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Keep Learning and Don’t Be Afraid to Fail

Cloud management tips from Andy Jones
Cloud management tips from Andy Jones

Andy Jones is a London-based Microsoft Technical Architect working for BT Enterprise. He writes about modern desktop solutions on his blog Move2Modern and is a co-creator of the Cloud Management Community YouTube channel.  

He recently sat down with us to talk about the work he is doing helping the endpoint management community and share some tips for those just getting started.

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Interested in Microsoft cloud? Here’s how you can become an Azure MVP.

How did you get started in tech?

I didn’t start off down the tech route, to be honest. I wanted to be a quantity surveyor but ended up decided to make a move and do an MSc in computer science. Then, on the back of that, I got offered a position for coding, and I went to a bespoke development house. And that role basically put me on the road. I was going from place to place and basically living in different towns, spending a contract here and a contract there. Coding banking systems, mainly.

And, while I was doing that job, a company I was doing some work for picked me, and it was a good position back in central London. And I was kind of living there at the time, my mum was quite ill. So, it served a purpose, and I decided to jump ship. And I’ve worked for them ever since. I’ve actually been here for quite a few years, like 25 years or so.

Why did you end up not going down the quantity surveyor career path?

The time in which I graduated wasn’t a good time in the economy, I was finding it difficult to find a job, so I decided to go back into education.

And I’ve actually got a twin brother who’s always been into engineering, and he already had a job. He’d been through university, and, funnily enough, he works for the same company as me. We reached a point where people confuse us. He lives in a different part of the country to me, but I’ve had people in America come up to me thinking I’m him and what have you. But he’s always been technical, and I kind of followed his lead a little bit and we kind of do fairly similar stuff now.

What do you do these days? What does your job involve?

In theory, I work within the pre-sales team, but my specific unit is pretty small, so I get involved with basically talking to the customers with our account teams picking up the requirements for modern management type solutions, largely Windows devices but it also might be iOS or Android. And then I take that requirement, put it into a proposal and that goes back to the customer. And then, if and when we win, I lead the engineers, assigning engineers to that project and overseeing it. In some instances where we don’t have the resources, I implement the solution myself as well.

So that’s why I like to keep technical. I don’t like to be in front of customers and not know what I’m talking about. You know, it’s a bit like going to an electronics store and asking someone about this latest TV and they don’t have a clue.

You need to know what you’re talking about, so I improved my skills and learn many things, hence the creation of a YouTube channel to participate in the community.

Let’s talk a bit about that. You are the co-founder of the Cloud Management Community YouTube channel, which focuses on the modern management of end-user devices and identities using Microsoft’s cloud. How did it all start, what prompted you to begin this adventure?

I started this community around about seven months ago or something like that. I started it with a colleague who worked with me at the time, and it was during the lockdown period. Everyone was online. Everyone was looking to do more online. My job kind of continued because I work from home anyway the majority of the time, but I challenged myself to learn. And the way I thought would be a good way of doing it was to write a blog and create a YouTube channel. So, we started the channel.

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There were very few options out there where people provided videos around the nuts and bolts, a step-by-step approach to do things like configuring, rolling out, you know — managing devices through the cloud. There was one other channel that’s still quite big out there, but we thought we could give a slightly different take on it, and I wanted to give content to which someone who was in my shoes, starting out, could relate to. I wanted to give back to people that might be starting in their journey and, in a way, document my own journey. The other colleague that I worked with on it was more advanced. And he had more experience, so he could kind of tackle some of the more complex solutions. But we started out doing videos together.

What was the most challenging part of that process?

The whole environment, starting up, trying to give yourself a persona and basically not embarrassing yourself on camera, editing and what software to use — there was a whole new field for us there.

But gradually we learned it. Gradually we got better, and that enabled us to concentrate more on the content rather than on the quality of the videos, etcetera. So yeah, it’s been a long journey, although it’s only been seven months but I think we are progressing quite well.

What have you learned so far from the experience?

I’ve learned that there’s a hell of a lot of people in the community that are really open and willing to help you. They’re on a learning journey themselves. They’re raising their status, if you will, within the technical community but, at the same time, they’re really learning a lot, and I think that’s probably a call for a lot of people. Yes, they probably want to develop their career to a higher status, but they’ve also got a hunger to learn.

What’s your advice for those just starting?

I would certainly say get some qualifications under your belt. But that’s not everything.

Build yourself a reference system. Get hands-on experience. Play around with it for yourself and use that as a model going forward. If you’re in a community and you’re asking a question and someone says, try this, try that — you’re not going to be able to do that unless you’ve got your own computer system. Set up your own lab to try and test things out. I think that’s really key.

And keep learning. Keep up to date. But be curious. Ask questions and don’t be afraid to fail. We kind of live in a society where people are maybe a bit afraid of that. But you learn from your mistakes and it’s only then that you really get to the bottom of understanding, sometimes, when you make a mistake or you’ve done something wrong.

Where do you see the device management world going? What are the most promising areas in the space from a career perspective?

In the modern management world, pretty much it won’t be too long before the majority of people move over to cloud management of devices. We’ve already passed the 50% mark from on-premises to cloud, and I think that will accelerate.

But within that whole realm of device management and cloud management, database management, artificial intelligence and IoT — I think those are going to be clear winners for a number of years to come.

For more tips on cloud management, modern desktop solutions and cloud careers, make sure to follow Andy through his blog and the Cloud Management Community’s YouTube channel, as well as on Twitter and LinkedIn.

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A Data Centre Migration Is About Technology and People

A Data Centre Migration Is About Technology and People
Sarah Lean (Techielass), Cloud Advocate at Microsoft, discusses getting into community relations and shares tips for a successful data centre migration.

Sarah Lean, aka Techielass, is a Scotland-based IT infrastructure, ops, and sys admin expert and Azure community evangelist. The founder of the Glasgow Azure User Group, Sarah works as a Senior Cloud Advocate at Microsoft and blogs, tweets and has her own YouTube channel. She discusses, cloud careers, how you can get into community relations. What makes a successful data centre migration, and how Data Centre Migration is about technology and people.

