iO are delighted to bring you the first instalment of our AWS meetup as sponsors of the Tampa Bay AWS User Group. This meetup was hosted by Jeff Fudge and iO’s Sam Johnson, and featured special guest speaker Shashank Prasanna, an AWS Developer Advocate.

Shashank presented a fantastic and knowledgeable talk on an Introduction to Machine Learning, showing us how you can train high-accuracy machine learning models with just a few lines of code – no machine learning expertise required. He also walked us through demos showing two AutoML solutions- Amazon SageMaker, AutoPilot, a fully managed AutoML service on AWS, and AutoGluon, an open source AutoML library by AWS.

It was great to connect with some new faces and hope everyone enjoyed it as much as we did! This virtual platform means that we can reach more of our community and interact with you directly. iO Associates get the most in-demand speakers on your choice of topics so please get in touch if you have any suggestions.

You can view the full video here:

iO are pleased to bring you our first instalment of our Azure meetups, as sponsors of the Tampa Bay Azure User Group. This meetup was co-hosted by Jeff Fudge and our iO Consultants, and featured special guest speaker Blaize Stewart.

Kubernetes is the king of container orchestration and the results are clear: More than ever, employers are looking for IT professionals that know Kubernetes. It can, however, be hard to get started with Kubernetes, because it is not trivial software.

This session took AKS back to basics, breaking it down into bite size chunks, giving us a jump start on our Kubernetes experience. Blaize showed excellent knowledge on the subject, a great help for those who are just starting out with this container.

About our speaker:

Blaize Stewart is an Architect at Wintellect. His work principally focuses on Microsoft Azure, and he is a current Microsoft Azure MVP and holds numerous Azure certifications, both old and new. He has architected and implemented applications ranging from small apps to enterprise grade applications on Azure across a wide array of offerings including PaaS and IaaS.

It was great to connect with some new faces from across the pond, and hope everyone enjoyed it as much as we did! This virtual platform means that we can reach more of our community and interact with you directly. iO Associates get the most in-demand speakers on your choice of topics so please get in touch if you have any suggestions.

You can view the full video here:

iO are pleased to bring you the next instalment of our AWS meetups, as sponsors of the Tampa Bay AWS User Group. This meetup was co-hosted by Jeff Fudge and our iO consultants, and featured special guest speaker Given you do some work with them it would also be beneficial if possible to include info that isn’t widely available in a press release .

Austin presented a fantastic talk on AWS Data Lakes. His session included how to architect a data lake on AWS, leveraging services such as S3, Athena and Glue.

About Our Speaker

Austin is a Cloud Architect at Photobucket and Founder of the AWSMeetupGroup. The AWSMeetupGroup was initially in the Denver area, but has now become a nationwide group with Austin travelling once a month to reach the wider tech community. He not only live-streams all his events on YouTube but also routinely blogs on Medium under the handle AWSMeetupGroup. One of his most popular blogs involve topics centered around AWS Lambda and serverless architecture.

It was great to connect with some new faces from across the pond, and hope everyone enjoyed it as much as we did! This virtual platform means that we can reach more of our community and interact with you directly. iO Associates get the most in-demand speakers on your choice of topics so please get in touch if you have any suggestions.

You can view the full video here:

iO Associates are delighted to bring you the next instalment as co-hosts in our series of Azure Virtual Meetups. This session featured special guest speaker Mike Pfeiffer, a Microsoft Azure MVP and host of the CloudSkills.fm podcast.

Automation and governance are key concepts when it comes to working with any cloud platform. When it comes to automatically deploying infrastructure in Azure, you may ask where do I start? What are the common pitfalls?

In this session, Mike walked us through the basics of automating the Azure Cloud. He showed us practical tips and presented tons of demos aimed at beginners, giving us code samples we can use on our own. This session helped in our understanding of foundational concepts about Infrastructure as Code (IaC), and gave us a game plan on how to start our own Azure Cloud automation journey!

About Mike:

– Microsoft Azure MVP
– Trainer to over 350,000 students globally
– Podcast host with listeners in over 155 countries
– Author of 5 books on Microsoft Azure, DevOps, Cloud Architecture
– Conference speaker at numerous IT industry events (Microsoft Ignite, AWS re:Invent)

You can view the full video here:

iO Associates are excited to deliver the next instalment as sponsors of the Tampa Bay Azure User Group. In this session, we were joined by special guest speaker Dwayne Natwick, Microsoft MVP, who gave a fantastic talk on ‘Protecting your Azure House – Best Practices for Data Security’.

An organization is expected to provide an environment where information is available from anywhere at anytime for users. The growth of cloud technologies has provided a means and a challenge to organizations as they enrich the accessibility of information and applications. During this session, Dwayne provided guidance on how to enable best practices within the organization to secure data and application access through the tools provided within cloud environments. These best practices will allow an organization to excel in the ability to provide an expanded ability to enrich user experience and attract talent with the availability of information, while maintaining organizational confidentiality and integrity.

