No more TechEd Australia as Microsoft launches Ignite

Microsoft Australia has announced that the annual TechEd conference will be replaced with Ignite, a new event aimed at a broader demographic.

The first Microsoft Ignite Australia will be held at the Gold Coast Convention Centre from 17 to 20 November 2015.

It marks the end of TechEd's two-decade history in Australia, following the first conference in 1994.

In a blog post, Microsoft Australia technology evangelist Vaughan Knight said that Ignite would "bring together the best from all your favourite tech events, including TechEd".

"[Ignite] intends to reach IT pros, IT decision makers, and enterprise developers from small to large enterprises and is designed for everyone who has attended TechEd and any other tech conference in the past, as well as those who have never attended a Microsoft event before," he said.

The giant vendor has started to globally consolidate its conference program this year, with the first international Ignite event held last month in Chicago. The USA version of TechEd also ceased this year and was rolled into Ignite, along with other smaller conferences.

"Ignite will focus on the full Microsoft commercial product and service portfolio including Office 365, Windows, Microsoft Azure, Windows Server, System Centre, Windows Intune, SQL Server, Visual Studio, SharePoint, Project, Skype, Exchange, Dynamics and more," said Knight in the blog.

The remaining major conferences on the calendar are Microsoft Build, which was held last week in San Francisco and this week in Sydney; Convergence, a business executives event held in Atlanta in March; Worldwide Partner Conference in Orlando on 12-16 July; and the Australian Partner Conference on the Gold Coast from 31 August to 3 September.