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    Azure for Executives

    We discuss digital trends and futures and real-world applications! Thought leader guests discuss moving industries forward with digital transformation. The show is especially valuable for business and technology decision-makers.
    en75 Episodes

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    Episodes (75)

    Diving Deep on Azure Storage Solutions, Part 2

    Diving Deep on Azure Storage Solutions, Part 2

    In this final episode of a 2-part series on Azure Storage and DataLake, Vamshi Kommineni shares some things with us of interest to any technology decision maker. We discuss what backup, recovery, disaster planning, failover, governance, and other factors look like regarding storage solutions. Further we dive deep into customer use cases and stories that illustrate the value and flexibility of the storage solutions, and even touch upon the role of storage in high-performance computing scenarios.

    Show Links

    Azure Storage Solutions

    Azure Files

    Azure Blob Storage

    Azure Data Lake

    Azure Disk Storage

    Azure Archive Storage

    Contact the product team at azurestoragefeedback@microsoft.com

    Guest

    Vamshidhar Kommineni

    Principal PM Manager for Azure Storage at Microsoft

    Vamshi and his team is focus on Azure Storage, Data Lake, as well as some other technologies. He is responsible for business strategy and growth along with industry relationships like Media and Entertainment, Automotive, Healthcare, and more.

    Find Vamshi on LinkedIn

    Diving Deep on Azure Storage Solutions, Part 1

    Diving Deep on Azure Storage Solutions, Part 1

    In this first of a 2-part series, Vamshi Kommineni takes us through Azure Storage and Data Lake from the perspective of industry use cases and relevant capabilities. Not only do we learn about the different capabilities of these services, but we also cover discuss their use at hyper-scale and what that can mean for customers. Vamshi shares several customer stories that highlight the technology’s evolution and usage as well as highlighting some common usage patterns.

    Transcript

    Show Links

    Azure Storage Solutions

    Azure Files

    Azure Blob Storage

    Azure Data Lake

    Azure Disk Storage

    Azure Archive Storage

    Guest

    Vamshidhar Kommineni

    Principal PM Manager for Azure Storage at Microsoft

    Vamshi and his team is focus on Azure Storage, Data Lake, as well as some other technologies. He is responsible for business strategy and growth along with industry relationships like Media and Entertainment, Automotive, Healthcare, and more.

    Find Vamshi on LinkedIn

    Protecting Financial Services During the COVID-19 Crisis with Bill Borden, Nick Leimer, and Karen Bailey

    Protecting Financial Services During the COVID-19 Crisis with Bill Borden, Nick Leimer, and Karen Bailey

    In this episode we hear how Microsoft and its partners are focused on helping financial services organizations meet the demands of today. Specifically, the guests discuss how Microsoft is helping with the COVID-19 situation, including things like fraud detection and enabling employees.

    Additional topics include how Microsoft is empowering customers with high performance computing and large data volumes to help update legacy risk models to factor in today’s new risks. Further, we hear about the power of Microsoft’s three clouds that underlies the ecosystem of Microsoft and partner solutions.

    Show Links

    [Transcript]

    Guests

    Bill Borden

    Corporate Vice President for Worldwide Financial Services at Microsoft

    Bill leads development and execution of Microsoft’s global financial services strategy, including the prioritization of banking, capital markets and insurance industry solutions and their alignment to Microsoft’s worldwide digital platform and partner ecosystem.

    Bill on LinkedIn

    Bill Borden's Blog

    Nick Leimer

    Principal Industry Lead for Azure for Insurance in the Microsoft Industry Experiences Team

    Nick recruits partners, ISVs, start-ups, and other influential organizations in the insurance industry to accelerate adoption of the Microsoft Cloud+ AI platforms. One of his core missions is to amplify how our Microsoft cloud solutions meet the business enabling needs across the globe through speaking at conferences, authoring blogs, use cases, whitepapers, and social media posts.

    Nick on LinkedIn and Twitter.

    Karen Bailey

    Financial Services Lead for Banking, Capital Markets and Insurance on the Microsoft Industry Experiences team.

    Karen is a passionate Business Technology leader with over 25 years of diverse experiences working to develop strategies for Digital Transformation focused on opti-channel, customer-centric and hyper-personalized experiences aligning Technology Solutions to Go-to Market Strategies, Operational Needs, Growth and Profitably strategies and sector imperatives.