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Interested in cloud careers? You might also enjoy our interview about how to become an Azure MVP.

How did you get started in tech?

I started off in a Sys Admin role, so I was a helpdesk engineer doing morning password resets for everybody, fishing out bits of broken paper from their printers, and stuff like that. I worked my career through those various different roles. In the UK, we call helpdesk roles first-level roles and then second-level is the support engineers that go out to people’s desks. Third-level is when you get to design systems for customers.

So, I basically went through those support levels within my career and just built up lots of experience both internally and externally. I was in companies where they just had a small IT department and they didn’t understand what IT departments did and how crucial they were. And then I also worked for managed service providers, dedicating myself to various different customers, etc.

How did you eventually become a Microsoft cloud advocate and a prominent figure in the Azure community?

I kind of fell into the community role because I wanted to learn Azure and there were no user groups in Scotland. I think the closest user group to me at the time was in London. Which is obviously not something you want to do it you finish working on Wednesday night; go down to London to user group and then come back up to your work the next day. It’s obviously not logistically feasible, so I basically started the Glasgow Azure user group to fulfil my need. Basically, to learn Azure and find out where everybody else was fitting this into the on-prem and cloud worlds.

And yeah, I kind of fell into running the user group and then started speaking at events. People were like “you need to speak at events and share your story and journey”. Which I didn’t want to do. But then I fell into it and; before I knew it; I was getting headhunted to become a cloud advocate at Microsoft.

It definitely hasn’t been a planned evolution in my career, if I’m going to be brutally honest about it. But one that I’m really enjoying and has given me some excellent experiences of travelling to different parts of the world and doing some amazing stuff and meeting some amazing people in the community as well.

What does the cloud advocate position entail?

My role can be quite varied. A summary of my job is to help others find out how to use Microsoft Technologies. Whether that be by telling the story in a simplified manner, maybe in a blog post or a video that kind of connects the dots between. For example, what your on-prem system looks like and what your cloud system would look like.

I’m sure we’ve all read some official documentation on various different products. Not just Microsoft products, and not understood what they were talking about. Being able to digest that into a way that makes sense for everybody. Whether that be someone who’s a project manager or someone who has 100 years of experience in IT, and being able to get that story across to them is something that I do. So, my day can be quite varied.

It can be creating videos, creating blogs, doing podcasts… Or it can be just playing with technology, or creating new Microsoft Learn content as well. There are lots of different facets, and there are lots of different things I can do throughout the day. So it can be quite fun. And obviously, Covid has stopped me from travelling, so that would have been a big part of my job had we not had a pandemic. But we’re making it work.

Besides being a cloud advocate for Microsoft, you also have a personal blog and do a weekly update on YouTube as Techielass. How do the two intertwine? Do you usually post work-related stuff, separate both worlds, or a mix of both?

I think it’s a bit of both to be honest. Because a lot of people know me as Techielass and from before I was a cloud advocate, through my blog. Some things like my weekly update on YouTube was something that I actually started in anticipation for this job. Because I knew I would have to be on camera or I knew I’d have to do some presentations for this job.

I started that weekly update nearly two years ago now, to basically get more familiar with looking at the camera and being able to connect to it and doing all the things that go around video production and so that that’s kind of interlinked. Although it’s become a kind of side project because I just enjoy doing that kind of medium as well.

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My blog is sometimes intertwined with my job. You’ll find me, you know, blogging about random things that I find. I’ve been supporting my husband and working from home lately. So there’s some random support ticket type questions he’s asked me that I’ve blogged about, because I know he’s going to ask me in about 6 weeks’ time. And I’m not going to remember how I did it, so yeah, there’s various different things on my blog.

So yeah, my blog kind of intertwines with my job, but it’s not necessarily always about my job.

Is there anything in particular that you like to blog about within the world of Azure?

I think I’ve tried to specialise in data centre migrations. I think we’ve probably all been involved in an on-prem data centre migration. And I’ve tried to take some of that experience and that knowledge and transfer it into how you would actually migrate to the cloud.

So, you’ll find me talking a lot about migrating. I tend to talk more about the processes around that nowadays rather than the technology because I think that’s a part of the journey that a lot of people struggle with. We can understand the technology quite easily, I think. But trying to put that into practice; how you think about things like training your staff; and how you change that culture within your organization; how do start the project for your migration…

So, I talk a lot about data centre migrations and, although I talk a lot about the culture and the process around it. You’ll find me talking about Azure migrate quite a bit and intertwining that into how you actually do your data centre migration. So that’s kind of my specialty, what a lot of people reach out to me and ask about.

What are the biggest mistakes being made in this data centre migration to the cloud, especially now that some companies might be rushing their transition because of the pandemic?

I think lots of people forget to actually assess what they have inside their on-prem data centre right now. They want to get to the actual delivery part. They want to get to put some resources in Azure, and they want to prove the value and say “we’ve completed that project”. And, like you say, some have been rushing because of Covid and the challenges that it’s thrown up.

I always try and say: take a step back, have a look at what’s in your environment. Try and understand not only the technology in your environment, but also what your staff needs are. So, your technology is going to have a bunch of needs when you move it to the cloud. Things are maybe not even going to be able to be moved to the cloud because they’re legacy. Or they’re far too complex, etc.

But what about the the staff within your environment as well? Do people know how to use Azure once you’ve moved into that? I think it that can often be a stumbling block as well. I’ve seen some customers who bring in third-party companies to do the migration. They move all the technology and then that third-party company leaves. The staff don’t have any clue on how to support the things that are now in Azure.

And before you know it, they’ve got into this situation where they think that the cloud is rubbish. Because the staff haven’t been able to support it because they themselves haven’t been supported in learning it. That’s why I always say that a data centre migration is about technology and people, so make sure you’re investing in the staff within your IT department.

