Azure for Executives

TranscriptInsurance is changing quickly these days and undergoing a digital transformation is not easy. Adding blockchain to the mix can change an entire architecture. When used appropriately, however, blockchain can become an indispensable tool for your ledger technology.In this episode, we discuss the use of blockchain in insurance as well as how it applies to other industries such as banking and capital markets, healthcare and manufacturing.Specifically, you will learn how companies are using Corda's smart contracts feature to create complex, logic-based, on-block content and events. Listen to how R3, with the open source Corda blockchain, is helping companies get started with blockchain today.Show LinksR3 on Azure: Launch of Corda Enterprise v3.1R3 websiteR3 on Azure: Strengthening our partnershipCorda Enterprise Scale Deployment on Microsoft AzureRyan RuggRyan is the Global Head of Insurance for R3 and leads the company's Insurance strategy to drive business growth. She is responsible for the strategic design, development, and commercialization across the ecosystem of blockchain innovation within the Insurance Industry.In 2017, she launched the Center of Excellence for Insurers and Reinsurers in partnership with ACORD which is redefining the foundations of insurance by harnessing the power of collaborative networks, through the deployment of DLT within the financial services industry.  Since then Corda, R3's blockchain platform has been the platform of choice for the insurance industry. Corda integrates and secures the entire stream of disparate data sources, while simultaneously ensuring transparency across an interconnected network of clients, brokers, insurers and other third parties. Prior to R3 Ryan worked for Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan where she gained extensive experience in financial services covering a broad range of institutions including; insurance, hedge funds, banks and asset managers. Ryan started her career in Technology at Lehman Brothers, experiencing first-hand the inefficiencies in the legacy infrastructure which she is now working to solve. She has a double major in Computer Science and Finance.Nick LeimerNick Leimer is the Principal Insurance Industry Lead for Azure. Nick brings 20+ years of experience bridging the business and IT gap in application development, operations, and infrastructure.Before joining Microsoft, Nick was the Senior Director for Actuarial Compute at Manulife leading the migration of LAN based HPC Farms to the Azure environment for all of Asia; including all desktop Moody’s / GGY Axis users and data feeds.Prior to Manulife, his career progressed through developing applications for Actuarial Valuation and Projection including components of ArcVal and Prophet, the Defined Benefit area with the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (BPGC), and leading life insurers, AIG and Manulife. Follow Nick on LinkedIn  and Twitter.

TranscriptIn this episode, we speak with Marcy Larsen, Microsoft Industry Solutions Executive focused for Retail in Australia. She helps us understand how hyper-personalization is the future for successful retailers.She shares how retailers balance the line of how personal can offers really be, without being off-putting to the customer. Marcy tells us about working with Microsoft to garner feedback and build services retailers want.Also, Marcy offers insights into how retailers can take advantage of the data they already have.Show LinksRead the use case that underlies this podcast episode and learn more from these other resources.See how Microsoft is helping grow intelligent retailMicrosoft retail and consumer goodsPower BIAzure Data FactoryAzure HDInsightAzure Machine Learning ServiceAzure Machine Learning StudioMarcy LarsenMarcella Larsen leads Microsoft's Retail Industry focus to inspire digital transformation in consumer-facing industries for Australia. Marcella is responsible for managing platform agnostic cloud and cross channel focused growth strategies in the industries of Retail, Travel, Hospitality, and Consumer Goods. She oversees retail, travel, transport and consumer goods industry solutions, go to market strategies, partnerships, marketing, solution development, thought leadership and customer relations to ensure the full extent of Microsoft’s industry visions and value propositions are realized locally. Marcella brings almost 22 years of deep customer, vertical technology, sales and marketing experience to this role.Marcella has a strong track record in developing and growing business, is results oriented, with a multidisciplinary approach for business planning. She is experienced in marketing, business development, supply chain operations, international trade, finance, and product management.