    Karen on LinkedIn

    The Current State and the Future of Manufacturing with Çağlayan Arkan

    The Current State and the Future of Manufacturing with Çağlayan Arkan

    Çağlayan Arkan, Microsoft’s Vice President and Global Sales Lead for the Manufacturing Industry at Microsoft, joins in this episode to talk about how Microsoft is engaging manufacturing and the supply chain. The discussion covers the current situation for manufacturers during in the current COVID-19 pandemic and how Microsoft is reaching out to customers and partners. 

    Further, Diego Tamburini, Principal Industry Lead in Azure for Manufacturing joins in to dive deeper on Microsoft’s partner ecosystem and how companies can join in that conversation.

    Other topics covered include current and emerging trends and technology for the following pillars:

    • Workforce transformation
    • Engaging customers in new ways
    • Building more agile factories
    • Creating more resilient Supply chains
    • Unlocking innovation and delivering new services

    Show Links

    [Transcript]

    The Future Computed: AI in manufacturing

    Manufacturing Industry site: COVID Webinar series links

    Microsoft Industry Digital Forum: Exploring the current manufacturing environment in light of COVID-19

    Microsoft Industry Digital Forum: Stories and Solutions Creating Manufacturing and Supply Chain Resiliency

    Microsoft Industry Digital Forum: Re-FACTORY-ing Stories and Solutions Enabling Agile Production

    Guests

    Çağlayan Arkan

    Vice President, Global Sales Lead, Manufacturing Industry at Microsoft

    As Vice President, Manufacturing Industry at Microsoft, Çağlayan Arkan is responsible for managing the digital transformation for manufacturing companies across high-tech and electronics, industrial equipment, aerospace, and chemicals/agrochemicals globally, as well as guiding growth and compete strategies for Microsoft in these verticals worldwide.

    Çağlayan is passionate about empowering customers to position themselves as first movers or fast followers in today’s disruptive era. By supporting organizations with new technology-led capabilities, strategies and insights that will fundamentally reinvent their products, services and business models, Çağlayan and his team are helping businesses drive sustained growth, agile innovation and operational excellence.

    Prior to his current role, Çağlayan held several leadership roles at Microsoft and Siemens, successfully spearheading new strategic growth, market penetration and business development initiatives

    Diego Tamburini

    Principal Industry Lead - Azure for Manufacturing

    Diego builds the best ecosystem of software partners developing manufacturing solutions on Azure and helping them be successful.

    Retail’s Rapid Digital Transformation in the COVID-19 Era with Shelley Bransten, Karen Garrette, and Sahir Anand

    Retail’s Rapid Digital Transformation in the COVID-19 Era with Shelley Bransten, Karen Garrette, and Sahir Anand

    Retail has been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. Shelley Bransten, Karen Garrette, and Sahir Anand join David and Paul to discuss how retailers are responding to the current crisis along with what to expect during and after recovery.

    We introduce the Microsoft for Retail team and how it works with partners and customers to solve the biggest retail problems and move the state of the industry forward with digital technologies. In addition we hear how Microsoft is helping the largest employment segment in the world navigate the COVID-19 crisis.

    Finally, we hear where Microsoft is investing in the technologies serving the future of the industry.

    Show Links

    [Transcript]

    Guests

    Shelley Bransten
    Corporate Vice President, WW Retail & Consumer Goods Industries, Microsoft

    Shelley grew up in retail. She is a passionate advocate for customers and works tirelessly to ensure retailers are set up for success across their digital transformation efforts. At Microsoft, Shelley leads the thought leadership, go-to-market and solution approach to address retailers’ most important growth opportunities.

    Shelley on LinkedIn

    Karen Garrette
    World Wide Retail Strategy Lead at Microsoft

    Having worked in a variety of roles from presales to consultancy, Karen has the depth and breadth of experience and deep technical understanding that allows her to translate the feature and function set into customer solutions to win against the competition.

    Karen on LinkedIn

    Sahir Anand
    Principal, Industry Lead – Microsoft Azure Cloud+AI for Retail & CPG at Microsoft

    Over the years, Sahir has published several industry reports, blogs, whitepapers, and videos focused on retail and CPG industry business and technology areas. He is an avid speaker at industry events.

    Sahir on LinkedIn

    The Current and Future States of Healthcare with Microsoft’s Leading Experts – Part 2

    The Current and Future States of Healthcare with Microsoft’s Leading Experts – Part 2

    Our Microsoft for Health panel looks forward to the future of healthcare. As healthcare responds to the current COVID-19 crisis, it is accelerating its adoption of technologies that would have taken years to implement before the current need for change.

