The history of the conference “Platform. Defining the future "

On November 9-10, 2011, the first international conference Tech ∙ Ed Russia 2011 will be held in Moscow. The conference will bring together about 3,000 information technology professionals from Russia and the CIS countries. Tech ∙ Ed Russia 2011 is the next step in the development of the famous annual conference “Platform. Defining the Future ”, which has been held for twelve years in Moscow.

This article describes the history of the largest Russian IT conference “Platform”, which is held annually by Microsoft. Over the twelve years of the Platform, this conference has become a meeting place for thousands of IT professionals, managers and managers, developers and system administrators. At each of the Platforms, the participants received a comprehensive report of Microsoft on their technologies and plans through technical tracks of reports, which were increasing from year to year.
')
Let's see how it was.

Platform 2000

The history of the well-known in Russia and abroad conference “Platform. Defining the Future ”began in 1999. Then the conference had a short name and was held under the name “Platform 2000”. The main audience of the first “Platform” became the directors of informatization (a term of that time) and IT managers.

^{Photos from the site osp.ru}

The themes of the first “Platform” are interesting, in 1999 Microsoft told about:

corporate implementation of Office 2000;
Features and methodology for implementing Windows 2000;
strategic issues of enterprise information management and the reduction of TCO;
Preparation of computer software organizations to the format of the dates of the 21st century, that is, the solution to the “2000 problem”

As you can see, the first “Platform” raised the pressing problems of IT departments and could not boast of a large scale. But that was only the beginning.

Platform 2001

In November 2000, the “Platform” was repeated, and this time the main theme was a completely new at that time Microsoft .NET application development platform. The conference has grown considerably; it has already been held for three days from November 22 to November 24 at the Radisson-Slavyanskaya Hotel. More than 750 people took part in the second “Platform”.

^{photo from pcweek.ru}

Five parallel tracks of reports were presented on “Platform 2001” in each of the three days. In total, more than 70 reports, 4 round tables, 14 laboratory works (for 300 participants) were held at the conference.

In addition to .NET technology, the conference discussed the topics of upgrading enterprise information systems and increasing efficiency, Exchange 2000 and SQL Server 2000 server technologies, and Windows 2000 operating system.

And now a little excursion into the history and web 1.0. The Platform 2001 website has been preserved to this day. You can find it at http://platforma2k.ru/ . I think many people with nostalgia remember the words “To view this site, you must install Internet Explorer 4.0 or higher.” True, according to eyewitnesses, this site is not entirely official, but is a copy of the disc published by one of the conference participants. However, this resource does not diminish its rarity.

Platform 2002

The third “Platform” was held in November 2001. This time the target audience of the conference was leading experts and heads of IT departments of various enterprises in Russia and the CIS.

The themes of the conference “Platform 2002” were new fundamental technologies: Windows XP, 64-bit Windows architecture, server solutions of the company. And although the volume of reports was somewhat reduced (the conference lasted two days), more than 850 people took part in the conference.

The conference continued the discussion of the .NET platform and the new Visual Studio .NET application development environment. In addition, the key topics of the conference were the recently released Office XP, BizTalk Server, Exchange Server, SharePoint Portal Server, Microsoft AppCenter, Content Management Server, and preliminary versions of Windows .NET Server and SQL Server “Liberty”.

A big step forward was the reports from representatives of the company from the headquarters in Redmond and the European office.

Platform 2003

The next, fourth, conference “Platform 2003” was held in November 2002. This time more than 1000 people took part in the conference. The number of streams of technical reports was again increased to five:

Information Infrastructure: Windows 2000 Server, Windows .Net Server, Systems Management Server, Operations Manager, Application Center, Internet Security and Acceleration Server, Exchange Server and Mobile Information Server;
Business application building platform: BizTalk Server, SQL Server, .Net Framework, Commerce Server, Content Management Server;
Business Productivity Systems: Office, SQL Server, Project Server, Sharepoint Portal Server, Content Management Server;
Information security technologies: security, public key infrastructure, building a VPN;
Development of applications in the .Net architecture: Visual Studio .NET, ASP.NET, Visual Basic .NET, C #.

As you can see, the number of reviewed technologies has increased and the conference has become much more saturated. And a very important step in the development of the conference was that participation in it was paid. It was the first “Platform” for the money. And in spite of this, the number of participants not only did not decrease, but also increased, which demonstrated the great value of the “Platform” as an IT event.

Platform 2004. Defining the Future

In 2003, another fifth platform took place, which this time acquired an additional slogan “Defining the Future”. This is indeed a landmark slogan, since the name of the conference always featured the next year, which indicated that the technologies presented at the conference are technologies of the future, nearest or slightly distant. The conference for hundreds of participants opened a laser show.

