Microsoft for Healthcare Innovation Awards

Posted on February 17, 2019 by George Walters

The winners of the 2019 Microsoft for Healthcare Innovation Awards were announced at HIMSS19.

Each year, the awards acknowledge health and life sciences organizations and their technology solution partners innovating with a Microsoft-based solution.

Award Category:  Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and KenSci

Award Category:  Empower Your Care Teams and Employees

Vision Source, LP and Kno2

Award Category:  Engage Your Patients & Enable Personalized Care

Premera Blue Cross

Award Category:  Optimize Clinical Operational Effectiveness & Improve Outcomes

Prediction of Patient Placement (POPP) Team at Boston Children’s Hospital

Award Category:  Outstanding Innovation

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and DNAnexus

Award Category:  Transform the Care Continuum & Reimagine Healthcare

Johns Hopkins Medicine

Original Blog post here: https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/industry-blog/health/2019/02/14/himss-19-microsoft-for-healthcare-innovation-award-winners/

 

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HIMSS 2019 Healthcare IT Conference

Posted on February 15, 2019 by George Walters

I attended my first HIMSS19 conference this past week. What a whirlwind of excitement! Below is a picture of our booth.

20190211_164947

Microsoft for healthcare? Why yes! Microsoft has been industry-deep for a couple of years now. I have evolved my conversations to be across all our product lines, and aligned specifically into healthcare. Some of the areas include payers, providers, life sciences, post-acute-care, and genomics.

We are privileged to have partners who are industry-deep, with specific solutions to help improve healthcare. Many have been built with Microsoft tools and platforms, but more needs to be done.

I joined the partner-facing side of Microsoft, One Commercial Partner, in 2018. I and others are helping build new software and business capability with independent software vendors (ISVs), so they can gain top line revenue, with less management of their platform, and ease of deployment to their customers. We do this on top of the flexibility of APIs available on the Microsoft clouds (Azure, Office 365, Dynamics 365) as well as client-facing products (Teams, Windows).

If you need help discovering a healthcare-related solution, or are looking to build one, and wish to leverage Microsoft’s clouds, as well as potentially scaling your salesforce through co-selling, feel free to reach out!

I can be found on LinkedIn and Twitter mainly.

 

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The privilege of teaching others

Posted on December 9, 2018 by George Walters

This past weekend, I realized was blessed by quite a few things:

1) An understanding wife, who lets me go and train people in other cities while dealing with our children.
2) The SQL Saturday program, where I have met wonderful people, and started volunteering my technical talents.
3) An awesome employer, who does well by us, and by the greater community.
4) Being a mentor for many people.

I was fortunate enough to designate SQL Saturday DC as the place where Microsoft would sponsor an after-event for a Cloud meetup centered around Diversity, Inclusion, and what career paths might be out there for people.
We had about 30 people attend, and it was a nice mix of people.

We discussed learning paths for people to “get into” the cloud, which I believe will help almost any IT pro or developer out there.

The list of sites to get training for free, validated by a few others, centers around these sites:

Microsoft Documentation (Pretty good nowadays!) https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/
Learning via docs: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/
Hands-on labs: https://www.microsoft.com/handsonlabs
In-Person events: https://events.microsoft.com/
SQL Saturday (Centered around Microsoft data platform): http://www.sqlsaturday.com
Microsoft virtual academy: https://mva.microsoft.com/
EdX has tons of material: https://www.edx.org/course?search_query=microsoft

There also are paid options via the following:

Pluralsight: https://www.pluralsight.com/
Lynda.com, now part of LinkedIn Learning: https://www.lynda.com/
Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/

Depending on your learning style, the above is a good start. The key is, start slow, pick something you like, and expand from there!

To gain more in-person networking and support, join a local user group.

The best place to find a user group is via the Meetup site (http://www.meetup.comhttp://www.meetup.com). Search for a topic (SQL, Azure, hiking) and it’ll display meetups within a distance of where you specify. A technical-focused user group is a good way to get connected with others and learn as well.

Once you get a bit of knowledge, and experience, it may pay to take an exam, as a sign of achievement, as well as sometimes a requirement for a few employers.

Microsoft certification exams can be found here:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/learning/exam-list.aspx

Finally what sort of jobs can one get?

I will address that in a later blog post.

Thank you, and feel free to give me feedback!

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New Ignite 2018 Announcements, Day 1! Azure! Azure Stack! SQL Server!

