Lenovo Microsoft Budapest Event
Lenovo Microsoft Partner Budapest Event!
What an event!! This week I was lucky to enough to be invited to visit Lenovo’s factory in Budapest to see up close and personal how orders are received, built, packaged and shipped in as little as 5 days!
I decided to write a short blog about what we got up to, saw and discussed while out in Budapest.
After an early 4am start on Wednesday I had my first flight with Wizzair, all in all a good airport experience.
After a quick exit from Budapest Airport I found my transfer and met my first partner of the day Tom. Next stop we arrived at our hotel the “Anantara – New York Palace Budapest Hotel”.
For anyone wishing to visit Budapest in the future, I would recommend this hotel without hesitation, a beautiful hotel inside and out, the food was fantastic and the Eggs Benedict at breakfast was something else! (Had me thinking about the next morning’s breakfast most of the day).
Now to the fun stuff, with no time to spare I checked in with the Lenovo team and we headed straight for some lunch, followed by a quick welcome speech.
Next up, team building with Go Trabi Go!
This was a real highlight, I was expecting the semi-regular let’s go round everyone and introduce yourself, tell us something interesting about you, etc. However not today! We were thrown into the deep end, “get into groups of 2 or 3 for a tour of the city in your very own Trabant” … pick a driver, navigator and a sightseer and off you go.
Team 3 was born!
Rasmas our nominated driver, myself in the navigator’s seat and Tom chilling in the back inhaling all sorts of fumes 😀
Driving was fun, Rasmas was really giving that gearbox some stick. Navigation was challenging, with my shins and knees pushed up against the dash, feeling like I was 10cm from the ground, unable to see past the car in front with this as our map:
This really was a great team building activity, got the conversations going while getting to see some of the amazing sites that Budapest has to offer.
After reaching our final stop and returning the Trabants we headed to the Welcome dinner at Spinoza restaurant – the Hungarian Ghoulash soup was nice and spicy, highly recommended!
A short announcement from the Lenovo team that of course, naturally TEAM 3 WON the Trabant tour and challenges – we were presented with a bottle of Unicum Liqueur that required an immediate palette cleanser!
Thursday Morning - ACTION!
After an early morning gym session briefly crossing paths with @Igor from Microsoft it was time to head for breakfast before an early transfer to the Lenovo Factory. Now I’m mentioning it again, the Eggs Benedict at breakfast was fantastic, if your ever at the hotel, give it a try, you won’t be disappointed!
After a short 30-minute transfer we arrived at the Lenovo Factory. (Blinded by the sun, I was happy really!)
A quick check-in at reception and we were introduced to Gabor Salamon who was our presenter and tour guide around the factory.
Gabor was incredibly knowledgeable about all things happening in the factory, I was blown away by the thoroughness and knowledge he had of everything going on.
Next stop, a presentation to give us an insight into what happens in the Budapest factory.
Gabor Salamon showing how the Budapest Factory is:
- Installing Solar Panels on the roof space of each factory building in the park
- Has created over 1300 jobs in and around Budapest
Impressively can build and ship:
A quick look at the products leaving the Budapest Factory destined for End Customers all around the world.
Whats inside a Water-cooled system? The copper providing the path for the water around the components within the chassis.
Now unfortunately, the next part of the tour didn’t allow any phones, wallets, keys, etc as you might imagine. So that means no pictures but if you are interested I have found a short video produced by Lenovo that does offer some glimpses to the inside operations:
We were provided some funky light green coloured clothing to wear which if I remember correct highlighted that we were visitors to the workforce.
The staff all wear something similar but with various colours each with a specific meaning to ensure no time was lost should a shift worker need assistance. Each colour would highlight a purpose such as a Dark Blue meant shift lead.
The processes and thought in this factory as I said earlier was something to behold, there is next to zero wasted time or effort, if there is a better way to do something then Gabor is already on it working on how to improve their processes and adopt it.
After the tour we had a quick group photo before we headed back to the hotel.