TranscriptBehavioral biometrics is an emerging topic in the security sector. Users are profiled in how they use specific applications. These patterns of usage establish something like a behavioral fingerprint, which can keep your assets secure.Banks use biometrics to prevent fraud from websites and mobile applications. What if someone found your unlocked phone, went to your banking app and was able to transfer money? If the application is trained to your personal biometric behavioral print, this transaction can be flagged.There are many other uses for behavioral biometrics we will discuss and continue to pay attention to its use across industries as the field grows.Show LinksThe BioCatch storyFrances ZelaznyFrances Zelanzy works closely with BioCatch's CEO to conceptualize and formulate strategic initiatives while on the marketing side, she establishes comprehensive marketing strategy, including brand positioning, messaging and execution.Follow Frances on LinkedIn.Dekel ShavitBioCatch VP of Operations & CISODekel has more than 15 years of experience as a customer-oriented operations professional, building, managing and scaling Operations groups in highly-demanding technology companies.Prior to joining BioCatch, Dekel led the Ops group at Leverate (a leading FinTech company) and was the Production Manager at DoubleVerify.Follow Dekel on LinkedIn.Howard Bush is a Principle Industry Lead for Azure for Banking and Capital Markets at Microsoft. He advocates for Microsoft Azure within the banking and capital markets industry.Howard BushHoward Bush is a Principle Industry Lead for Azure for Banking and Capital Markets at Microsoft. He advocates for Microsoft Azure within the banking and capital markets industry. Howard works with customers to help them understand how cloud computing addresses the unique and changing needs of the industry. Howard describes himself as “a banker wrapped in IT clothing.” Follow Howard on LinkedIn or Twitter.

TranscriptFIS is an international company with offices all over the world. Generating new ideas from around the globe could be a logistical problem—not to mention differences in languages and cultures. But FIS has a hands-on way to get innovation to the forefront: a hackfest called InnovateIN48. Contestants get 48 hours to start and finish their solutions before having them judged.This event has helped FIS innovate in key areas. And this year, FIS challenged contestants to solve a social, humanitarian, scientific or philanthropic challenge. The theme was “Innovation Empowering Hope.” Hear how they did it in the podcast.67 finalists. 14 teams. 48 hours. That's the InnovateIN48 hackathon.Show LinksInnovateIN48 home pageFISMike SilvermanMike Silverman is the Global Head of Enterprise Technology Strategy for FIS, a global leader in financial services technology. FIS focuses on retail and institutional banking, payments, asset and wealth management, risk and compliance, and outsourcing solutions.Through the depth and breadth of our solutions portfolio, global capabilities and domain expertise, FIS serves more than 20,000 clients in over 130 countries. Headquartered in Jacksonville, Fla., FIS employs more than 52,000 people worldwide and holds leadership positions in payment processing, financial software and banking solutions. Providing software, services and outsourcing of the technology that empowers the financial world, FIS is a Fortune 500 company.Follow Mike on LinkedIn.Paul MaherPaul Maher is the General Manager of the Industry Experiences team which is part of the Cloud and AI Engineering organization at Microsoft. Paul is a proven leader in the technology field, having extensive industry experience acquired across a variety of roles, with a passion for technology.He is a strategic thinker, who can look at the big picture, or complex problems and distill into actionable output. Started career behind the code as a Software Engineer, through to most recently as General Manager at Microsoft. Skilled at leading, building and growing teams.Follow Paul on LinkedIn or Twitter.Howard BushHoward Bush is a Principle Industry Lead for Azure for Banking and Capital Markets at Microsoft. He advocates for Microsoft Azure within the banking and capital markets industry. Howard works with customers to help them understand how cloud computing addresses the unique and changing needs of the industry. Howard describes himself as “a banker wrapped in IT clothing.” Follow Howard on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Transcript Rubikloud is an artificial intelligence (AI) company and has created a cloud-native, machine learning platform especially for retail. RubiKloud was founded in 2013 and is based in Toronto. In this episode, Waleed Ayoub, Rubikloud's Chief Technical Officer takes us through their thinking on the addition of AI to retail, along with other insights into up and coming technology in retail. Further, this episode looks at the benefit Rubikloud has received by being a valued Microsoft partner. Whether you are in the retail space or not, this is a great episode to just hear the possibilities of what AI might do to change the whole supply chain. Show Links Rubikloud Microsoft Retail and Industry Goods Home Waleed Ayoub Waleed Ayoub is Chief Technology Officer at Rubikloud Technologies. He is a product and technology leader with over a decade of hands-on experience empowering talented teams and building impactful enterprise SaaS products. His experience spans a broad enterprise landscape, including banking, CPG retail, loyalty, telco, pharmacy and other specialty B2C domains. Waleed specializes in transforming data and machine learning from an operational afterthought to a revenue-generating asset with some of the world's largest enterprises. At Rubikloud, Waleed is on a mission to bring "intelligent decision automation" to the enterprise. Prior to joining Rubikloud as their Chief Technology Officer, Waleed most recently ran the Customer & Advanced Analytics practice at Shoppers Drug Mart. Waleed holds a Bachelor of Applied Science and Engineering with a specialization in Quantum Physics from the University of Toronto. Follow Waleed on LinkedIn.

