State of GenAI-based development in Azure

GenAI is the largest hype. All products have AI, and all organizations are interested in it, with the highest levels of leadership demanding AI capabilities from the IT and development teams.

Yet, at the same time, there's only a limited number of meaningful software development projects with GenAI.

Why is this? What is going on? What is going to happen next? Where will we be next year?

This presentation explores the current state of GenAI development market, followed by practical AI projects and forecasting for what's next regarding this highly hyped and interesting field of GenAI.

How to succeed with app modernization in Azure

We've all been there. There's a legacy codebase that's old enough to go to a bar, and "surprisingly" it has become such a big ball of mud that adding new features or fixing bugs has become very time-consuming and expensive. And irritating enough for some people to consider resigning.

At last the leadership team makes the decision - this big ball of mud needs to be modernized! Let's cloudify it, how hard can it be? The goal is to make the app more maintainable and easier to develop, as well as increase the user happiness. Maybe lower the runnings costs too!

App modernization, meaning "modifying solutions to fit cloud", has been and will continue to be one of the hot topics in any company's cloud strategy. Unfortunately, modernization projects tend to fail at least partially. This talk explores that failure.

I have over 2 decades of experience from this field, and as a CEO of a development company, I get to talk about these issues a lot with leadership and development teams. This talk is aimed at decision-makers, developers, team leaders, and all stakeholders who are part of a modernization project. After this talk, you'll know what to do to make your modernization project succeed.

Key takeaways:
- Why do app modernization projects fail
- What does the business leadership team think
- How to succeed in an app modernization project

Keynote: Where are we, and what's next?

I have been in the field for over two decades. I started as a developer, and a short ten years later founded a company. Zure operates in three countries, and I've seen the growth of cloud and Azure from the beginning. Right now, we're at a point of pivot. The future seems to repeat the past, but it could also be argued there's something new happening. Currently, the technical and economical ecosystem is in a flux, and many of us wonder - what's happening to our careers, what should we tell our kids about the future?

In this keynote, we'll look at the state of market and technology. After this talk, you'll have my view point into the environment, enabling you to act in your best interest.

Please, don't do microservices

Most big thinkers in our field agree: microservice architecture is rarely the correct choice. For 1/100 of projects, there might be a path forward with microservice architecture. Do you think your project is special enough to be that one? If you do, please attend this session.

In this session, not only will you come to understand microservices, you will also learn the pitfalls of the architecture as well as how to mitigate the risks and approach the creation of a microservice architecture.

After this session, you will be able to identify the situation where microservice architecture is a viable choice to go forward. In addition, you will know how to actually go forward. The goal is that after this session, many of you will view microservices differently.

Key takeaways:
- Why shouldn't you use microservice architecture
- What is the proper way to define microservices
- What are the pitfalls and problems of microservice architecture
- How to the pitfalls in the architecture
- Concrete examples on how to approach microservice architecture
- Useful microservice architecture patterns
- The team composition for succeeding in a microservice development project

Previously presented in Finnish in a seminar in December. The talk received a review of 4.7/5 from the audience, with about 200 votes.

Real-time design of an Azure PaaS app - Improv

In this session, you will see how a person with over 10 years of Azure PaaS and 20 years of software development experience designs a solution with Azure PaaS components. The promise is, you will have a broader view and understanding on the components and approaches used.

The session consists of 10 minutes of PaaS introduction, and the rest of the time of real-time design of an application with draw.io on the screen. The idea for the application is received from the audience, and nothing is decided before the session. The presenter talks their thinking and decision-making out loud, allowing you to follow his thinking his decision-making of Azure services.

This session is most applicable for developers and architects, but is followable for other roles, such as IT professionals and decision-makers, and can indeed give them a glimpse into what does it mean to be an developer/architect. The session is interactive, and audience is invited to share their opinion and extend the required features. The finalized design diagram is shared afterwards, including a description of core features. The session is about level 200.

This session received 4.7/5 from over 60 reviewers in Azure Tour across Finland in 2021.

Modern Azure Data Platform

After this session, you will be familiar with the positioning, responsibilities, and relevant Azure tools for a modern, Azure-based data platform.

Data platform consists of several responsibility areas, such as integrations / IPaaS, APIs / API Management, ETL and IoT streaming pipelines, machine learning, and, of course, data warehousing and BI. In this talk, the presenter will present all of these areas and their responsibilities, including the relevant and most commonly used Azure services, with a decision-tree on what services to pick when.

This session is most applicable for enterprise and solution architects, data experts (engineers/scientists), and developers, but can also be mostly followed by IT professionals and decision-makers wishing to understand the cloud stack a bit better. The session is about level 250.

This session received 4.7/5 from over 60 reviewers in Azure Tour across Finland in 2021.

Selecting the right Azure products for your Azure PaaS project

Microsoft Azure just keeps on growing. The amount of new releases during the year is alarming. In addition, many of the new products overlap with the old ones or with each other.

This talk gives you a quick overview of the meaningful differences between the Azure products commonly used when building a custom solution on top of Azure PaaS. The commonly used product consist of Azure App Services, Azure Functions, Azure SQL, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Search, Azure Data Lake, Azure Redis Cache, Azure Service Bus, Azure Event Grid, Azure AD, Azure API Management and Application Insights. The talk is aimed at beginner and intermediate levels and those of us who have not had the time to broadly explore Microsoft Azure, with some bits at advanced level.