Photo credit: @Guido Terni
Back at the hotel and into the Bellini meeting room for some B2B sessions. Presenter no1 – Guido Terni, unfortunately missed the action shot here!
Guido went on to talk about some of the following:
- The history of Lenovo and its 4 decades of transformation
- The company makeup – 180 Markets, 71.5k employees, 4 Devices bought per second
- Edge computing
- Cloud computing
- Exploring Lenovos focus on 5G and cloud network convergence
- Intelligence – AI
- Sustainability
- Lenovo & Microsoft’s combined solutions to solve any challenge such as:
- Productivity and Collaboration (Devices/Office365/TruScale/Teams)
- Endpoint Management (Microsoft Configuration Manager/Intune/Lenovo Dock Manager and Deployment Assistant)
- Security (ThinkShield/Windows Hello/Windows 11)
- Sustainability (CO2 Emissions Offset/Low Temp Solder/Modern Power Efficient Hardware/Recycled Materials/Windows 11 & MS Sustainability Manager)
- Accessibility (Windows 11/MS Accessibility Checker/MS Adaptive Accessories/Lenovo Esports)
- Infrastructure (ThinkAgile/ThinkSystem/TruScale/ThinkEdge/Azure Stack HCI/Lenovo Xclarity/Windows Admin Centre)
The second presenter was a winner from Team 3 – Rasmus Borch.
Rasmus is part of the Solutions and Services Group and gave us a roundup of the Solutions provided by Lenovo and explained how together Lenovo, Microsoft and Partners can solve any challenge for any customer:
- Digital Workspace Advisory Services
- Persona Based Configuration
- Collaboration and Productivity
- Unified Endpoint Management
- Service Desk
And the last speaker of the day was @Igor Krstin from Microsoft. Igor even struck a pose for the photo!
Igor is a Channel Executive at Microsoft and was giving us his and Microsofts insights into why Windows 11 is different and what the introduction of AI and Copilot means for the future.
We spoke about topics everyone is talking about right now such as the importance of AI in the workplace. Key pain points and top priorities in business today.
We then discussed how Windows 11 is the most secure Windows ever due to:
- Reduced attack surfaces (TPM2.0/VBS/HVCI/Microsoft Pluton/Secured-core PC)
- Staying ahead of threats (SmartScreen/Windows Hello Passwordless/Windows Update for Business)
- Mission-critical app protection (Win32 apps run in isolation/Defender Application Control with MDM)
- End-to-End Protection (Config Refresh/Microsoft Intune EPM/Windows Firewall/LAPS/MAM)
I think everyone participating in the event agreed that “Now is the time to move to Windows 11”.
Why though?
- Windows 10 is End of Life October 2025
- Since Fall 2020, Windows 10 has had no OS fundamental improvements, those are only being released for Windows 11
- Better performance, connectivity and battery life due to modern chipset innovations
- The most secure Windows out of the box
- Fresh, intuitive and consistent look
- More productive end users with new search functionality, M365 integration and not to mention the coming influx of AI capabilities
Microsoft have openly announced that planning on paying for Extended Support to continue getting updates to Windows 10 post October 2025 is a very expensive strategy.
After a brief Q&A the presentations were finished and we have around 1hr to get ready for the final dinner. During this time myself and Tom flew like the wind to grab some close up pictures of the beautiful House of Parliament, it was well worth the effort, I’m sure you would agree.
After the mad rush back and a quick change of clothes we set off for our final dinner at the Studel House for another very tasty meal. We were shown how Strudels are made and some of the group got to take part in attempting to roll out the dough, some fared better than others…
At the end of dinner, we made our way back to the hotel for our pickups the next morning to start our journeys home, I won once again with the earliest 8AM, the less said about that the better!
And that was it, an uneventful return journey but a fantastic event which I am very grateful for being invited to.
A huge shout out to everyone who organised, led and presented in the event and also to the partners/new friends I got to meet.
I look forward to our next meeting and to my next visit to Budapest.