Also, make sure you’re looking towards the end users, the people that use these applications that are in your data centre. Do you know how they use them? Is this an opportunity to ditch some of the ones that they hate? Is it that time to look at new solutions?

So, technology and people are the things you should be thinking about in your data centre migration.

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What advice would you give to other IT specialists who might want to get into community relations and advocacy?

If you want to get into the community space, try and do it in your spare time. I know that’s a big ask, because we probably don’t have a lot of spare time, (I definitely don’t have a lot of spare time myself), but it’s definitely a job you have to have a passion for because it’s very different from the technology world, from being a consultant, from being an engineer.

There are so many facets to it. I do things in marketing, I do video editing, I do image creation. I’m a bit of a designer occasionally. I’m also a technical writer. I have to be a presenter.

There’s a ton if things before I even get to the technology. Sme days might I don’t even touch any of the technology because I’m in things like Adobe Creative Cloud, so that’s a big change.

If you’re not ready to give up the toolbox, if you’re not ready to give up playing with the technology. Then it’s not something for you right now, and that’s why I say do it in your spare time, because, if you find that and you enjoy doing these things, if you enjoy doing podcasts, if you enjoy doing videos you enjoy doing the blogging, you’ll naturally find that you’ll progress more and more to that and away from being hands on the tools as such.

I see a lot of people wanting the glamour, but they don’t realise that there’s a lot of time where you’re actually not touching technology. But it is a great job. It has offered me fantastic opportunities , but I think a lot of people need to be aware of the fact that there’s so much to it and it’s not just talking about tech all the time.

And your advice for the larger IT community?

Besides that, just support people who are creating content, whether that be people like myself that do it as a job or whether it be people doing it as a hobby. It definitely means a lot, even if it’s just a small like on a YouTube video or a retweet on Twitter. That means a whole load to us as content creators.

So, definitely support people when they do that, because it can make a massive difference. That 10-minute video could have taken me like 3 days to create so that small little like on a YouTube video means the world to me and it means that I actually spend my time valuably.

Support the content creators out there.

Check out more of our interviews from our podcast episodes.

For more cloud careers and Azure tips, make sure to follow Sarah on Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn or through the Techielass blog.

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Interview with microsoft Wesley Backelant: Becoming data-driven is more than just saying you are data-driven (Part 2)

Part two of our interview with Microsoft cloud solution architect Wesley Backelant. We discuss his role and what's ahead for the cloud industry.

The second part of our interview with Microsoft cloud solution architect Wesley Backelant, in which he talked about his role, what the job entails and what’s ahead for the cloud industry.

A Microsoft insider, Wesley Backelant is a Belgian cloud solutions architect who works together with the company’s customers to engineer and deploy impactful data and advanced analytics projects. Among other things, Wesley is an expert on the various components of the Azure AI platform. He is also a frequent speaker at numerous community events and regularly shares Azure news and tips.  

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Interview with Wesley Backelant: What part of being a cloud architect at Microsoft do you enjoy the most?

There are a couple of aspects that make it very interesting to me, personally. One of them, and that’s probably one of the benefits of being at a company like Microsoft, is leading the space in terms of innovation and cloud. You are at the forefront of technology, and that’s what I like. I like new stuff. Every time I get to learn something new, I see it as an incredible challenge, and I really love doing these things and getting my hands on new stuff and new technologies. That’s what drives me from a technological standpoint.

But the other thing that I really like about being in the data and BI space is that it puts you in a position where you are not just talking about technology, you’re also talking about business and societal outcome. One of our customers, for example, is in the public transportation space, and the fun part there is that, when you do something that’s innovative with them, you know that it´s going to have an impact on people and that it’s going to improve the experience of a hundred thousand or millions of people. To me, that’s one of the more rewarding parts of my job. Seeing a project succeed is fun, but seeing it drive real impact is the real deal.

At the technical level, what do you love most doing as part of your job?

Making it all work together. Azure is a continuously evolving platform. New things pop up all the time. Figuring out where all those things fit together and how you can make things more efficient and cost-effective is one of the role’s key drivers and, honestly, quite fun. Matching what we deliver as a technology to something that can actually provide value to the customer by leveraging existing building blocks.

Also, coding is not so much part of my job officially, but it’s still something I love to do, because it’s quite tangible. You get to see the result pretty immediately, and that’s a lot of fun.

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What tools do you like using the most?

I would be obliged to say Azure SQL Database is my favourite tool, as SQL is my old love, but that wouldn’t be entirely fair, especially, if you look at what we’re doing today with open source. I’d like to split my answer between cloud and open source.

Containers and Kubernetes are clearly changing the way people are building software these days. I talk a lot with start-ups and partners, and pretty much all of them are building stuff based on containers and mostly Kubernetes as an orchestrator. It’s impressive to see what the impact of these tools has been in the relatively little time that they’ve been around for. We are also seeing them as a big foundation for our own services.

Then there’s open source. For example, something people sometimes forgets is that, whenever you have a service that has to run in production, you need proper monitoring and alerting. It’s not the most fun part of building a solution, but it’s one of the most crucial steps when you want to do something seriously. We have Azure Monitor, which is a great tool that I strongly recommend, but at the same time, I’m a huge fan of open-source solutions like Prometheus and Grafana. Luckily, they have integrations with Azure Monitor, so that makes them even more interesting. What amazes me of the open-source world is the community, and the power of the community, how the community sets the direction in a lot of ways. Even the big players follow the direction set by the community. That’s quite nice to see.

As a data expert, what’s the biggest issue you are seeing with data these days?

I think we all know the challenges from a more technical point of view, so data quality, governance, etc, to me things that between quotes we can easily solve with technology. But one of the biggest challenges I see with customers is being more data-driven. It sounds like a marketing term, but it really is not.

