Same DJ in between keynotes as before the first keynote. Everyone has wristbands underneath their chairs so can participate in the keynote in some way. Presumably Azure can make lots of LEDs blink at the same time.

Starting with Scott Guthrie, MS Executive VP (I think) – time to go deeper into MS Azure and how to build amazing things with it.

But…everything is accelerating and it’s getting harder for everyone to keep up with tech. Azure is meant to help with that problem. Having great technology with lots of features is necessary but not sufficient. Outcomes matter most.

90% of Fortune 500 use Microsoft Cloud – opening customer story with Mars (candy bars! 🙂 ). SAP lives in Azure along with 150 workloads – expect that to increase to 500-600 workloads this year. “It allow us to put a data scientist in a box.” Also examples with Mars, Geico, and NEXT games.

End-to-end management makes Azure unique…well, maybe. Management portal, CLI, Powershell, monitoring and log analytics, patching, etc.

Corey Sanders on stage for demos. First part is Inception style demo – VM in a VM in a VM – nested Hyper-V. Claiming that no other cloud can do this. Now into demonstrating how to create a VM in Azure via Powershell – that got a round of applause. Next is showing updates needed for VMs in Azure + remediation via central control panel. Works for Windows AND Linux both in Azure as well as on-premises machines. Applause here too.

Phew….this is a big demo. One-click DR testing for VM’s – stand up at remote location with the latest replicated copy of a VM on an isolated network. Final part was simple query language to go across millions of records.

Corey finishing up by emphasizing how all of these are capabilities not available on any other cloud.

<Missed a bit here due to wifi issues – had to get tethered>

Coding demo time – kanban board in Visual Studio Online. Git integration so can create a new branch out of the kanban board and the branch + all changes are tracked back to the work item on the kanban board.

And ending on a fun note.

Now into discussion of Hybrid Cloud Consistency and Azure Stack.

Customer example with EY and working in Russia. No public clouds exist on Russian soil but strict data governance that Russian data can’t live outside Russia. Azure Stack allows EY to code to Azure and either run in Azure or via Azure Stack for in-country specific options and requirements.

Natalie Mackevicius now onstage for Azure Stack demo. I find the difference in hybrid cloud definitions across the industry fascinating – some cloud-centric (bring public cloud feel to the datacenter) and some on-premises centric (bringing traditional to the cloud….relates to IaaS).

Loved a demo showing SQL Server running on Linux being managed from a Mac.

Afraid that I have to leave this keynote early to do some training on a Rubrik SE call – impressed with what I saw.