Yesterday I attended a Microsoft Azure workshop in Keilaniemi, Helsinki. This was a joint session arranged by Arrow ECS and Microsoft to promote Microsoft and their “Microsoft & Friends” titled cloud ecosystem and involved partners offering.
Working intensively with AWS technologies currently, it seemed to me, that still the angle on this event was to promote “use cloud for secondary workloads, as DR and backup”. That has been the angle on most of the Azure discussions, I have been involved in lately.
For me, this sounds like that maybe the client base targeted there is really tough audience, or the people selling yet don’t have the confidence in their own offering. And it’s not like the Azure as a platform would be totally lagging in features.
One of the most interesting topics of the day was the last one discussing service design. Specifically in health care segment, and not from software development point of view, but modelling actually patient flows and so on. The key takeaway here was “what if the service provider had actually understood the client needs”. That is a very good message, that we all should keep in focus.
After the sessions, there was solo performance by Anssi Kela, one of the foremost current artists in Finland. And naturally a sauna-evening after that in the executive suite.
And as usual in Finland, the most interesting discussions happen in the sauna.
Unfortunately, I had a long drive back home against the night, so I had to bail out a bit early.