I really believe most companies are aware there’s a lot of value in the data they have, in applying machine learning or even good reporting. But getting into thinking what’s the difference I can make with this data, and do I have the proper environment and organisation in place to really benefit from it? That’s where I still see a lot of companies struggle. If I were a c-level person, that’s probably the question I would ask myself – are we organised to benefit from all the data and what it can bring to our company? Becoming data-driven is more than just saying you are data-driven. It also means having a proper organisational structure in place together with technology and tools.

Interview with microsoft Wesley Backelant: What’s next for cloud?

One of the things is that I still see too much of is that there’s still a strong focus on infrastructure. I still see a lot of IT departments that can tell you what server or specific IP address is hosting an application or service.

Things can change, the infrastructure can scale in or out. It shouldn’t matter to you. I really believe that infrastructure part is one of the things will see disappearing over time. One of the best things about cloud is agility, and when people start really to adopt the whole serverless idea, and also DevOps as a philosophy, that’s the point where we’ll really see the whole power of cloud.

Secondly, at Microsoft we strongly believe in the intelligent cloud and edge. Bringing some part of that computing power, or at least how it works closer to where the data is, is definitely also an area where there is a lot of innovation happening these days. The big challenge is, obviously, making it all work seamlessly together. We are definitely doing progress there. But I still think there’s going to be a lot of new developments in this area still. And, thirdly, there is the abstraction of where things are running. If you look at tools like Azure Arc, basically, Kubernetes is having a big impact on that whole story. Being able to host your solutions be it on the public cloud, your own cloud or multiple clouds and having it all seamlessly work together from an operational standpoint and management point of view – that’s also where cloud is going.

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You can follow Wesley on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Also, make sure to check out his blog: My long term memory for data and development related information.

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You need to share your knowledge and not just keep it to yourself

Cloud solutions architect and Microsoft Azure MVP Karel De Winter discusses his career in IT and shares tips for advancing your cloud career.

An interview with Microsoft Azure MVP Karel De Winter to discuss his trajectory in IT and how to advance your cloud career.

Karel de Winter is a Belgian cloud solutions architect working at Azure Expert managed cloud services provider DexMach. He is passionate about helping others in the cloud community grow and develop their expertise. Whether it is on Twitter, on his blog, or at an industry event, Karel is constantly sharing news and resources that will help you make the most of the power of cloud.

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Check out more of our interviews from our podcast episodes.

Interview with Karel De Winter from Azure: How did you get started in technology?

I was about seven when I started to play around with some old computers. The first things you learn are the basic commands like DIR and CD. And, from that moment on, I just wanted to learn more about computers in general and what you could do with them. So, getting into IT was all about doing what I love to do and the things that I was playing around with. The hardware that was given to me by family, by neighbours; I was looking to improve that hardware, making all those things work together.

Then the Internet came and became this living thing. And a lot of things happened from there. I joined some local communities in Belgium and learned about a lot more besides computers. I learned a little bit of programming, I learned to build websites. It was just the beginning of the web, so it was all about playing around, building websites and making music and then putting the music on those websites.

That is how it all started. And now I have around 14 years of experience in IT. I have always worked with Microsoft partners, and every company I worked with had the possibility to try out the Microsoft products, to try new things, to test them, and then implement them together with customers.

Interview with Karel De Winter:What about Azure?

The same thing happened with Azure. The platform is about 10- or 11-years old right now, so I started to play with Azure in the very beginning. I got interested at a local community event. Somebody was showing something from Azure Storage; you could put your files on a storage account or you could run your SQL environments and servers on Azure.

I was curious about all those things and how they worked together. So, I got involved with the Azure community in Belgium and attended several sessions. And I immediately saw the benefit of cloud products. But I must say that, ten years ago, Azure was not the Microsoft Azure platform that we now know. A lot has changed since then. So, it was a lot of exploration and investigating what was possible, always learning new things through the process. That is how, throughout my career, I went from being a systems engineer to making cloud architectures and other related things.

Interview with Karel De Winter from Azure: And what are you up to these days?

My main focus so far has been on Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). But, since I started working at DexMach as a solutions architect, a lot of things have changed. Now I am focusing more on the Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) side of things and everything around governance, making sure that we have a good landing zone and keep security in mind. Those are the things I now focus on.

Now I am designing architectures, but also doing a bit of pre-sales. Together with our team, we help to make proposals for customers so that they are having a clear understanding of the cost and architecture of the Azure environment. Aside from that, I’m also a competence lead, which means that I am responsible for all platform related projects and guidelines related to Azure. So, I am looking at, for example; how we can use Azure Stack HCI as a hybrid solution for our customers, or how we can standardize platform-as-a-service in Azure with Azure Functions, Logic Apps or Web Apps. Even Kubernetes comes into play when a customer wants to keep full control. I am making sure that everything is secure, that everyone who works in the team is on the same page (we have standards that we need to implement with every customer).

What is your advice for more junior Azure experts?

My number one piece of advice for junior Azure experts would be that learning is important. It is so important that you have to do it for the rest of your life. Especially because a lot is changing in cloud. It is going very, very quickly. So, if you are not learning day by day, six months later you are behind your competitors. You need to keep on learning and keep doing new things.

If you want to start with Azure, just go with Microsoft Learn. That’s a very good starting point. You have different paths you can follow. So, if you are a junior and you don’t know which area or which track you should go for, this is the way to go. You have the ability to sign up for free and have a complete Azure environment in a sandbox and see what is working for you. You can see if you are doing a lot of development things, or enjoying the web development part, or if you are an infrastructure guy like me. Or are maybe more into VMs, more into Kubernetes and managing all those things, networking, storage, etc. Just have a look at that.

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What about official certifications, what would you recommend focusing on?

You can’t learn everything in these times of digital revolution, there is just too much information. But when preparing for an official Microsoft you should start by looking at the PDF that’s on the page of the exam. There you will find the exam skills outline. All the topics covered in the exam are listed with some percentage at the end. And you should aim to learn by that percentage. The skills measured with the highest percentage must be also your highest learning priority and the biggest investment in time. That’s something I always do. My main focus will be on the biggest parts, and then, if I have time to go into a really deep dive, I will look into the other parts.