^{Photo from sql.ru}

By tradition, “Platform 2004” was held in November. The conference was opened by Kirill Tatarinov, vice president of Microsoft Corporation, who had come specially to the event in Moscow. Other guests at the conference were: David LeBlank - security architect, one of the main ideologists of the Trustworthy Computing secure information systems initiative, and Eric Van Bever - chief application architect at Microsoft's European headquarters.

The themes of the conference this time were new products and initiatives: Exchange 2003, Office 2003, Dynamic Systems Initiative, Windows Server 2003, Longhorn, Microsoft Operations Manager, SQL Server Yukon, the next version of Visual Studio “Whidbey”, BizTalk Server 2004 and others.

The conference took a step further and in 2003 it was already visited by about 1,500 people.

Platform 2005. Defining the Future

The sixth “Platform 2005” was held from November 30 to December 1. This “Platform” is particularly notable for the fact that for the first time the conference was opened by a new director of the Microsoft office in Russia - Birger Sten.

^{photo from thg.ru}

The conference presented the traditional five streams of technical reports:

Technologies for creating managed information systems;
Technologies for building secure information systems;
Modern enterprise business platform: Microsoft ERP and Microsoft CRM;
Solutions to improve business efficiency;
Creation and integration of applications for a modern enterprise.

Microsoft shared information about new products released in 2005: .Net Framework 2.0, Windows Server 2003 64-bit, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 HPC, SQL Server 2005, System Center 2005, Visual Studio 2005, and others.

One of the announcements of “Platform 2005” was the announcement of the official Russification of the new at that time Office OneNote product.

In total, the conference in 2004 was attended by over 1,200 people.

Platform 2006. Defining the Future

The seventh conference “Platform 2006. Defining the Future” was held from December 7 to December 8 in Moscow in the building of the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The central theme of the conference was the close integration of the company's latest products: SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006.

^{photo from thg.ru}

In 2005, 1,900 specialists came to the Platform. There were so many visitors that the plenary report in the hall did not have enough seats and some participants had to listen to the report standing. During the plenary report, Birgen Sten recalled that in 2005, the 15th anniversary of the first Microsoft product in Russian - MSD DOS 4.1.

By tradition, several tracks were presented at the conference:

Creating applications for a modern enterprise
Building managed information systems
Corporate databases
Modern systems of collective work
Enterprise Application Integration

In addition, for the first time for the Russian community, the capabilities of the next generation Office “12” were demonstrated on this platform.

Platform 2007. Defining the Future

In December 2006, the eighth “Platform” conference was held in Moscow at the Olimpiysky Sports Complex. At this time, Microsoft has focused on the conference on its new products: Windows Vista, Office 2007, Exchange Server 2007 and Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0.

The conference has grown significantly in volume, in 2006 it already contained 8 technical tracks, on which about 50 reports were read. The tracks were divided into the following categories:

Microsoft Office 2007 Technologies
Unified communications
Using Microsoft Windows Vista in an organization
Building information infrastructure
Microsoft Dynamics Business Solutions
Application building platform
Infrastructure Management
Information Security Technologies

This time around 3000 people came to the conference. Participation as usual was paid, but Microsoft promised to send Office 2007 and Windows Vista as a gift to each participant of the Platform when these products entered the market.

Platform 2008. Defining the future

The ninth conference “Platform 2008. Defining the Future” was held from 27 to 28 November 2007 at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. As a special guest at the conference, Eric Radder, Vice President for Technical Strategy at Microsoft, spoke.

^{photo from pcweek.ru}

At the conference in 2007, more than 1,500 experts gathered to listen to more than 50 reports. The main topics of the conference were: the new server operating system Windows Server 2008, the development environment of the new generation of Visual Studio 2008, the latest versions of SQL Server 2008 and Office 2007. For the first time, the company presented the Expression Design Suite package to Russian developers and designers.

A total of eight technical tracks and over 50 reports were presented at the conference:

Business analytics
Data management
Development tools
Service Oriented Architecture and Business Processes
Group work and unified communications
Corporate Content Management
Configuration management
Information Security

Platform 2009. Defining the future

In 2008, the Platform Conference celebrated its first round anniversary - the tenth event. “Platform 2009. Defining the Future” was held from December 4 to 5 at the Russian Academy of Sciences.

^{Photo from prime-tass.ru and interface.ru}

The highlight of the tenth “Platform” was the arrival of the famous Mark Russinovich, the author of many books on architecture and application development under Windows. The conference was once again opened by Eric Radder. The other guests and speakers of the conference were Dmitry Robsman (manager of the Microsoft ASP.NET development department) and David Cheppell, a well-known speaker who regularly speaks at the Platform.