    The panel discusses how Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning is impacting healthcare today and in the future. Hear how Microsoft's AI/ML technologies and the Azure cloud are being brought to bear to empower people to work differently.

    Not only are these technologies helping the current situation, but partners are providing the next generation of medicine today. Learn how Healthcare will be forever changed by the technology solutions currently being introduced today.

    Transcript

    Show Notes

    Microsoft’s Covid-19 Response

    Supporting your healthcare organization and community during crises

    Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare
    Uses of AI for health include the work to fight COVID-19 is already underway. A handful of key partnerships include the following.

    The  COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium, a private-public effort spearheaded by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, for which Microsoft is providing researchers access to the world’s most powerful computing resources, which can significantly speed the pace of scientific discovery in the fight to stop the virus. Around the world, Microsoft’s research scientists, spanning computer science, biology, medicine and public health, are collaborating on projects in the consortium

    The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), a global health research organization at the University of Washington School of Medicine, is releasing a set of COVID-19 data visualizations and forecasts that the White House, FEMA, governors and hospital administrators have started using to mobilize resources

    The Washington State Department of Health is working on a new dashboard that aims to increase timeliness, accuracy and speed of data reporting to the public. The dashboard relies on data reported by local health jurisdictions, healthcare facilities and labs

    Folding@home, a global organization that uses distributed computing is researching COVID-19 proteins that could help with designing therapeutics

    The Sepsis Center of Research Excellence (SCORE-UW), part of the University of Washington’s Department of Medicine, is a global collaboration between a network of hospitals, industry, blood banks, universities and funding partners. Using clinical data, radiologic imaging and other patient biomarker responses, SCORE-UW is developing novel algorithms to predict, and improve, healthcare and socioeconomic outcomes of COVID-19 positive patients

    Take, the Brazilian leader in chatbots and the smart contacts market, developed a bot to bring official and credible information to the public and connect potential patients to medical teams to avoid overloading Brazilian hospitals

    Guests

    Gareth Hall

    Senior Director - Microsoft WorldWide Health Solutions

    Gareth leads the team driving the worldwide solutions strategy for the Microsoft Health business, focused on working with Microsoft product teams and partners to build solutions on the Microsoft cloud platforms (Azure, Dynamics 365 and Office 365).

    LinkedIn

    John Doyle

    Director, Cloud & AI, Microsoft Healthcare

    As a Director within the worldwide commercial business industry team at Microsoft, John Doyle is responsible for the development of business strategy and partnerships across the healthcare industry, globally. John, engages with industry customers and partners, developing strategies and repeatable technology solutions that harness the power of cloud and AI to drive innovation and industry transformation.

    LinkedIn

    David Houlding

    David is the Director of Healthcare experiences on Microsoft Industry Experiences team. He has extensive experience in working with partners for healthcare in applicable technologies, most lately the cloud, blockchain, and AI.

    LinkedIn
    Twitter

    The Current and Future States of Healthcare with Microsoft’s Leading Experts – Part 1

    The Current and Future States of Healthcare with Microsoft’s Leading Experts – Part 1

    Microsoft for Healthcare is working hard to help healthcare throughout the COVID-19 crisis and to plan for what comes after the pandemic. Our guests discuss how Microsoft is responding to the current COVID-19 crisis as well as their mission in healthcare and the future of the industry.

    Our guests describe how they work with partners to find the right capabilities enabled by Microsoft solutions. Additionally, we discuss several Microsoft healthcare-focused products in use today. Learn how Microsoft technologies are being used to solve real world problems related not only to the current pandemic, but other important healthcare problems.

    The panel discusses the partnerships occurring between competitors to combat COVID-19. Learn about Microsoft partner solutions available to help "flatten the curve" during this crisis.

    Transcript

    Show Notes

    Microsoft’s Covid-19 Response

    Supporting your healthcare organization and community during crises

     

    Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare
    Uses of AI for health include the work to fight COVID-19 is already underway. A handful of key partnerships include the following.