Learn more with our article: The Most Popular IT Certifications

What’s the best career advice you have been given?

Networking is important because, for example, if you are going for a job interview and they have two people with a very similar resume (same certificates and experience) but the one person knows somebody within the company or knows somebody that knows somebody — you know, they will be picked instead of the other one. I think networking is very important in every job. But not only in it. If you want to work at another place or you want to take a career step, it is very important that you know people and that you do some extra networking as well. Yeah.

Secondly, as you are becoming an expert, you need to share your knowledge and not just keep it to yourself. Sharing your expertise with people in your company or even online is very important because you show that you are doing things. You get on the radar of other people and other people. Create a blog or do a podcast or make a YouTube video. Just explain something simple. Get started sharing something you’ve learned, something you worked on, a project.

And the last thing: try to get involved in as many projects as you can. And don’t be shy to do some complex projects. Mostly you will be working in teams, so you will learn from other team members, from other people. Cloud is still very new, so nobody has 20 or 25 years of experience with it, as it happens with other technologies. Everybody is kind of new to the job. It is by doing that you will learn a lot. Making sure you have complex projects in which to get involved. That has worked very well for me in my career.

What would you do if you were not in IT?

That’s a good question. I think I would have a small company that gave mountain biking lessons because I love mountain biking. I imagine this little village in the mountains, where I would have a little shop full of mountain bikes. And I would give lessons, or give some tours. Yeah, that would be nice.

You can follow Karel on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Also, make sure to check out his blog.

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Interview with Wesley Backelant from microsoft: Playing with technology is one thing, but you only start learning when you have requirements (Part 1)

An interview with Microsoft cloud solution architect Wesley Backelant to discuss his career trajectory and the best strategies to gain new skills.

The first part of the interview with Microsoft cloud solution architect Wesley Backelant to discuss his career trajectory and share some tips on how you can gain new skills and become a self-made IT pro like him.

A Microsoft insider, Wesley Backelant is a Belgian cloud solutions architect who works together with the company’s customers to engineer and deploy impactful data and advanced analytics projects. Among other things, Wesley is an expert on the various components of the Azure AI platform. He is also a frequent speaker at numerous community events and regularly shares Azure news and tips.  

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Check out the second part of the interview 

So, Wesley, tell us a bit about your professional trajectory. How did you get started in your career?

I’m actually what they call a self-made man. I started studying ICT or IT, but I had been doing an internship at a company during high school, and that’s the company I got started in. They were looking for someone to help them and support them with software development and, because I worked there as an intern, they asked me to go work with them in my first year of university. They offered to teach me. There were some very senior people working there, who knew everything about development and so on. So, I left my studies and joined the company.

I decided to do that the first year because, to be honest, the education system in Belgium at the moment was not that strong at this level, so I was kind of frustrated. I finished high school and I thought, okay, now I am going to study IT stuff, I am going to learn how to program, and when I got there, there was a lot of stuff that I had to do that was completely unrelated to IT. There was accounting, economics, different languages. It was all super interesting, of course, but I was there to learn how to develop, and even when we did that, it was only old school stuff that we learnt, COBOL, and so on.   

When I got that opportunity to get hands-on, I said, okay, let’s do this. It was a leap of faith too, but it turned out to be okay! A small company, so I was the IT department together with a few colleagues. We did a bit of everything.

Interview with Wesley Backelant from microsoft: What sort of career path eventually took you to become a cloud architect at Microsoft?

Well, sometime after that, I started getting interested in the database side of things, more than on development. I needed bigger challenges, so I got into outsourcing to have more variation, customers and technologies to get in touch with.

Learn more about Microsoft Technologies Careers Overview

I then had the opportunity to become a database architect at a large enterprise in Belgium, and I took it because I knew they were hosting one of the most transaction-intensive SQL environments in Belgium at that moment. I thought it would be a great learning opportunity, which kind of proved to be true, because it put me on the next level of data, focusing on database design, performance tuning, and so on. They were also looking into some business intelligence solutions and, given my passion for data, I had been doing some reporting services work. We implemented together with a colleague the first reporting solution there, and that’s how I got into contact with some people at Microsoft. I figured that, with that experience, it was the right time to apply for a position at Microsoft, as they were looking for a pre-sales for their data and BI.

Back then I was not really a BI specialist, I was more focused on the database engine, but I figured, hey, new stuff to learn, fantastic, let’s take that leap. It was the same year I first saw the demo for what back then was called Red Dog, which is now known as Azure, at an internal event. Looking back, it was hard to imagine. It was the early, early days of Azure, and, seeing that demo, it was still hard to grasp what cloud would mean nowadays.

It was fun being there. Being at the birth of Azure, so to speak, put me in a nice position. I actually grew up and worked together with Azure at Microsoft, meaning that I was blessed to be able to go through this whole cycle of innovation and new services coming up. You know, looking back at something like SQL Server 6.5 and what keeps me awake at night today, it’s really amazing. We are so far from the traditional idea of the database now.

What educational resources do you turn to as someone who is constantly learning new things?

Well, at Microsoft there’s a huge focus on learning these days. It’s one of the key priorities to make sure everyone is up-to-speed with technology. Especially with our roles as cloud architects, we need to be ahead of the curve in many ways. But it’s a broader concept, of course. Everyone at Microsoft needs to at least have some part of technical knowledge, and there’s a strong push for that. Most of that is coming from Microsoft learn these days, which is also open for external people, so I really would encourage people to look at it, as there is great content on the platform.

Additionally, I like to look at blogs, from the official Microsoft blogs to the heroes in the industry. For me that’s actually the queue, when I see something on a blog post, I say, okay, let’s see how can I learn this, how can I get my hands dirty with this.

Is that what you tend to favour, a more practical approach to education?

What I’ve noticed works best for me — I have these “production-like” pet projects. It could be something you do at home, but where you try to have a scenario in mind. Playing with technology is one thing, but you only start to learn when you have requirements, I think.