One of the important announcements of the conference was the announcement that the Microsoft office in Russia would be headed by a new leader, Nikolai Pryanishnikov (then executive vice president of VimpelCom).

Virtualization, the new Microsoft product Hyper-V and the Windows Azure cloud platform, became the key theme of “Delimiters 2009”. Among other conference topics, the most notable were: Windows 7, Silverlight 2, WPF, Internet Explorer 8, .NET Framework 4, Visual Studio 2010, C # 4.

A total of over 60 papers were presented at the conference in 9 technical tracks. About 40 laboratory work was carried out on major products: Windows Server 2008, System Center, ForefrontTM and ISA Server, SQL Server 2008, Microsoft Dynamics, PerformancePoint Server, Microsoft Project, Windows Mobile, Windows Embedded, and others.

Platform 2010. Defining the Future

The eleventh conference “Platforms” was held in November 2009 in the building of the World Trade Center. This conference was first opened by Microsoft Russia President Nikolai Pryanishnikov. Another key speaker was Norm Judah, director of technology strategy at the consulting department at Microsoft. And, of course, according to tradition, David Chappell performed on the Platform.

^{photo from ixbt.com}

The key topics of the conference were the new products of the company: Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Exchange Server 2010, Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, Visual Studio 2010. At the conference, the first draft version of Project 2010 was presented.

In total, visitors were invited over 60 technical reports in eight parallel tracks:

Windows 7 operating system;
Solutions based on Windows Server 2008 R2;
Information Security;
Collaboration technologies;
IT and virtualization management solutions;
Use of business applications and corporate services;
Software development tools and technologies;
Architecture of applications and systems.

As usual, more than 20 laboratory works on key technologies were conducted at the conference. The expert zone worked, round tables were held.

Platform 2011. Defining the future

Last year, the twelfth and last conference on the Platform brand was held today. “Platform 2011. Defining the Future” was held for the second time at the World Trade Center in the center of Moscow.

During the plenary report, Nikolai Pryanishnikov and Eric Radder again spoke, who told the conference participants about Microsoft projects and the company's participation in various projects, such as the Skolkovo Foundation. The big announcement of the conference was the launch of the new unified communications platform Microsoft Lync 2010.

^{Photo from foterpc.info}

The main topics of the conference were:

Microsoft cloud computing technologies and services (Windows Azure, Office 365);
Collaboration and unified communications based on Microsoft Lync, Microsoft Office 2010, SharePoint Server 2010;
Optimization of data centers based on Windows Server 2008 R2, virtualization technologies and products of the System Center family;
Software development tools and technologies Visual Studio 2010, .NET Framework, Silverlight, etc.
Promising products and technologies - Windows Phone 7, Internet Explorer 9, and more

In total, nine technical reports were presented, in which 1,500 participants were asked more than 80 reports:

Cloud computing
Optimization of client jobs
Data Center Optimization
Information Security
Portal solutions and collaboration
Unified communications
Software development tools and technologies
Application and System Architecture
Business intelligence and data warehousing

The site “Platform 2011” is available today at http://www.microsoft.com/ru-ru/events/platforma/ .

TechEd Russia 2011 - a new level of the Platform

And in 2011, the Platform conference is entering a new level of quality, transforming into the global brand TechEd Russia. You can read more about conferences and the TechEd brand in this article .

On November 9-10, 2011, the first international conference Tech ∙ Ed Russia 2011 will be held in Moscow. The conference will bring together about 3,000 information technology professionals from Russia and the CIS countries.

The program of the event includes more than 150 technical reports and interactive sessions, during which participants can discuss with leading experts and developers topical IT issues, laboratory work to get to know products and technologies, the Ask an Expert zone, an exhibition of innovations and much more.

Among the main topics of the first Tech ∙ Ed Russia 2011 conference: cloud computing and services, the Windows Phone 7 mobile platform and another key topic of the conference will be announced later.

The program of the event is constantly updated. The latest information can be obtained at http://www.msteched.ru , as well as by subscribing to Twitter at the conference or tracking the hashtag #ruteched .

Registration for the first Tech ∙ Ed Russia 2011 conference is already open. Until August 1, the maximum discount for tickets is valid, the number of discount tickets is limited.

We are glad to inform Habra-users about a special special discount for you. When registering for the conference, enter the promo code 678955662996 and you will get the opportunity to purchase tickets for the conference at a reduced price!

Sources

Interestingly, the archive of presentations of the Platform conference of different years can be found in one place on the Microsoft website at this address .

Sources used in writing this article:

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/123601/

All Articles