It's been a while since I've written a new post for the simple reason that I didn't have any time left. Behind the scenes I was doing a ton of things that you might like.

Here we go!

Mastering Azure Analytics by Zoiner Tejada

I had the oppertunity and honor to review Zoiner Tejada his new book "Mastering Azure Analytics" which covers basically everything going from how you get the data in Azure to how you can store it to what the options are for analyzing the data and much more.

Personally, I think this is a great book that is well written and easy to read, even if you are not an expert on the topic. By using fictious cases you also see the benefits of certain techniques and why they are better over the other one.

I can only recommend this book to both data engineers/scientists as well as developer because it enables you to learn what the benefits are for your data team and will help you decide what the best data store is to optimize the processing. If I were you, I'd go visit my local book store and buy it!

Here is the abstract of the book in case you want to learn more about it:

Microsoft Azure has over 20 platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offerings that can act in support of a big data analytics solution. So which one is right for your project? This practical book helps you understand the breadth of Azure services by organizing them into a reference framework you can use when crafting your own big data analytics solution.

You’ll not only be able to determine which service best fits the job, but also learn how to implement a complete solution that scales, provides human fault tolerance, and supports future needs.

Understand the fundamental patterns of the data lake and lambda architecture
Recognize the canonical steps in the analytics data pipeline and learn how to use Azure Data Factory to orchestrate them

Implement data lakes and lambda architectures, using Azure Data Lake Store, Data Lake Analytics, HDInsight (including Spark), Stream Analytics, SQL Data Warehouse, and Event Hubs

Understand where Azure Machine Learning fits into your analytics pipeline
Gain experience using these services on real-world data that has real-world problems, with scenarios ranging from aviation to Internet of Things (IoT)

"Integration of Things" whitepaper released

Over the past months, if not year, I've been working on a whitepaper called "Internet of Things" that highlights the differences and similarities between traditional integration and internet of things solutions.

At first these might seem totally different but in the end you can re-use a lot of integration concepts and priciples but it also comes with new challenges such as higher security risks.

In my paper I also refer to the relevant services that are part of the Microsoft Azure offering that can help you when building your own internet of things solutions and provide further reading for those that are interested.

You can download my whitepaper here, let me know what you think about it!

Project Santiago & Alfred

At Codit we've started an internal project called Santiago that is a visitor system that is being used in our brand new office. When you arrive you can checkin with Alfred, our butler, and the person you're meeting will be notified.

You can read more about that on the Codit blog

New events for AZUG

After the success of CloudBrew and our event on ExpressRoute, the Belgian Azure Usergroup (AZUG) is back with a ton of events including the Global Azure Bootcamp & Troy Hunt:

Global Azure Bootcamp is back on Saturday 22nd of April where you can join AZUG at Codit and learn all about Microsoft Azure! We have a pretty nice line-up of speakers talking about a variety of topics, you can find more information here.
On 3rd of May we are welcome at Hello Customer to learn about machine learning & security. Tijl Carpels will be talking about Azure Machine Learning and what the pitfalls are while Mike Martin will show you how you can secure your Azure assets. More information can be found here
On 1st of June Troy Hunt will talk about how he is running Have I Been Pwned on a coffee budget powered by Microsoft Azure. It’s a practical look at a real world Azure success story that will answer many of the questions people have about moving to the cloud. More information can be found here

Want to see a specific topic at AZUG? Feel free to let us know!

Techorama 2017

Techorama is one of the biggest IT conferences, if not the biggest, in Belgium and is bigger than ever! On 22nd - 24th of May you can either attend workshops, the conference itself or both and learn from technology leaders in the industry to learn all about the latest and greatest. I'll be joining the Techorama crew but you should join as well!

Thanks for reading,

Tom.