At first, I had zero knowledge of Linux, for example. I saw it was going to become important. Since I had a server at home running Windows, I decided to make it a Linux server – that was before cloud, to be clear – so I said, okay, let’s use Linux, let’s start building RAID arrays, save some pictures on a central server, etc. I broke the server several times. Luckily, I had backups, thanks to experience. I think I had to re-install it like 3 times because I did something wrong with permissions and partitions in Linux, but that’s learning.

The point is that you need something that has real requirements so that you challenge yourself to try new things. And for me that’s what works best, getting your hands dirty with technology. It, of course, starts by reading and learning the basics. But then you need to start pushing yourself.

Check out more of our interviews from our podcast episodes.

You can follow Wesley on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Also, make sure to check out his blog: My long term memory for data and development related information.

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Weekly News: Google’s Project Zero-Day Bugs, Cloud and a Quantum Leap

Weekly News: Google's Project Zero-Day Bugs, Cloud and a Quantum Leap
Google's Project Zero-Day Bugs, Cloud and a Quantum Leap... Watch this recap in video format with Mission Control Center by Mindquest

Google’s Project Zero-Day Bugs, Cloud and a Quantum Leap… Watch this recap in video format.

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Infosec & Google’s Project Zero: Google says try harder

New research by Maddie Stone, a researcher at Google’s Project Zero security team, suggests hackers have it way too easy thanks to the business world’s failure to patch zero-day and recurring vulnerabilities. 

According to Stone, attackers these days don’t really need to come up with new vulnerabilities to exploit. Although industry leaders including Google itself are diligent enough in issuing patches to zero-day vulnerabilities, these bug fixes often fall flat and don’t fully address the issue, leaving the doors open to future attacks.  

Project Zero, whose only focus is to investigate these zero-day flaws, advocates for greater investment and a more proactive approach to security. The key, Stone says, is to let engineers go deeper to identify the root of the problem and implement more meaningful structural changes. 

MIT Technology Review

It’s all about the cloud

This week we got a surprise announcement from a technology titan: Jeff Bezos is stepping down as CEO of Amazon. And his choice of successor is quite revealing of where the industry is headed next. 

Amazon started as an online retailer, and that’s for what most people know the company. But it’s not where the money is at. Any tech insider like yourself will undoubtedly tell the layman that the Seattle born company makes most of its revenue with its cloud services. It is no surprise then, that Bezos has chosen Andy Jassy, head of Amazon Web Services, to take the company into the future.  

And Amazon is not alone here. Microsoft is no longer the company that makes Windows. Google is not just a search engine. Cloud has clearly become the winning bet for tech goliaths. And, with only 25-30 percent of business workloads in the cloud. we are just seeing the beginning of it.   

NBC News

Quantum leaps

And speaking of Microsoft and cloud, the Redmond-based company announced this week the availability on preview of Azure Quantum, a public cloud ecosystem that lets users access the quantum capabilities of partners like Honeywell, IonQ and Quantum Circuits. 

With this public preview, Microsoft wants to encourage developers, researchers and systems integrators to learn how to use the platform and build applications that could potentially transform a wide range of industries. 

The announcement comes the same week Dutch researchers at Radbourd University revealed a new method for assembling a network of atoms that works in a similar way to the synapses in our brains. The breakthrough, the researchers say, is a major step towards the creation of a quantum brain that is able to function and change like a human’s.

ZDNet / The Independent

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Luxembourg: Top 10 Cloud Experts to Follow on Twitter

Luxembourg: Top 10 Cloud Experts to Follow on Twitter
If you are a cloud specialist living in Luxembourg or are looking to get into cloud, discover our top 10 experts from Luxembourg to follow on Twitter.

Cloud computing is an umbrella under which many a successful professional career can be built by those who decide to go the way of IT. If you are a cloud specialist living in Luxembourg or are looking to get into cloud and could use the advice of a local, here’s a list with the folks you should be following on Twitter. Discover our top 10 experts from Luxembourg to follow on Twitter.

Top 10 Cloud Experts from Luxembourg to Follow on Twitter

Adam Tymofiejewicz 

@ITaaService 

Adam is a true cloud enthusiast who works as an IT services consultant and outsourcing processes specialist, always approaching IT from a business transformation perspective. He tweets extensively about industry trends and news, but also about many other topics of interest like space exploration and career advice.

 Fernando Simon  

@FSimonDBA 

Fernando is an Oracle ACE working as a Senior Database Architect at eProssed. He is highly experienced with the Oracle Database, mainly with Oracle Engineered Systems with focus in mission-critical and high availability environments. Fernando is also co-founder and board member of LuxOUG, and he blogs extensively about all things Oracle and disaster recovery. 

Rodrigo Mufalani 

@Mufalani 

Rodrigo is a Database Administrator (DBA) specialising in Oracle. In fact, he is an Oracle Certified Master (OCM) and Oracle ACE, a recognition that speaks to his deep expertise in the technology and his contributions to the platform. Rodrigo is also a chairman at LuxOUG and blogs extensively about all things Oracela and DBA.  

Lauren Miltgen 

@kubernan 

Laurent is a Microsoft cloud expert working as Head of Digital Transformation for consultancy firm Elgon and Ainos.  He is a Microsoft Office 365 MVP, a focus he complements with expertise in areas like project  and change management and business development. He tweets regularly about all things cloud and Microsoft, as well as general interest tech news and new developments regarding the star-up scene. 

Andre Ontalba 

@aontalba 

Andre is an Oracle ACE working as a Cloud Architect Team Lead and Senior Database Engineer at Digora, where he works with OCI, AWS and Azure. He is an Oracle Apps DBA, Exadata MAA, DG and HA expert, as well as a co-Founder LuxOUG. He blogs about DBA in his native Portuguese. 

Paolo Vecchi 

@Vecchi_Paolo 

Paolo is CEO at cloud start-up Omnis Cloud, where he helps partners and customers deliver cloud solutions based on open-source platforms which allow private and public sector organisations to take back control of their data. He is passionate about Linux, data privacy, security and regulations, topics he tweets about regularly. 

