Cloud as a Story - Vunvulea Radu

This month, I had the opportunity to be one of the speakers at ITDays . The 12th edition of ITDays took place in Cluj-Napoca and gathered IT specialists from Cluj-Napoca and surrounding cities. Each year, the conference is growing, not only in the number of attendees but also in the level of technical content.  My session this year was about cloud (re) partitioning and how it is part of IT's lifecycle. This trend will become more common in 2024, and I expect it to be part of IT strategies. As organizations' cloud maturity increased, they became more aware of cloud advances and disadvantages and what systems work better in the cloud or in other hosting flavours. Feel free to contact me if you have questions about this subject. I would love to chat with you.  

 In the last few weeks, I have been busy from the community's point of view. I had the great opportunity to participate in multiple conferences as a speaker. DevTalks —The conference, which had over 2,200 attendees, took place in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, on September 26th. I delivered a session about AI in the cloud and how we need to modernize our cloud solution to prepare for it - Reference Architecture of AI in the Cloud All Day DevOps  - The online conference that took place in the second week of October was around DevOps provided a great opportunity to learn more about automation, cloud and DevOps I had the chance to deliver a session regarding cloud and AI, and how we should prepare our cloud solutions for the AI workload.  The Hack Summit —This conference, which took place on October 17th, was all about security and the tools related to it. I delivered talks about Cloud (re)patriation and Hybrid Cloud & Reference Architecture of AI in the ...

 Looking back, July 19, 2024, was challenging for customers using Microsoft Azure or Windows machines. Two major outages affected customers using CrowdStrike Falcon or Microsoft Azure computation resources in the Central US. These two outages affected many people and put many businesses on pause for a few hours or even days. The overlap of these two issues was a nightmare for travellers. In addition to blue screens in the airport terminals, they could not get additional information from the airport website, airline personnel, or the support line because they were affected by the outage in the Central US region or the CrowdStrike outage.   But what happened in reality? A faulty CrowdStrike update affected Windows computers globally, from airports and healthcare to small businesses, affecting over 8.5m computers. Even if the Falson Sensor software defect was identified and a fix deployed shortly after, the recovery took longer. In parallel with CrowdStrike, Microsoft provi...

Looking back, the 19th of July 2024 was challenging for customers using Microsoft Azure or Windows machines. Two significant outages affected customers using CrowdStrike Falcon or Microsoft Azure computation resources in the Central US. In today's article, we’ll focus on the Microsoft Azure outage. These two outages affected many people and put many businesses on pause for a few hours or even days.   CrowdStrike Outage A faulty CrowdStrike update affected Windows computers globally, from airports and healthcare to small businesses, affecting over 8.5m computers. Even if the Falson Sensor software defect was identified and a fix deployed shortly after, the recovery took longer. In parallel with CrowdStrike, Microsoft provided a tool that helped customers fix the issue.   Azure Storage Outage in Central US Region Around the same time, customers running their businesses in the Central US Region started to notify availability, connectivity issues, or service management f...

On June 19th, I had the opportunity to share my view on AI in the Cloud during Connect.IT. The event focused on exploring the dynamics of the world of AI from an ethical and cloud point of view.  My session covered the cloud strategy and architecture components and highlighted the importance of cloud modernization during the AI journey. You can find below the takeaway from my session: The advancement of AI technology is absolutely critical, and there is no doubt that modernizing cloud applications is pivotal in unlocking AI systems' full potential.  The capabilities of AI, such as advanced algorithms and learning models, are undeniably vital, but they can only truly succeed when coupled with modernized, scalable, and efficient cloud infrastructure. The modernization of the cloud ensures that AI solutions are powerful and effective but also scalable, cost-efficient, secure, and capable of delivering real-time, actionable insights.  Thus, cloud application modernization und...

 Last week, I had a session about cloud repatriation and hybrid cloud delivered to Cloud Marathoner. The session covered costs, drivers and how cloud repatriation should be handled. During the session, I shared insights related to the hidden cost of cloud repatriation and the business KPIs that should be used to monitor and track such a program.

 In the middle of May, I had the opportunity to participate in the Peak IT Conference as a speaker and panel moderator. With over 400 attendees, 48 speakers, and 4 streams, the Peak IT Conference offers the attendees 3 amazing days.  The conference was a treasure trove of well-organized sessions, networking opportunities, and, of course, coffee. Andrei Danila delivered one of the standout sessions, titled ' There is light at the end of the tunnel. ' This session, among the best I've seen in recent years, provided invaluable insights for startups and highlighted key areas of awareness. During the conference, I had the opportunity to deliver a session related to Cloud Repatriation and talk about the future of Microsoft Azure and . NET. You can find more about the content that I delivered below: Cloud (re)patriation and Hybrid Cloud : The cloud has revolutionized how businesses operate, providing agility, efficiency, and scalability. However, in recent years, cloud repa...

 Does Copilot ring a bell? I am more than sure that YES. But what kind of bell? Microsoft Copilot or Copilot for Microsoft 365 (M365) or ChatGPT. In this article, I am trying to highlight their core differences. I am sure things might change in the next months, but defining a boundary between them is still a good starting point. I will start with the summary because I know that you don't have too much time: Microsoft Copilot is an AI assistant built for personal use (Windows 11). It can be used for Windows 11 tasks, adjusting Windows settings, and performing similar activities. Copilot for Microsoft 365 is an AI-powered business tool. It is used with professional tools from the O365 stack and assists us in creating, understanding, and gaining insights related to the digital content in our organization. ChatGPT provides a platform that can be used for broader activities and can be an AI assistant for different tasks (e.g., coding). It can better understand a problem or que...

 The first cloud migration dates from early 2000, when the first cloud provider emerged. Since then, cloud adoption has become part of business, helping companies grow and adopt emerging technologies. Cloud computing has changed businesses' operations, providing agility, efficiency, and scalability.  Cloud repatriation started to emerge in the last few years. It involved moving data or business back to on-premises. According to the ESG group, over 60% of companies have repatriated at least one workload back to on-premise. A well-known example of cloud repatriation is Dropbox. In 2016, they decided to shift the workloads from AWS to on-premises data centres driven by economics, better operational flexibility and control. From the cloud adoption point of view, cloud repatriation was part of their cloud journey. Today, Dropbox has multiple cloud vendors and on-premises partners that cover business-specific needs.  The leading causes of cloud repatriation The top concerns rel...