TranscriptIn this episode, we speak with Kelly Goetsch, who is Chief Product Officer at commercetools. We touch on current and emerging trends in retail and hear how data-informed decisions can change a company culture. Further, discuss commercetools and their offering of APIs to retailers who are building their own eCommerce sites that live on commercetool's platform.Our discussion covers how Azure allowed them to spool up their multi-tenant app quickly in containers using Azure Kubernetes Service. Looking forward into the future of retail, we hear about uses for AI and even augmented reality.Show LinksCommercetools websiteAzure Kubernetes ServiceKelly GoetschKelly Goetsch is Chief Product Officer at commercetools. He came to commercetools from Oracle, where he led product management for their microservices initiatives.Kelly is the author of 3 books about commerce.He previously held senior-level product development and go-to-market responsibilities for key Oracle cloud products representing nine+ figures of revenue for Oracle. Prior to Oracle, he was a senior architect at ATG (acquired by Oracle), where he was instrumental to 31 large-scale ATG implementations. In his last years at ATG, he oversaw all of Walmart's implementations of ATG around the world.Follow Kelly on LinkedIn.David StarrIn addition to being the host of this podcast, David is a Principal Cloud Solutions Architect at Microsoft, focusing on healthcare. He loves creating with code and with large systems supporting scale.He enjoys all aspects of developing, delivering and operating software systems. He is also passionate about the end-to-end process, methods and techniques, and the patterns and practices of high performing software development teams, using skills that transcend specific technology stacks.Follow David on LinkedIn or Twitter