    The  COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium, a private-public effort spearheaded by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, for which Microsoft is providing researchers access to the world’s most powerful computing resources, which can significantly speed the pace of scientific discovery in the fight to stop the virus. Around the world, Microsoft’s research scientists, spanning computer science, biology, medicine and public health, are collaborating on projects in the consortium

    The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), a global health research organization at the University of Washington School of Medicine, is releasing a set of COVID-19 data visualizations and forecasts that the White House, FEMA, governors and hospital administrators have started using to mobilize resources

    The Washington State Department of Health is working on a new dashboard that aims to increase timeliness, accuracy and speed of data reporting to the public. The dashboard relies on data reported by local health jurisdictions, healthcare facilities and labs

    Folding@home, a global organization that uses distributed computing is researching COVID-19 proteins that could help with designing therapeutics

    The Sepsis Center of Research Excellence (SCORE-UW), part of the University of Washington’s Department of Medicine, is a global collaboration between a network of hospitals, industry, blood banks, universities and funding partners. Using clinical data, radiologic imaging and other patient biomarker responses, SCORE-UW is developing novel algorithms to predict, and improve, healthcare and socioeconomic outcomes of COVID-19 positive patients

    Take, the Brazilian leader in chatbots and the smart contacts market, developed a bot to bring official and credible information to the public and connect potential patients to medical teams to avoid overloading Brazilian hospitals

    Guests

    Gareth Hall

    Senior Director - Microsoft WorldWide Health Solutions

    Gareth leads the team driving the worldwide solutions strategy for the Microsoft Health business, focused on working with Microsoft product teams and partners to build solutions on the Microsoft cloud platforms (Azure, Dynamics 365 and Office 365).

    LinkedIn

    John Doyle

    Director, Cloud & AI, Microsoft Healthcare

    As a Director within the worldwide commercial business industry team at Microsoft, John Doyle is responsible for the development of business strategy and partnerships across the healthcare industry, globally. John, engages with industry customers and partners, developing strategies and repeatable technology solutions that harness the power of cloud and AI to drive innovation and industry transformation.

    LinkedIn

    David Houlding

    David is the Director of Healthcare experiences on Microsoft Industry Experiences team. He has extensive experience in working with partners for healthcare in applicable technologies, most lately the cloud, blockchain, and AI.

    LinkedIn
    Twitter

    The Microsoft Commercial Marketplace

    The Microsoft Commercial Marketplace

    Join us in this episode about the Microsoft Commercial Marketplace, the way to buy and sell software from Microsoft partners. Publishers and buyers of Azure-based cloud software will be interested in this show, whether learning how to sell your solution or how to buy an offered solution.

    The Microsoft Commercial Marketplace consists of two storefronts, the Azure Marketplace and AppSource. Join us on this episode to learn the differences and who will be interested in each.

    Transcript

    Jeana Jorgensen

    As a leader in the Cloud Commercial Community organization at Microsoft, Jeana Jorgensen is an expert in the Microsoft Commercial Marketplace and the value Microsoft Azure customers and partners derive from it. She joins us on the podcast to discuss the use of the Microsoft Commercial Marketplace, who should be interested, and how to get the greatest value from it as sellers or buyers of commercial software running on Microsoft Azure.

    LinkedIn

    Helping Retailers with Actionable Data

    Helping Retailers with Actionable Data

    Transcript

    Uncrowd’s Friction/Reward Index, or FRi, platform answers retail's most fundamental question, “Why do customers choose retailer x over retailer y?” It then shows exactly how to win in more shopper missions, identify safe cost reductions, and optimize operations.

    The Friction/Reward index is fundamentally about showing when and why a customer will prefer you to a rival. In the era of total and easy access to competing choices, knowing where you stand among those choices is your number one priority.

    Guests

    Richard Hammond

    Richard is the Uncrowd’s CEO and the leading global expert on friction versus reward. He is the author of both Friction/Reward and Smart Retail.

    Richard on LinkedIn
    Uncrowd on LinkedIn

    Data, data, and more data: Bringing it all together

    Data, data, and more data: Bringing it all together

    Transcript

    Solix Technologies, Inc., is a leading big data application provider that empowers data-driven enterprises with optimized infrastructure, data security, and advanced analytics.

    We discuss sources of our data explosion and how companies can benefit from this data by connecting silos of data together. And, the cultural change that comes with data-informed decisions.

