Microsoft Ignite just wrapped up, and it was a big week for collaboration and the cloud- so naturally I felt right at home representing PureCloud by Genesys! This was my first time at Ignite, so I was an eager newcomer at the weeklong IT conference. Here’s what I learned.

Just by looking over the long list of seminars or walking the cavernous expo floor, it was obvious that the “cloud is now” attitude was everywhere. As Gartner recognizes, Microsoft is one of the leaders in cloud infrastructure, and Ignite is the company’s time to flex their muscles. Microsoft exhibited countless ways that customers could take advantage of applications built around a cloud infrastructure—from innovative machine learning to analytics and artificial intelligence. The most “Gee whiz” moments of the conference were examples of capabilities that can happen only in the cloud.

Here at PureCloud, our name isn’t just a tagline—our contact center and unified communications solution was born in the cloud since its inception in 2012. Back then, Amazon Web Services dominated the cloud infrastructure market; now it’s great to see more industry heavyweights share their visions for the future of cloud computing.

The vision Microsoft has for the future is also heavy on collaboration. At Ignite, Microsoft demonstrated a handful of different collaboration solutions—from Skype for Business to Lync Yammer and now Microsoft Teams. One of my goals at the conference was to show off an upcoming PureCloud integration with Skype for Business. We understand collaboration is important across the enterprise, and we see the benefits of connecting employees for easy discovery and communication. Our Skype for Business integration will enable PureCloud agents to chat directly with Skype for Business users from a single application. They also can quickly bring agents in on a call if a few instant messages can’t solve the problem. This integration is currently in development, and this conference was the perfect place to debut the functionality and gather early feedback.

Looking at the interesting features coming out for Microsoft Teams, I’m excited that the PureCloud Skype for Business integration is built on a third-party marketplace platform for PureCloud. What makes a marketplace platform exciting? It lets third parties develop and extend the platform. Customers don’t have to rely on PureCloud to deliver new features; they can benefit from rapid innovation and the vision and inventiveness of others. When the rich vision of collaboration with Microsoft Teams becomes a reality for our customers, we’ll be able to provide new collaboration integrations  between PureCloud and Microsoft—all built on the third-party marketplace platform.

Collaboration is a part of our everyday lives—inside and outside the office. While away from the conference hall, I kept up with fellow traveling coworkers through PureCloud on my iPhone—coordinating rides, setting up dinner reservations and, most importantly, making sure we didn’t miss the new fireworks show at Disney World. (As a consummate tourist, I simply can’t talk about Orlando without mentioning theme parks.) The projection show onto the castle is amazing, especially when the video syncs up with the pyrotechnics! Even if they’re not theme park fans, I think my colleagues back in the office were a bit jealous when looking over the pictures I shared in our social chat room.

Ignite was a great experience. I loved hearing about the Microsoft vision for the future of IT—and I’m excited that PureCloud is on the same path. Read more about what analysts and industry leaders say about tech trends for this year and beyond.