Posted on September 25, 2018 by George Walters

Ignite is the premier customer-facing IT Pro conference for Microsoft. It coincides with Envision, the conference for thought leaders in IT.

At Ignite on the first day, we had a large slate of announcements, crossing from the public Azure cloud, to Azure stack, to SQL Server.

Here is the released link summarizing the cloud platform announcements: Cloud-platform-release-announcements-for-September-24-2018

If you’re interested in the advances in Microsoft SQL Server, including integration with big data analytics, follow this link: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server/sql-server-2019

As always, let me know if you have any questions, and I will be happy to help answer them, mostly via Twitter and LinkedIn.

George

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Inspire 2018 is coming! Partners, are you ready?

Posted on May 25, 2018 by George Walters

One great thing that happens annually is the Microsoft Partner conference, titled “Inspire”. This year, it will be held July 15th-19th in Las Vegas.

Sign up SOON, as there is a 300 dollar discount to sign up before June 1st! Go here: https://partner.microsoft.com/en-US/inspire

While you are reading: I am in a new role as of March, where I am helping Microsoft Partners. This role is called “ISV Technical Evangelist”. Other types of partners may know this as “Partner Technical Architect”.

What does that mean? Especially for ISVs?
(Webinar here: https://info.microsoft.com/value-of-azure-for-isvs-on-demand.html)

I am charged with helping recruit independent software vendors, or assist ISVs in their desire to modernize and improve their offerings.

The role is technical, and broad. I cover all of Azure, Office 365, Dynamics 365, and Windows. Much of the focus is on Azure.

I also get to pull in deep dive resources, who are Cloud Solution Architects, to help with specific projects that are aligned to the Partner’s goals for sellable solutions.

Part of this role is being involved also on the business side of my ISV portfolio.  I engaged with Microsoft Partner Development Managers, who deal with more business-side activities, like co-selling activities, publishing in our Azure Marketplace, and the like.

Together, we help our partners bring their solutions to market.

Please continue to give me feedback on what you’d like to see here. Thank you!

p.s. Microsoft is always hiring. I am happy to help you navigate what the roles mean from my standpoint. Since I am on my third field role at Microsoft (Previously, Premier Field Engineer and Technical Pre Sales), this might be helpful. Please look here: https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en and then hit me up on Twitter! @gwalters69

 

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Troubleshooting SQL Server on-premises Performance

Posted on March 29, 2018 by George Walters

Are you trying to figure out if you have SQL Server performance issues?

Is your server overloaded?

There are free tools to help you diagnose this.  Generally, I would tell you to get a support case opened, but you can do some diagnosis yourself if you wish.

Do not run in production, unless directed to by a Microsoft Support Engineer, and permitted by your organization.

The built in collection tool is called SQLDiag. The configuration tool for it is “DiagManager”.

“The SQLdiag utility is a general purpose diagnostics collection utility that can be run as a console application or as a service. You can use SQLdiag to collect logs and data files from SQL Server and other types of servers, and use it to monitor your servers over time or troubleshoot specific problems with your servers. SQLdiag is intended to expedite and simplify diagnostic information gathering for Microsoft Customer Support Services.”

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/tools/sqldiag-utility

DiagManager will help configure SQLDiag to collect appropriate data to troubleshoot any performance issues.

Do not run in production, because it will slow it down.

“Pssdiag/Sqldiag Manager is a graphic interface that provides customization capabilities to collect data for SQL Server using sqldiag collector engine. The data collected can be used by SQL Nexus tool which help you troubleshoot SQL Server performance problems. This is the same tool Microsoft SQL Server support engineers use to for data collection to troubleshoot customer’s performance problems.”

https://github.com/Microsoft/DiagManager

How to run the tool, and collect into the output folder is detailed here.

https://github.com/Microsoft/DiagManager/wiki/Running-PSSDiag

Please zip and return the output folder to Microsoft support for further analysis.

The further analysis Microsoft does may include the following tools.  Microsoft will do the analysis, but feel free to play with these tools as well.

SQL Nexus reads output of SQLDiag to show performance issues.

https://github.com/Microsoft/SqlNexus

PAL is a tool to read perfmon files and compare against known good metrics.

https://github.com/clinthuffman/PAL

I would encourage anyone doing this performance troubleshooting to test on a test system.  Do not run in production, unless directed to by a Microsoft Support Engineer, and permitted by your organization.

