2016

SQL Server has been one more time enhanced and this time, due to the mobile first, cloud first approach used by Microsoft, a new improved transactional processing methods have been developed.

One of the biggest changes in SQL Server 2016, is that Management Studio is no longer part of SQL Server and it needs to be downloaded separately.

The biggest enhancement is SQL Server is the HTP (High transactional Processing) which improves 100% processing time, in addition to its availability now on Linux and Mac, thanks to Docker.

Docker:

Docker is the new trend in virtualisation, which allows the virtualisation of applications, in addition words, we can install apps, configure them, encapsulate everything in Docker, distribute them and make them available for all user regardless which device or OS they use.

Useful links:

UCDAY: Dedicated UC and Cloud conference focusing on Skype For Business, Exchange and O365. ucday.co.uk .
Microsoft Cloud User Group: mscurg.com/events
MUCUGL: Microsoft UC User group London, focusing on Skype for Business mucugl.co.uk
Three65: Live regular video podcasts with speakers discussing a range of topics related to Office 365. three65.live