Workshop: Microsoft Azure Expert Technical Training (13-16 November, Warsaw, Poland)

Wrapped up the 3 days training on Azure (Nov 13th - 16th), in organized by Ingram Micro Poland. I got excellent mix of IT Pros and Sales people attending this course, including couple of Ingram Micro colleagues. Primary focus is on Infrastructure-as-a-Service model, with demos and hands on labs focusing on predefined scenarios in operating, planning, creating and configuring the infrastructure and services.

Day 1 was focused on Azure Fundamentals: Welcome and introduction, Azure Portal, Resource Groups, Storage Accounts, Virtual networks and Network Interfaces (incl PIP, VPN, Gateways and Peering), Network Security Groups, Virtual Machines, VM Extensions, Scale and Availability Sets, Load Balancer, Traffic Manager.

We finished strong with deploying WordPress Multi-tier app and Acronis Backup Blueprints.

Day 2 was reserved for more Blueprints - Remote Desktop Services (Small Business Server Replacement) and CheckPoint Blueprints.

Day 3 was focused more on Business Development Managers Track, focused on the business side of partner transformation, driving business transformation and its impact on the partners, pricing model and how to calculate the cost (Azure Pricing Calculator), as well as comparison with other licensing programs.

Event: Thrive conference (November 8th - 9th), Rimske Terme, Slovenia

We just wrapped up Day 1 of the event. It was a busy day, packed with activities and sessions. It all started this morning with the keynote, hosted by Branka Slinkar, backed up with Eoin Bailey, Paolo Pialorsi, and Spencer Harbar. 

It is an combined CxO, IT Pro, Dev and End User event, happening in Rimske Terme (Slovenia). The event gathered pretty large group of speakers (33), from different locations around the world, in front of the local attendees. The tracks are divided by interest, and they vary between: SharePoint PRO and DEV, CxO, BI, Exchange, End User, Cloud, and Development. It is a great place to learn about technologies; connect with people and build your network; share the knowledge and ideas; get answers to your questions; and just enjoy being here.

The first day I did a session titled "Migration to Office 365 - Step by Step", and enjoyed the Q&A and discussion during it.

During the second day, we had a full day ahead. Lots of sessions, from old friends (Adis Jugo, Dubravko Marak), but also from new friends (Aleksandar Draskovic, Brett Londsdale, Pennelope Coventry, Todd Klindt and few more).

I did a follow up session on "Exchange 2016 and Office 365 in a Hybrid World" with a Q&A session on specific business scenarios and samples from the audience.

It was a privilege to be a part of this event. Lots of great speakers, topics, meetups and discussion with the attendees.

 
More info can be obtained at:


https://www.facebook.com/ThriveITConf/
http://www.thriveconf.com/en-us/Pages/thrive.aspx

Event: Macedonian IT Pro User Group Meet up - November 2017

Together with my fellow IT Pro's - Vladimir Meloski, and Gorana Koevska-Jankoska, we held another monthly user group meetup, on November 1st @Microsoft Macedonia offices.

We did an overview of past and upcoming conferences, followed by my session on "Microsoft Azure Updates & Road-map", based on analysis and review of sessions from this years Microsoft Ignite. You can download the PDF from here.

We wrapped up with Vladimir's session on Microsoft 365.