Insights and Inspiration from Microsoft LEAP 2018

AlfaPeople participated in Microsoft LEAP conference earlier this year. The conference is targeted software architects and developers. Lars Lund, Technical Solution Architect, and Ameed Sheikh, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Senior Solution Architect are telling us their most important takeaways from the conference.

What were the most important takeaways from Microsoft LEAP 2018?

Lars Lund: “It is very clear that Azure can do a whole lot more than what it´s being used for. Today most people are using Azure to create virtual machines, but Azure Virtual Machines is just a tiny part of the potential of Azure“.

Ameed Sheikh: “Among other things Azure contains Event Grid-, DevOps- and Visual Studio Team Services frameworks. A thing like VSTS will become very important in the future and with VSTS we can automate a lot of the processes. With VSTS we can do it all using just one click.”

Lars Lund: “AI, machine learning, and cognitive services is also an area, that is developing rapidly. At AlfaPeople we must know all of the new trends and technologies. Otherwise, we are not able to guide our customers, when they ask us. Our core business is still Microsoft Dynamics 365. But the core business needs to be updated at all times with the new analytics disciplines. Here it´s all about taking some of the hype out of the concept and look for POC-projects, where vi can make the technologies to bring real business value to the customers.”

What was the biggest surprise?

Ameed Sheikh: “During LEAP I learned that the biggest challenge in IoT is the infrastructure. I´ve always thought that IoT more or less was all about to set up the units and create a data feed, but there is more to it than this. You have to have the infrastructure in place first. This is where Microsoft has made it so much easier because Azure can deliver the whole infrastructure around IoT, so we don´t need to create a direct contact to every unit. Azure is doing that with Event Grid.”

What will have the biggest impact?

Ameed Sheikh: “Developers are using Logic Apps framework today, but not to the extent they can. With Logic Apps, there are connectors to an enormous number of services and vendors and on top, it doesn´t demand as much time to create integrations and actions as if you write the entire code yourself. In Logic Apps everything is included in a dashboard and you create integrations by clicking a box and define the action that you will like the system to do. This will save us a lot of difficulties.”

Is there anything that you will do differently now?

Lars Lund: “I want to invest more time in saving time going forward. For instance by getting more knowledge in VSTS. This means that my colleagues and I can work smarter and more effectively. It´s always about educating yourself through videos and other content so that we are able to automate more processes and work in a more structured way. Among other things there a new DevOps tools that can automate tests, builds, and deployments, this will speed up the process in a significant way. At the end of the day, our customers will go live with their digital projects much faster.”

Learn more about Microsoft Dynamics 365 here.