    SHOW LINKS


    GUESTS

    • Sai Gundavelli : Chief Executive Officer at Solix Technologies, Inc.
    • John Ottman: Executive Chairman at Solix Technologies, Inc.
    • Jim Lee: VP of Data Services
    • Kalyan Manyam: Director of Cloud Products
    • Paul Maher: General Manager of Microsoft's Industry Experiences Team

    The Insurance Industry's Digital Transformation via Blockchain Technology with Ryan Rugg and Nick Leimer

    The Insurance Industry's Digital Transformation via Blockchain Technology with Ryan Rugg and Nick Leimer

    Transcript

    Insurance is changing quickly these days and undergoing a digital transformation is not easy. Adding blockchain to the mix can change an entire architecture. When used appropriately, however, blockchain can become an indispensable tool for your ledger technology.

    In this episode, we discuss the use of blockchain in insurance as well as how it applies to other industries such as banking and capital markets, healthcare and manufacturing.

    Specifically, you will learn how companies are using Corda's smart contracts feature to create complex, logic-based, on-block content and events. Listen to how R3, with the open source Corda blockchain, is helping companies get started with blockchain today.

    Show Links


    Ryan Rugg

    Ryan is the Global Head of Insurance for R3 and leads the company's Insurance strategy to drive business growth. She is responsible for the strategic design, development, and commercialization across the ecosystem of blockchain innovation within the Insurance Industry.

    In 2017, she launched the Center of Excellence for Insurers and Reinsurers in partnership with ACORD which is redefining the foundations of insurance by harnessing the power of collaborative networks, through the deployment of DLT within the financial services industry. 

    Since then Corda, R3's blockchain platform has been the platform of choice for the insurance industry. Corda integrates and secures the entire stream of disparate data sources, while simultaneously ensuring transparency across an interconnected network of clients, brokers, insurers and other third parties.

    Prior to R3 Ryan worked for Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan where she gained extensive experience in financial services covering a broad range of institutions including; insurance, hedge funds, banks and asset managers. Ryan started her career in Technology at Lehman Brothers, experiencing first-hand the inefficiencies in the legacy infrastructure which she is now working to solve. She has a double major in Computer Science and Finance.

    Nick Leimer

    Nick Leimer is the Principal Insurance Industry Lead for Azure. Nick brings 20+ years of experience bridging the business and IT gap in application development, operations, and infrastructure.

    Before joining Microsoft, Nick was the Senior Director for Actuarial Compute at Manulife leading the migration of LAN based HPC Farms to the Azure environment for all of Asia; including all desktop Moody’s / GGY Axis users and data feeds.

    Prior to Manulife, his career progressed through developing applications for Actuarial Valuation and Projection including components of ArcVal and Prophet, the Defined Benefit area with the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (BPGC), and leading life insurers, AIG and Manulife. 

    Follow Nick on LinkedIn  and Twitter.

    Hyper-personalization in retail

    Hyper-personalization in retail

    Transcript

    In this episode, we speak with Marcy Larsen, Microsoft Industry Solutions Executive focused for Retail in Australia. She helps us understand how hyper-personalization is the future for successful retailers.

    She shares how retailers balance the line of how personal can offers really be, without being off-putting to the customer. Marcy tells us about working with Microsoft to garner feedback and build services retailers want.

    Also, Marcy offers insights into how retailers can take advantage of the data they already have.

    Show Links

    Read the use case that underlies this podcast episode and learn more from these other resources.


    Marcy Larsen

    Marcella Larsen leads Microsoft's Retail Industry focus to inspire digital transformation in consumer-facing industries for Australia. Marcella is responsible for managing platform agnostic cloud and cross channel focused growth strategies in the industries of Retail, Travel, Hospitality, and Consumer Goods. She oversees retail, travel, transport and consumer goods industry solutions, go to market strategies, partnerships, marketing, solution development, thought leadership and customer relations to ensure the full extent of Microsoft’s industry visions and value propositions are realized locally. Marcella brings almost 22 years of deep customer, vertical technology, sales and marketing experience to this role.

    Marcella has a strong track record in developing and growing business, is results oriented, with a multidisciplinary approach for business planning. She is experienced in marketing, business development, supply chain operations, international trade, finance, and product management.

    Preventing financial fraud with behavioral biometrics

    Preventing financial fraud with behavioral biometrics

    Transcript

    Behavioral biometrics is an emerging topic in the security sector. Users are profiled in how they use specific applications. These patterns of usage establish something like a behavioral fingerprint, which can keep your assets secure.

