Back in June, the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) announced that it will be holding an in-person event for CES 2021, which it then changed to an all-digital event likely after a survey that the association conducted with potential attendees. Now, the CTA has announced that it has chosen Microsoft as its technology partner to help conduct the virtual event and will use the company’s cloud technologies to “enable the all-digital event platform”.
Bob Bejan, CVP for global events, production studios, and marketing community at Microsoft writes:
It is an extreme honor for Microsoft to be selected as CTA’s technology partner for CES, the world’s most influential technology event. It won’t surprise you to hear we’re bringing Microsoft Cloud solutions, including Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Power Platform, together with partner solutions to create the technology platform for the all-digital event that will bring together the entire global tech community and be the CES 2021 experience.
Bejan adds that the team intends to share the learnings from conducting the firm’s own – and large – virtual events such as the annual Build conference, and five other events. The company supposedly had already started planning the live events for the year, including Build 2020, and had to move to a virtual setup thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting restrictions.
Gary Shapiro, president and CEO of CTA says:
“After a rigorous search process, we selected Microsoft for its technical expertise, global scale and experience in creating compelling digital event. Microsoft is a global innovation leader and longtime supporter of CES. We look forward to working with them to bring CES 2021 to the world.”
The Redmond firs says that it adapted to the challenges brought by working remotely and hosted close to 197,000 attendees during build and a whopping 266,000 during the Ignite conference. In addition to its own conferences, the company also boasts of its collaboration with the likes of the NBA and the NFL.
CES 2021 is slated to take place from January 11-14.