Arnaud Maichac 

@arnaudmaichac 

Arnaud is a Tech Lead at Bâloise Assurances Luxembourg. He is a senior .NET developer who describes himself as a Microsoft Azure addict and is a co-founder of the Luxembourg .NET User Group. He is highly involved with the country’s cloud community and tweets extensively about the topic.  

Gildas Cuisinier 

@gcuisinier 

Gildas is a DevOps and Software Engineer at the Luxembourg International Bank. He combines his interest for development with that for the sysadmin domain. He is a big advocate of the DevOps culture and the co-creator and organizer of Voxxed Days Luxembourg, a new event focusing on microservices. 

Andrey Martovoy 

@AndreyMartovoy 

Andrey is a FinTech Adviser at Luxembourg Bankers’ Association. He has combined expertise in FinTech and open innovation in financial services, and he is passionate about all the technologies impacting this industry – including, of course, the cloud.  

Mathieu Perrein 

@perrein 

Mathieu is Chief Technology Officer at Squaremiled, role to which he comes after years working as a software craftsman and architect. He is a Microsoft Certified Trainer and a co-founder of the Luxembourg .NET User Group. He tweets and share news about the topic. 

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The Microsoft Technology Stack for Business

The Microsoft Technology Stack for Business
When it comes to all things enterprise technology, these are the principal platforms that make up the Microsoft Technology Stack.

When it comes to enterprise technology, the Microsoft Technology Stack reaches almost as far as the eye can see. From operating systems and development tools to cloud computing, the company owns an extremely diversified portfolio of solutions that can be hard to keep track of as an IT professional.

Don’t get lost in the clutter. These are the principal platforms that make up the Microsoft Technology Stack.

.NET

An open-source, cross-platform development framework used to build all sorts of applications. .NET, allows developers to choose among a wide variety of programming languages, code editors and libraries, giving users the flexibility and scalability to build solutions for everything from web and mobile to IoT.

It is these broad capabilities that make .NET one of the world’s most popular developer platforms. As such, it benefits from the support of a vast community and an extensive repository of libraries.

GitHub

GitHub has been part of Microsoft since the company acquired it in 2018. The platform is used by both amateur and expert developers to host code, review it and collaborate by focusing on version control and following a continuous integration, continuous delivery (CI/CD) philosophy. 

Its impressive community is what really fuels GitHub. Millions of programmers upload their work and review each other’s code through the platform. As such, GitHub is one of the world’s largest open-access repositories and collaborative projects platforms.

Furthermore, the fact that is used by hobbyists, corporations and top professionals alike has turned GitHub into a sort of LinkedIn for developers and tech enthusiasts. A place to showcase one’s talent and concrete achievements.

Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365 is one of today’s leading cloud-based productivity platforms. It combines the traditional MS Office suite with a set of collaboration tools and features like cloud-based storage and Teams to provide organizations and individuals with the means to get things done wherever they are located.

It is a mix of software like Microsoft Teams, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, with flexible and scalable cloud storage and security and world-class security. From an IT perspective, it requires companies to deploy, maintain and update an infrastructure that is adapted to business needs while preserving security and a nimble spirit.

Microsoft Careers

Dynamics 365

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems are all-encompassing software toolsets with capabilities extending across marketing, sales and customer service. As a leading CRM, Dynamics 365 allows organisations to easily plan and execute operations from a single platform. The speed, efficiency and cohesiveness derived from its use have made CRM a staple of today’s business management – as well as one of the most profitable specialisations in the IT world.

Dynamics 365 is a scalable solution that allows for advanced customization, making it adaptable to the needs of each company. It is the job of technical MS experts to set up, customize and maintain this environment in a way that maximizes efficiency, user satisfaction and customer loyalty.

Test these upcoming Dynamics 365 features

Azure

Microsoft Azure is the company’s public cloud computing platform. A competitor to Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, and IBM Cloud, Azure provides companies with a wide range of cloud services, including computing, storage, analytics and networking.

Azure is an open-source-friendly, adaptable and scalable platform that fits the needs of every customer. Furthermore, Azure is industry-specific, providing dedicated tools to sectors like healthcare, e-commerce or retail. It offers 4 different types of cloud computing: infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), software as a service (SaaS) and serverless.

A whole army of professionals is needed to design, deploy and maintain such cloud ecosystems.

On Learning Azure IoT and Being an Active Member of the Community

Microsoft Power Platform

The Microsoft Power Platform enables businesses to create and deploy custom-made workflow apps and reports that help them easily extract, process, and analyse data. The Power Platform is integrated with the rest of Microsoft’s ecosystem of platforms as well as with other third-party apps.

It is a key tool in today’s data-driven business world, providing actionable insights in real time. It requires a team of technical experts to deploy, maintain and expand, as well as to train end-users and offer them support on a daily basis.

Microsoft SQL Server

SQL Server is a relational database management system (RDBMS) by Microsoft. Also called MSSQL, it serves as the backbone to data registering, accessing and manipulation for its enterprise customers.

It is protected by high-grade encryption and caters to a variety of businesses depending on size and data needs.

Learn more about the QlikView Developer Job

Visual Studio

Microsoft Visual Studio is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that can be used to build anything from the ground up. In a way, IDEs are the word processors of the programming world, allowing developers to create applications for a multitude of platforms from a single place. Visual Studio includes debugging, automation and team collaboration features, creating a holistic environment to conceive and deliver high-quality applications.

Learn more about the Microsoft Technology Stack and the various roles within Microsoft Technologies in our comprehensive Microsoft Technologies Careers Guide

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Industry Snapshot: Microsoft’s Momentum

Industry Snapshot: Microsoft’s Momentum
Microsoft’s Momentum: we look at the most recent developments and headlines involving the U.S. company. Things change quickly, especially in IT.