    Banks use biometrics to prevent fraud from websites and mobile applications. What if someone found your unlocked phone, went to your banking app and was able to transfer money? If the application is trained to your personal biometric behavioral print, this transaction can be flagged.

    There are many other uses for behavioral biometrics we will discuss and continue to pay attention to its use across industries as the field grows.

    Show Links

    The BioCatch story

    Frances Zelazny

    Frances Zelanzy works closely with BioCatch's CEO to conceptualize and formulate strategic initiatives while on the marketing side, she establishes comprehensive marketing strategy, including brand positioning, messaging and execution.

    Follow Frances on LinkedIn.

    Dekel Shavit

    BioCatch VP of Operations & CISO

    Dekel has more than 15 years of experience as a customer-oriented operations professional, building, managing and scaling Operations groups in highly-demanding technology companies.

    Prior to joining BioCatch, Dekel led the Ops group at Leverate (a leading FinTech company) and was the Production Manager at DoubleVerify.

    Follow Dekel on LinkedIn.

    Howard Bush is a Principle Industry Lead for Azure for Banking and Capital Markets at Microsoft. He advocates for Microsoft Azure within the banking and capital markets industry.

    Howard Bush

    Howard Bush is a Principle Industry Lead for Azure for Banking and Capital Markets at Microsoft. He advocates for Microsoft Azure within the banking and capital markets industry. Howard works with customers to help them understand how cloud computing addresses the unique and changing needs of the industry. Howard describes himself as “a banker wrapped in IT clothing.” 

    Follow Howard on LinkedIn or Twitter.

    Growing a culture of innovation at FIS with InnovateIN48

    Growing a culture of innovation at FIS with InnovateIN48

    Transcript

    FIS is an international company with offices all over the world. Generating new ideas from around the globe could be a logistical problem—not to mention differences in languages and cultures. But FIS has a hands-on way to get innovation to the forefront: a hackfest called InnovateIN48. Contestants get 48 hours to start and finish their solutions before having them judged.

    This event has helped FIS innovate in key areas. And this year, FIS challenged contestants to solve a social, humanitarian, scientific or philanthropic challenge. The theme was “Innovation Empowering Hope.” Hear how they did it in the podcast.

    67 finalists. 14 teams. 48 hours. That's the InnovateIN48 hackathon.

    Show Links

    Mike Silverman

    Mike Silverman is the Global Head of Enterprise Technology Strategy for FIS, a global leader in financial services technology. FIS focuses on retail and institutional banking, payments, asset and wealth management, risk and compliance, and outsourcing solutions.

    Through the depth and breadth of our solutions portfolio, global capabilities and domain expertise, FIS serves more than 20,000 clients in over 130 countries. Headquartered in Jacksonville, Fla., FIS employs more than 52,000 people worldwide and holds leadership positions in payment processing, financial software and banking solutions. Providing software, services and outsourcing of the technology that empowers the financial world, FIS is a Fortune 500 company.

    Follow Mike on LinkedIn.

    Paul Maher

    Paul Maher is the General Manager of the Industry Experiences team which is part of the Cloud and AI Engineering organization at Microsoft. Paul is a proven leader in the technology field, having extensive industry experience acquired across a variety of roles, with a passion for technology.

    He is a strategic thinker, who can look at the big picture, or complex problems and distill into actionable output. Started career behind the code as a Software Engineer, through to most recently as General Manager at Microsoft. Skilled at leading, building and growing teams.

    Follow Paul on LinkedIn or Twitter.

    Howard Bush

    Howard Bush is a Principle Industry Lead for Azure for Banking and Capital Markets at Microsoft. He advocates for Microsoft Azure within the banking and capital markets industry. Howard works with customers to help them understand how cloud computing addresses the unique and changing needs of the industry. Howard describes himself as “a banker wrapped in IT clothing.” 

    Follow Howard on LinkedIn or Twitter.

    Changing Everything for Retailers

    Changing Everything for Retailers

    Transcript

    Rubikloud is an artificial intelligence (AI) company and has created a cloud-native, machine learning platform especially for retail. RubiKloud was founded in 2013 and is based in Toronto.

    In this episode, Waleed Ayoub, Rubikloud's Chief Technical Officer takes us through their thinking on the addition of AI to retail, along with other insights into up and coming technology in retail. Further, this episode looks at the benefit Rubikloud has received by being a valued Microsoft partner.

    Whether you are in the retail space or not, this is a great episode to just hear the possibilities of what AI might do to change the whole supply chain.