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Developer tools and training for SQL Server, Mobile Development, and cross platform. Where are they?

Posted on February 14, 2018 by George Walters

Are you a developer, or wish to become one?  Maybe you want to learn how to access data with modern tools.

The following are a set of links to free tools and training that can help you get started around data, mobile, and cloud.

At a high level, Microsoft has developed courseware that you can use for free:

https://academy.microsoft.com/en-us/professional-program/tracks/

There are Immersion projects, to get your feet wet.

https://github.com/Microsoft/developer-immersion-data

The Microsoft parent site for SQL Server developers is here:

https://www.microsoft.com/sql-server/developer-get-started

As an IDE, Visual Studio is superior.  Also Visual Studio Code is now available on any platform:

https://www.visualstudio.com/

Visual Studio has plugins for different areas of development.  One area is Xamarin (Cross platform mobile)

https://www.visualstudio.com/xamarin/

More than just a developer IDE, Developer Essentials gets you free Azure cloud usage, and other stuff.

https://www.visualstudio.com/dev-essentials/

Finally, EDx.org is a fantastic resource, with free training from many schools as well as Microsoft professional training. You only pay if you want a verified certificate. Auditing courses is free!

https://www.edx.org/course?search_query=microsoft

Hopefully these will help you get started on your journey of data and/or mobile development.

 

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Azure DataFest! March 1st, Burlington MA!

Posted on February 9, 2018 by George Walters

On March 1st, there will be an event, “Azure DataFest”, all day from 9-5 at Microsoft’s office at 5 wayside road, Burlington, MA.

If you wish to attend, please go here. We are charging 22 dollars for this event plus tax:

https://boston-azuredatafest2018.eventbrite.com

Thanks to the following user groups, who are responsible for helping put this event together. Please consider going to get connected to these great groups!

New England SQL Server User Group https://www.meetup.com/NESQLUG/

Boston SQL Server User Group https://massdatatraining.org/boston-sql/

North of Boston Azure User Group https://www.meetup.com/North-Boston-Azure-Cloud-User-Group/

Boston Azure User Group https://www.meetup.com/bostonazure/

Boston BI User Group https://www.meetup.com/Boston_BI/

Rhode Island SQL Server User Group https://www.meetup.com/Rhode-Island-SQL-Server-Users-Group/

Rhode Island BI User Group https://www.meetup.com/The-RI-Microsoft-BIUG/

Boston .NET User Group https://www.meetup.com/DevBoston/

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Homage to the DBA

Posted on September 19, 2017 by George Walters

To my Database Administrator friends… #Parody #Humor

“The DBA Rules” sung to the tune of “The Mob Rules” by black sabbath.

Oh come on
Restrict the database and tell the people that something's coming to call
Performance and slowness are taking a bite from the BI users, oh
You've nothing to say
They're breaking away
If you listen to Data
The DBA rules
The DBA rules
Kill the SPID and you'll be thanked, the end is always the same
Play with indexes, you burn your fingers and lose your hold of the trace, oh
It's over, it's done
The transaction began
If you listen to Data
The DBA rules
You've nothing to say
Oh, they're breaking away
If you listen to Data
Break the rebuild and stop the autogrow, the storage is overrun
Just remember it might start growing and take you right back around
You're all Data, Insights, Performance, Throughput
The DBA rules
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Upgrading to SQL 2016 (and 2017) and Windows Server 2016

Posted on August 8, 2017 by George Walters

A lot of engineering work has gone into easing upgrades for SQL Server and Windows at Microsoft. In general, a lot of breaking changes no longer happen especially around the database engine. But what about other components? What about Windows?

Many folks are wondering where to get the documents to help guide them on software upgrades.

I compiled a few links for a support manager in Microsoft, and am sharing them here.  I think this will help you get started.

Public Docs:

What’s new in SQL 2016 (and SQL 2017 is on the left menu) https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/sql-server/what-s-new-in-sql-server-2016

SQL Release Notes for a bunch of versions https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/release-notes/sql-server-release-notes

Upgrade to 2016 from 2008R2, 2012, 2014…. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/database-engine/install-windows/upgrade-sql-server

“Are you upgrading from SQL 2005?” https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/database-engine/install-windows/are-you-upgrading-from-sql-server-2005

Windows Server technical content… 2016, 2012r2, 2012, 2008r2, 2008, 2003 https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/windows-server-versions

Windows Server installation and upgrade https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/get-started/installation-and-upgrade

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