Transcript From planning to streaming analytics, this episode looks at all phases of introducing IoT to a company. Just having the data is often not enough to make decisions. Insights must be gleaned from that data. Joe Biron walks us through PTC's approach to full IoT adoption including everything from installation to organizational change. Finally, we talk about the coming technologies that Joe is excited about. Show Links PTC Manufacturing Learn more about PTC's strategic partnership with Microsoft and how together we’ve enabled enterprises to accelerate digital transformation.  Joe Biron Joe Biron is an experienced technology executive with a passion for imagining and implementing technology solutions for the grand challenges that businesses face. In his career he has been a software engineer, technology consultant, chief architect, product strategist, and team leader. For the past decade he had the good fortune to be part of the Internet of Things revolution, particularly the Industrial IoT, and looks forward to the stunning paradigm shift that is happening now! As part of the PTC Office of the CTO, he looks after the intersection of our customer solutions, platforms, and the opportunities that the Internet of Things bring. Follow Joe on LinkedIn Diego Tamburrini Diego Tamburini is the Principal Industry Lead for Azure Manufacturing in the Microsoft Industry Experience team, where he focuses on developing technical content to help manufacturing companies and software developers deliver their solutions on Azure, at scale. He also champions partners who deliver manufacturing solutions using Azure. Follow Diego on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Transcript Nick Leimer shares changes occurring in the insurance industry and how companies are dealing with it. Specifically, we look at computing risk for regulatory compliance and how it might be a good match for Azure services, like Azure Batch or Azure High-Performance Computing. Additionally, Nick explains some of the current and evolving industry regulations. Regulatory compliance is key to insurance companies and the discussion addresses this issue. Show Links Azure Batch Azure CycleCloud for HPC scenarios Nick Leimer Nick Leimer is the Principal Insurance Industry Lead for Azure. Nick brings 20+ years of experience bridging the business and IT gap in application development, operations, and infrastructure. Before joining Microsoft, Mr. Leimer was the Senior Director for Actuarial Compute at Manulife leading the migration of LAN based HPC Farms to the Azure environment for all of Asia; including all desktop Moody’s / GGY Axis users and data feeds. Prior to Manulife, his career progressed through developing applications for Actuarial Valuation and Projection including components of ArcVal and Prophet, the Defined Benefit area with the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (BPGC), and leading life insurers, AIG and Manulife.  Follow Nick on LinkedIn or Twitter. David Starr In addition to being the host of this podcast, David is a Principal Cloud Solutions Architect at Microsoft, focusing on healthcare. He loves creating with code and with large systems supporting scale. He enjoys all aspects of developing, delivering and operating software systems. He is also passionate about the end-to-end process, methods and techniques, and the patterns and practices of high performing software development teams, using skills that transcend specific technology stacks.  Follow David on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Healthcare IT veteran, David Houlding, chats with us about reducing costs in healthcare as part of an organization’s digital transformation and specifically, outlines the tools and techniques needed for these transformations to succeed. Additionally, we discuss core technologies of Azure and how they can help in the move to the cloud, ensuring regulatory compliance, security, and privacy.David discusses how healthcare organizations are adopting cloud technologies and explore some non-exotic reasons to move to the cloud like data storage and security. Finally, we point to partners for the applications created on top of the Azure infrastructure.Show LinksAzure BackupAzure Compliance ManagerAzure Key VaultAzure Security CenterAzure Site RecoveryAzure StackIndustry Certifications and ComplianceSimplify your compliance journeyDavid HouldingDavid is a Principal Healthcare Program Manager at Microsoft. He has 24+ years of experience in healthcare, cloud, privacy, security, compliance, blockchain, and artificial intelligence / machine learning. Responsibilities include cloud, privacy, security, compliance, blockchain, AI/ML thought leadership in the healthcare industry globally.He supports the healthcare industry by embracing the power of the cloud to provide better care for patients. From hospitals and insurers to pharmaceuticals and researchers, David links the industry to Microsoft technology to empower the healthcare industry and anticipate the healthcare needs of the future.Find David on LinkedIn or Twitter.David StarrIn addition to being the host of this podcast, David is a Principal Cloud Solutions Architect at Microsoft, focusing on healthcare. He loves creating with code and with large systems supporting scale.He enjoys all aspects of developing, delivering and operating software systems. He is also passionate about the end-to-end process, methods and techniques, and the patterns and practices of high performing software development teams, using skills that transcend specific technology stacks. Follow David on LinkedIn or Twitter

Transcript In this episode, we dive into IoT, High Performance Computing (HPC) and even delve into scaling strategies. Diego Tamburini takes us deep into the digital transformation occurring in the manufacturing world. Along the way we discuss IoT, moving systems and data into Azure, and the interesting issues that can come up in time-series data. Additionally, we even go deeply into some 3D printing for manufacturing and rendering jobs from standalone desktop applications. Show Links Big Compute: HPC and Batch Azure Batch Manufacturing home page Azure for Manufacturing Diego Tamburini Diego Tamburini is the Principal Industry Lead for Azure Manufacturing in the Microsoft Industry Experience team, where he focuses on developing technical content to help manufacturing companies and software developers deliver their solutions on Azure, at scale. He also champions partners who deliver manufacturing solutions using Azure. Follow Diego on LinkedIn or Twitter. David Starr In addition to being the host of this podcast, David is a Principal Cloud Solutions Architect at Microsoft, focusing on healthcare. He loves creating with code and with large systems supporting scale. He enjoys all aspects of developing, delivering and operating software systems. He is also passionate about the end-to-end process, methods and techniques, and the patterns and practices of high performing software development teams, using skills that transcend specific technology stacks.  Follow David on LinkedIn or Twitter.