    Show Links

    Rubikloud

    Microsoft Retail and Industry Goods Home


    Waleed Ayoub

    Waleed Ayoub is Chief Technology Officer at Rubikloud Technologies.

    He is a product and technology leader with over a decade of hands-on experience empowering talented teams and building impactful enterprise SaaS products.

    His experience spans a broad enterprise landscape, including banking, CPG retail, loyalty, telco, pharmacy and other specialty B2C domains. Waleed specializes in transforming data and machine learning from an operational afterthought to a revenue-generating asset with some of the world's largest enterprises.

    At Rubikloud, Waleed is on a mission to bring "intelligent decision automation" to the enterprise. Prior to joining Rubikloud as their Chief Technology Officer, Waleed most recently ran the Customer & Advanced Analytics practice at Shoppers Drug Mart.

    Waleed holds a Bachelor of Applied Science and Engineering with a specialization in Quantum Physics from the University of Toronto.

    Follow Waleed on LinkedIn.

    Running an eCommerce system in Azure (and more)

    Running an eCommerce system in Azure (and more)

    Transcript

    In this episode, we speak with Kelly Goetsch, who is Chief Product Officer at commercetools. We touch on current and emerging trends in retail and hear how data-informed decisions can change a company culture. Further, discuss commercetools and their offering of APIs to retailers who are building their own eCommerce sites that live on commercetool's platform.

    Our discussion covers how Azure allowed them to spool up their multi-tenant app quickly in containers using Azure Kubernetes Service. Looking forward into the future of retail, we hear about uses for AI and even augmented reality.

    Show Links


    Kelly Goetsch

    Kelly Goetsch is Chief Product Officer at commercetools. He came to commercetools from Oracle, where he led product management for their microservices initiatives.

    Kelly is the author of 3 books about commerce.

    He previously held senior-level product development and go-to-market responsibilities for key Oracle cloud products representing nine+ figures of revenue for Oracle. Prior to Oracle, he was a senior architect at ATG (acquired by Oracle), where he was instrumental to 31 large-scale ATG implementations. In his last years at ATG, he oversaw all of Walmart's implementations of ATG around the world.

    Follow Kelly on LinkedIn.

    David Starr

    In addition to being the host of this podcast, David is a Principal Cloud Solutions Architect at Microsoft, focusing on healthcare. He loves creating with code and with large systems supporting scale.

    He enjoys all aspects of developing, delivering and operating software systems. He is also passionate about the end-to-end process, methods and techniques, and the patterns and practices of high performing software development teams, using skills that transcend specific technology stacks.

    Follow David on LinkedIn or Twitter

    Introducing and Adopting the Internet of Things with Joe Biron of PTC Manufacturing and Microsoft’s Diego Tamburrini

    Introducing and Adopting the Internet of Things with Joe Biron of PTC Manufacturing and Microsoft’s Diego Tamburrini

    Transcript

    From planning to streaming analytics, this episode looks at all phases of introducing IoT to a company. Just having the data is often not enough to make decisions. Insights must be gleaned from that data.

    Joe Biron walks us through PTC's approach to full IoT adoption including everything from installation to organizational change.

    Finally, we talk about the coming technologies that Joe is excited about.

    Show Links


    Joe Biron

    Joe Biron is an experienced technology executive with a passion for imagining and implementing technology solutions for the grand challenges that businesses face. In his career he has been a software engineer, technology consultant, chief architect, product strategist, and team leader. For the past decade he had the good fortune to be part of the Internet of Things revolution, particularly the Industrial IoT, and looks forward to the stunning paradigm shift that is happening now!

    As part of the PTC Office of the CTO, he looks after the intersection of our customer solutions, platforms, and the opportunities that the Internet of Things bring.

    Follow Joe on LinkedIn

    Diego Tamburrini

    Diego Tamburini is the Principal Industry Lead for Azure Manufacturing in the Microsoft Industry Experience team, where he focuses on developing technical content to help manufacturing companies and software developers deliver their solutions on Azure, at scale.

    He also champions partners who deliver manufacturing solutions using Azure.

    Follow Diego on LinkedIn or Twitter.

    Evolving actuarial risk compute and modeling on Azure?

    Evolving actuarial risk compute and modeling on Azure?

    Transcript

    Nick Leimer shares changes occurring in the insurance industry and how companies are dealing with it. Specifically, we look at computing risk for regulatory compliance and how it might be a good match for Azure services, like Azure Batch or Azure High-Performance Computing.