About our speaker:

Dwayne is a Microsoft MVP for Azure, and an author, trainer, and product manager with over 30 years of experience in the IT industry. He is certified in multiple Azure and M365 roles, including Azure Solution Architect Expert, Azure Administrator Associate, Azure Security Engineer Associate, and Microsoft 365 Security Administrator Associate.In addition to creating curriculum, training, and blog writing, Dwayne is also a Microsoft Certified Trainer and Regional Lead.

– @DwayneNcloud
– linkedin.com/in/dnatwick/
– captainhyperscaler.com (blog)

You can view the full video here:

iO Associates are excited to bring you the next instalment in our series of AWS meetups as sponsors of the Tampa Bay AWS User Group. Our most recent meetup featured Alex DeBrie, AWS Data Hero, who gave a very interesting talk on‘Using DynamoDB in Serverless Applications’.

For many reasons, DynamoDB has been the database of choice for serverless developers in the AWS ecosystem.

In this talk, Alex explained why DynamoDB is such a great fit in serverless applications. He walked us through how to get started with DynamoDB, showing us the best practices for data modelling with DynamoDB.

If you would like some more information on how to use one of the fastest growing databases around, Alex has written a fantastic book which contains five full walkthrough examples!

Buy it here

You can view the full video here:

iO Associates are delighted to bring you the next instalment in our Azure Virtual Meetup series as sponsors of the Tampa Bay Azure User Group. In our latest virtual meetup, we were joined by Thiago Custodio, Technical Lead at EPAM Systems and Microsoft Azure MVP. Thiago gave a fantastic talk on ‘Zero to Hero with Azure Functions’.

Serverless computing is a paradigm that is rapidly gaining popularity due to it’s simplicity. In this session, we looked at how it works and also which Azure services you use in this model, including a Serverless Overview, Azure “Functions” Overview, Best Practices as well as Durable Functions, API Management and Security.

You can view the full video here:

iO Associates are delighted to bring you our first Azure Virtual Meetup of 2021! This session was led by Vaibhav Gujral, Cloud Architect at Kiewit Corporation, who presented a talk on ‘Accelerate your IT Career with Azure Role-Based Certifications’.

In this session, we find out how to sharpen your Azure skills and accelerate your IT career with Azure role-based certifications.

If you have given a certification exam before or if you are planning to take your first exam, you should watch this session to:

– Understand the different role-based certifications which are available
– Choose the right certification for you
– Benefits of taking an exam
– Identify the skill sets needed for the certifications
– Understand the Exam structure
– Get some Preparation tips

You will get enough information in this session to get started with your certification preparation.​

About the speaker:

Vaibhav Gujral is a seasoned cloud architect currently working at Kiewit Corporation.

He is playing a pivotal role in Kiewit Technology Group’s ongoing digital transformation and is currently responsible for envisioning, creating, and continually improving the cloud platform foundations that development teams build upon.

He has been awarded Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award for the Microsoft Azure category and is a Microsoft Certified Trainer. He is a Microsoft Certified Azure Solutions Architect Expert and he holds numerous other Azure Certifications.

He has been putting in his time and effort in building and growing the tech community. Apart from being a regular speaker at several user groups, events, and conferences, he also runs the Omaha Azure user group (https://omahaaug.com). He regularly blogs at https://vaibhavgujral.com/

It was great to see people from all over the globe! We get the most in-demand speakers on your choice of topics, so please get in touch if you have any suggestions.

In addition, if there’s anything we can help you with in regards to sourcing candidates or finding a new role please do also get in contact.

You can view the full video here:

We are delighted to bring you the first AWS Virtual Meetup of 2021! We are joined by Trevor Roberts, an AWS Sr. Solution Architect from Amazon, who presented a talk on ‘Amazon re:Invent Sessions’.

AWS re:Invent is a learning conference hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS) for the global cloud computing community. The event features keynote announcements, launches, sessions, and more. The re:Invent Sessions are targeted at developers, engineers, system administrators, system architects, and technical decision makers.

In this session, Trevor reviewed all of the exciting announcements from Amazon’s recent re:Invent sessions held at the end of 2020.

You can watch the full video here:

iO Associates are delighted to bring you our next Azure Virtual Meetup! The topic of this session is ‘Five Azure Services Everyone Should Know’, which was ran by Josh Carlisle, Microsoft MVP.

Getting started with Azure can be daunting for new developers. With dozens of various platforms, it’s easy to become overwhelmed with choices! Where should I host my applications? Where should I store my data? How do I manage my applications? Despite the broad number of services, it is possible to narrow down to a handful of platforms that meet many of the most common application requirements and is also a great place to get started learning more about Azure. In this talk, Josh introduced us to five of these platforms, how to work with them, alongside some best practices. Along the way, we implemented and deployed a solution to Azure that takes advantage of them.

About the Speaker:

Josh is Microsoft MVP in Azure and industry veteran of more than 20 years with a passion for the cloud and Azure. He has worn many technology hats over his career, from developer and architecture roles to management and leadership and is currently the Global Azure Lead for the AppDynamics Cloud Team at Cisco. He has spent most of his career sharing with the technology community and can be found speaking at industry and community events worldwide. He is based out of Raleigh, North Carolina, along with his wife and two children.

You can watch the full video here: