SPTechCon: The SharePoint Technology Conference is returning to Boston, June 27-30, 2016! SPTechCon offers more than 80 technical classes and tutorials — presented by the most knowledgeable instructors working in SharePoint today — to help attendees improve their skills and broaden their knowledge of Microsoft’s collaboration and productivity software.

SPTechCon offers classes and tutorials for IT professionals, business decision makers, information workers, project managers, software architects and developers. Each presenter at the conference will be a true SharePoint expert, with many drawn from Microsoft’s tech teams or from outside authorities with Microsoft MVP status.

I will be delivering a workshop and 2 sessions at this conference.

From the Ground to the Cloud with SharePoint & Business Intelligence

This is a half day pre-conference workshop. SharePoint has long been discussed as a center of Microsoft’s Business Intelligence (MSBI) world. Whether it is the visualizations provided through Excel Services, the reports that can be generated out of libraries, PerformancePoint Services dashboards, and most recently the awesome power of PowerBI, this massive landscape of tools can be difficult enough without the constantly changing nature of Microsoft’s Cloud First, Mobile First commitment. Join us for a day of demystification around the massively powerful toolsets that make up Microsoft’s Business Intelligence offerings. You will walk away from this full-day workshop with a working knowledge of the major tools that Microsoft has put at your disposal to drive SharePoint has long been discussed as a center of Microsoft’s Business Intelligence (MSBI) world. Whether it is the visualizations provided through Excel Services, the reports that can be generated out of libraries, PerformancePoint Services dashboards, and most recently the awesome power of PowerBI, this massive landscape of tools can be difficult enough without the constantly changing nature of Microsoft’s Cloud First, Mobile First commitment. Join us for a day of demystification around the massively powerful toolsets that make up Microsoft’s Business Intelligence offerings. You will walk away from this full-day workshop with a working knowledge of the major tools that Microsoft has put at your disposal to drive insights into your business. We will go through installation, configuration, implementation, recommended practices from the field on how to get started with MSBI and but how to manage it, and even what to avoid. This is a day not to be missed!

What’s new in Microsoft Business Intelligence in 2016

There are a number of significant changes to the BI workload in SharePoint 2016. Excel Services has been deprecated, and SQL Server Reporting Services has been significantly enhanced. Power BI is a big factor, but where does it fit? What do all of these changes mean for your new and existing BI investments?

This session will walk through the various changes, and call out the good the bad, and the ugly of these changes. It will highlight what can still be done, what has been enhanced, and what is no longer possible. Finally, it will provide a BI migration strategy for any existing investments.