If you are looking for MSDN blogs on SQL Server, take a look at the new locations!
We have migrated several active and inactive MSDN blogs to these new combined blogs. If you’re wondering where the content went, here’s a table that lists the old blog and the new URL for the blog. Note that each source blog has a label at the end there in the new target blog which allows you to follow that specific content – they are self-descriptive:
This March 30th, in the Burlington, MA office of Microsoft, will be SQL Saturday Boston, BI Edition!
I will be speaking on a topic near and dear to me:
I walk through a high level architecture of a real-world application: A Software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider who does financial transactions wanted to explore migrating to the cloud.
Why would they want to move off-premises? Well, apparently buying a new SAN (Storage area Network) for storage every few months was becoming less economical, and they wanted to also reduce the workload of maintaining this application.
Finally, they ran out of datacenter space, and had another 13,000 customers they could not sell to, due to that space restriction! This mean serious financial opportunity loss.
They chose Azure, and a team of us at Microsoft helped them build a path to get them from on-premises to Azure.
I talk through the journey this customer went through, what their architecture was like, and how it ended up. This relates to both business and technical challenges.
In the end, of course, Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) matters as much as reducing the workload to maintain a mission critical SaaS application.
There are many other great speakers who will be delivering great content as well. I hope to see you all there!
Attention all Microsoft partners!
Inspire, our partner conference, will be held in Las Vegas again July 14-18th, 2019.
Why should you consider attending or sponsoring this event?
We recognize there are end-customer solutions that you are expert at, and we want to help you connect with other partners, as well as hear from our product and business teams on our strategy. All size and shape partners are welcome and encouraged to attend.
Anyone can stream last year’s sessions as well, to help get a taste of what Inspire is all about. For first time attendees, go check out the ones labled “FTA”.
When I attended in 2018, I was new to a partner-facing role, and had the privilege of hosting a few of my partners, and attending industry meetings and other sessions with them. This was to help them realize there are tons of resources available in partnering with Microsoft, from technical, to industry, to creating new opportunities for your products.
Microsoft has always been a platform company. We have rebuilt ourselves and are refocused on helping you, our partners, to succeed in this modern cloud-first era.
Sign up today, to save money in advance! https://partner.microsoft.com/en-US/inspire
A friend of mine recently asked where to get free in-person training on the Microsoft cloud platform. We have tons of online training for free, so that’s easy enough.
Microsoft has in-person events in various offices periodically. The Microsoft Technology Centers are where most of these day-long events occur.
You can see upcoming events at a local “MTC” here.
In this case, I’ll walk through a search.
First, navigate to https://events.microsoft.com/.
Under Category, Click on “In Person”
On the top right, “Near”, enter your city, and click search.
At this point the top of the list presented will be at locations near you. You can then decide to filter by product if you wish. I would caution against over-filtering.
Once you select an event, you need to register for it, and please bring a valid ID. IDs are required to enter Microsoft offices for these events.
The registration page will have details for the venue, as well as expected level of education for you prior to going. Most which do not specify are for people at any level. If they’re asking for 300 level or above in a subject, please don’t be a beginner walking in.
Many of these events are delivered through our partners, who deliver solutions based on our platform. Make sure to ask questions, and even network with others in the room.
I hope this helps!
What are SQL Saturdays? Basically, a day of free training by qualified and enthusiastic people, surrounding the Microsoft data platform!
Free? Yes. Sometimes the events charge for lunch. Know that the speakers generally are working on their own dime. Also, many of them are Microsoft MVPs. (This means they really know their stuff, and volunteer a lot in the community).
I have been part of the SQL Saturday community for 6 years now. The user group and other people creating these events are wonderful.
Please sign up for one near you. I am going to be speaking at the Boston BI SQL Saturday on March 30, 2019.
I encourage you to sign up, and go to one of these events near you. You will meet people happy to help, and it may help in terms of networking and career development.
Thanks, and have a great day!
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
Award Category: Engage Your Patients & Enable Personalized Care
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
Original Blog post here: https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/industry-blog/health/2019/02/14/himss-19-microsoft-for-healthcare-innovation-award-winners/
I attended my first HIMSS19 conference this past week. What a whirlwind of excitement! Below is a picture of our booth.
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.
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.
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
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!
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!
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
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
George Walters 
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