Microsoft’s Momentum. It was not that long ago that Microsoft seemed on track to take a more secondary role in the future of enterprise technology. Software sales had been sluggish for some time, and the company seemed unable to keep up with the pace of innovation of its competitors. Well, things change quickly, especially in IT. 

To the surprise of some, Microsoft has managed to bounce back in just a few years. It has delivered its finest OS to date, Windows 10, created a new line of successful hardware products like the Surface, and become one of the top contenders in the cloud wars.  

We look at the most recent developments and headlines involving the U.S. company. 

Microsoft’s Momentum

Global lockdown and cloud momentum 

We have recently discussed how the surge in remote work caused by COVID-19 has helped the cloud industry. Microsoft is, of course, one of the biggest beneficiaries of the current situation. Finding itself incredibly well-positioned with cloud collaboration tools ranging from Azure to Microsoft Teams.  

The Redmond, Virginia company just posted its Q3 2020 earnings, delivering 59% growth for Azure sales and taking its share of the global cloud market up to a 17%. The second place after Amazon. This steady expansion is forcing Microsoft to grow their overall cloud infrastructure.  

The company announced this week it will be investing billions of dollars in new data centers in Poland and New Zealand. It also presented an upcoming — and significant – update to the integration of VMware cloud solutions into Azure.  

Microsoft is betting big not only on cloud infrastructure and third-party support. But also on cloud security – a major concern for the modern digital enterprise. The company revealed this week a new hacking challenge for Azure Sphere. Promising a total of $200K in bounty for those who can break into the system.   

Software consolidation 

Although it’s been almost a year since Microsoft released its last big update for Windows 10. The company announced no major upgrades or changes for the upcoming May 2020 update. Furthermore, and in response to the global pandemic, as of May 1st, the company will limit the scope of its updates to security fixes. For how long? We don’t know exactly. Altogether, this makes analysts and industry experts think that Windows 10 has reached a maturity state. And that it will not change much more. 

Ironically, this consolidation comes at the same time that Microsoft is shifting its strategy for Windows 10X. What was going to be the dual-screen variant of the OS is now being redirected towards a more simplified, one-screen version. The move signals Microsoft’s intention to compete more head-on with Google’s Chromebook. Which holds a big share of the business and education market. 

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Free IT Courses for Locked-Down Tech Pros

Free IT Courses for Locked-Down Tech Pros
Several online learning platforms and software manufacturers have made some free IT courses so that tech professionals can exit this crisis better prepared.

It’s probably safe to say that we all have uttered these words at some point in our lives — If I had more time, I would….

With a good part of the world on lockdown to fight the expansion of COVID-19, now it might be the perfect time to put this premise to the test. Even if your effective schedule remains unaltered and you are simply working from home, there’s still a lot that you can do with whatever time you’re saving by not having to commute.With this in mind, several online learning platforms and software manufacturers have made some courses available for free so that tech and IT professionals like yourself can exit this crisis better prepared. These courses add to the already extensive list of free online resources that were already accessible before the quarantine. 

Re-skilling and continuous learning are a must for those looking to advance their career in a field like technology, where skill shortages are a prevalent problem and tools are constantly being updated. Accordingly, we suggest you make the most of the extra time on hand by benefitting from the below resources.

Coursera

The eLearning powerhouse has always offered a multitude of free courses from ivy-league universities and top technical schools across the globe — especially if you didn’t mind not receiving an official diploma for which you had to pay. However, and until May 31, a total of 100 courses will be accessible for free through the platform.

The reviews team at Business Insider has gone through the list of courses and identified 9 of them related to computer science. You will obtain an official certificate upon completion, at no cost and even enjoying access to otherwise premium features like homework grading and expanded reading materials

Hurry up, as most of these courses start today, April 08 – and make sure to add that certificate to your CV and LinkedIn profile once the course is completed. 

The list includes:

Udemy

With a somewhat more of a quick-bite and mobile mentality, Udemy offers a wide variety of courses and tutorials in dozens of topics. These are taught by subject matter experts and eLearning initiatives directly, without requiring the involvement of a third-party institution. 

The portal has made available over 530 courses for free so we can all invest in our education in the upcoming weeks. A lot of these focus on IT-related topics, from data science to videogame design.

Examples include:      

Codeacademy

A household name in tech education and computing, Codeacademy offers free courses on topics spanning from coding to computational theory and web development. The possibilities are almost endless, and you can even choose specific skill paths like building chatbots with Python or creating front-end apps with React.  

CompTIA IT Fundamentals

The Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA), known globally for its reputed certification programs, is offering free 30-day learning licenses for its IT Fundamentals (ITF+) curriculum. The overall course is probably too introductory if you are a seasoned tech expert, but you might find it touches on topics you haven’t had time to explore.

You can also pass the link along to anyone who is considering a career in IT but is not quite sure yet.

SAP and Microsoft

Another career-advancement option for these days of confinement is investing time in official vendor certifications and learning programs. These let you master some of the world’s most ubiquitous software tools and validate your skills in front of the community.

Leading ERP provider SAP is providing free access to a total of 35 courses to prepare for its official certifications. You even get a free first attempt at the official exam. The courses cover areas including building bots with SAP’s RPA or the business migration to S/4HANA – a course that can give you a great competitive edge given S/4HANA’s growing momentum.  

Additionally, Microsoft Learn offers a comprehensive host of learning resources for Dynamics 365, Microsoft 365, or the Power Platform. among others. Just keep in mind that, to protect its staff from the virus, Microsoft has implemented some changes in its user policy, as well as extended certain courses and deadlines. Here’s a full list of changes.    

Don’t forget your soft skills

Last but not least, think of dedicating some time to develop your soft skills. In IT, it is becoming increasingly vital to possess a strong set of soft skills to complement your technical ones – from interpersonal communication to adaptability and creative thinking.

Or perhaps you should focus on your mental health and resilience? LinkedIn Learning is providing free mindfulness courses to help people cope with lockdowns.

Also discover our guide: IT Job Hunting Done Well: A Step-by-Step Guide