Cloud as a Story - Vunvulea Radu

 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 related to th

This week, RO AI Alliance invited me to deliver a talk about the PCI-DSS framework and how we can build cloud & Microsoft Azure solutions aligned with PCI-DSS compliance.  We had a great time together discussing compliance, AI&ML and how startups can use and benefit from it. Thank you for having me here.

Most of the time, when you are a student, you have time to learn, discover and experiment. Nowadays, we have access to information, but it can take time to filter and find the right one for your needs. As students, you might want to experiment with Microsoft Azure to discover how to use cloud services and play with them. For this purpose,  Microsoft provides a $100/monthly credit for students  that can be used to learn and play with it. You don't need a credit card when creating the subscription, so you should not worry about additional charges. If you want to be more involved in the learning programs, you can join the  Students Ambassadors program (MSP ) and support the local students to grow together with you. There are additional programs that you can take part in, together with the University, like Skilling Initiatives (ESI), which provides free training and a 50% discount voucher for certifications,  Open Hacks for Universities  and Resource Trial (e.g. $1500 for 3 months for

 I finished the review and scoring for Imagine Cup - Epic Challenge 2023. I found exciting ideas and ways in which technology helps us to make the world better. I realised that from 2018 until now, I was part of the judging team for more than 18 different Imagine Cup events, including the semifinal and finals. As always, it is an honour to be part of this event.

  Today I was recognized for my mentoring of startup founders, some of whom are operating in emerging markets and are in under-resourced communities. This has been one of the most personal and impactful ways we at Microsoft can support and enable these founders, that is, sharing our startup experience and industry knowledge through mentorship. I hope this inspires startups to turn to Microsoft where we can truly democratize access to resources and channels that can help founders grow and scale their businesses. 

The last 4 weeks were a joy from the community's point of view. Even if the interaction was mainly online, I had the chance to discover and meet many people at 6 different conferences. I would like to share a short summary of each event: Microsoft Ignite Spotlight on Romania  (Bucharest, December 8th): The in-person event took place in Bucharest in a fantastic location (Nord Events Center by Globalworth). It gathered Microsoft and Cloud specialist from the local market. During the conference, I had the opportunity to share my experience related to resilience and performance tests on Microsoft Azure using the new Microsoft tools like Azure Chaos and Azure Load Testing. Conf42 DevSecOps 2022  (online, December 1st): The online conference is focused on DevSecOps aspects related to the cloud and Kubernetes. I was invited by Conf42 team to deliver a session about security tools that need to be used when you build an application on Microsoft Azure.  Connect.IT Sibiu  (Sibiu, November 24t