    Additionally, Nick explains some of the current and evolving industry regulations. Regulatory compliance is key to insurance companies and the discussion addresses this issue.

    Show Links


    Nick Leimer

    Nick Leimer is the Principal Insurance Industry Lead for Azure. Nick brings 20+ years of experience bridging the business and IT gap in application development, operations, and infrastructure.

    Before joining Microsoft, Mr. Leimer was the Senior Director for Actuarial Compute at Manulife leading the migration of LAN based HPC Farms to the Azure environment for all of Asia; including all desktop Moody’s / GGY Axis users and data feeds.

    Prior to Manulife, his career progressed through developing applications for Actuarial Valuation and Projection including components of ArcVal and Prophet, the Defined Benefit area with the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (BPGC), and leading life insurers, AIG and Manulife. 

    Follow Nick on LinkedIn or Twitter.

    David Starr

    In addition to being the host of this podcast, David is a Principal Cloud Solutions Architect at Microsoft, focusing on healthcare. He loves creating with code and with large systems supporting scale.

    He enjoys all aspects of developing, delivering and operating software systems. He is also passionate about the end-to-end process, methods and techniques, and the patterns and practices of high performing software development teams, using skills that transcend specific technology stacks. 

    Follow David on LinkedIn or Twitter.

    Reducing Healthcare Costs with Azure with David Houlding

    Reducing Healthcare Costs with Azure with David Houlding

    Healthcare IT veteran, David Houlding, chats with us about reducing costs in healthcare as part of an organization’s digital transformation and specifically, outlines the tools and techniques needed for these transformations to succeed. Additionally, we discuss core technologies of Azure and how they can help in the move to the cloud, ensuring regulatory compliance, security, and privacy.

    David discusses how healthcare organizations are adopting cloud technologies and explore some non-exotic reasons to move to the cloud like data storage and security. Finally, we point to partners for the applications created on top of the Azure infrastructure.

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    David Houlding

    David is a Principal Healthcare Program Manager at Microsoft. He has 24+ years of experience in healthcare, cloud, privacy, security, compliance, blockchain, and artificial intelligence / machine learning. Responsibilities include cloud, privacy, security, compliance, blockchain, AI/ML thought leadership in the healthcare industry globally.

    He supports the healthcare industry by embracing the power of the cloud to provide better care for patients. From hospitals and insurers to pharmaceuticals and researchers, David links the industry to Microsoft technology to empower the healthcare industry and anticipate the healthcare needs of the future.

    Find David on LinkedIn or Twitter.

    David Starr

    In addition to being the host of this podcast, David is a Principal Cloud Solutions Architect at Microsoft, focusing on healthcare. He loves creating with code and with large systems supporting scale.

    He enjoys all aspects of developing, delivering and operating software systems. He is also passionate about the end-to-end process, methods and techniques, and the patterns and practices of high performing software development teams, using skills that transcend specific technology stacks. 

    Follow David on LinkedIn or Twitter

    Innovation acceleration: Benefits of moving manufacturing processes to Azure

    Innovation acceleration: Benefits of moving manufacturing processes to Azure

    Transcript

    In this episode, we dive into IoT, High Performance Computing (HPC) and even delve into scaling strategies.

    Diego Tamburini takes us deep into the digital transformation occurring in the manufacturing world. Along the way we discuss IoT, moving systems and data into Azure, and the interesting issues that can come up in time-series data.

    Additionally, we even go deeply into some 3D printing for manufacturing and rendering jobs from standalone desktop applications.

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    Diego Tamburini

    Diego Tamburini is the Principal Industry Lead for Azure Manufacturing in the Microsoft Industry Experience team, where he focuses on developing technical content to help manufacturing companies and software developers deliver their solutions on Azure, at scale.

    He also champions partners who deliver manufacturing solutions using Azure.

    Follow Diego on LinkedIn or Twitter.

    David Starr

    In addition to being the host of this podcast, David is a Principal Cloud Solutions Architect at Microsoft, focusing on healthcare. He loves creating with code and with large systems supporting scale.

    He enjoys all aspects of developing, delivering and operating software systems. He is also passionate about the end-to-end process, methods and techniques, and the patterns and practices of high performing software development teams, using skills that transcend specific technology stacks. 

    Follow David on LinkedIn or Twitter.