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Azure Immersion Workshop: .NET App Modernization

Jump-start your organization’s digital transformation with this intimate online learning session. The Azure Immersion Workshop: .NET App Modernization was designed to help you manage and modernize your Microsoft .NET application states as you migrate them to Azure App Service. The morning kicks off with a whiteboard design session on app modernization, followed by a hands-on lab to help you manage your .NET app library to increase resiliency, improve cost-efficiency and help you scale more easily.

During this training event, you will:

  • Learn how to prioritize and evaluate your applications to prepare them for Azure.
  • Modernize your .NET library with minimal interruptions and learn best practices, design patterns and obstacles to avoid.
  • Join a hands-on lab that gets you started on your digital transformation journey.

 

Here’s what you can expect:

Introduction to application modernization on Azure
Whiteboard Design Session
Hands-on Lab

 

Reserve your seat now, because space is limited.

 

Explore Digital Transformation with Azure

With the incredible capacity, flexibility, and innovation enabled by cloud, now is the time to drive rapid Digital Transformation. Digital Transformation requires leaders to re-envision existing models and embrace new ways to create value for their customers and drive business outcomes.

We are excited to announce the first Optimus Breakfast Series event of 2020. Join us on February 27th to explore Digital Transformation with Azure. Gain insight from leading industry professionals and leave with practical Do’s and Don’ts that you can implement at your organization.

Register
To register for this event, please send an email with your full name, company and title to jessalynn.tran@optimusinfo.com.

Agenda

7:30am – 8:00am  Registration, Hot Breakfast, and Networking
8:00am – 8:05am  Introductions
8:05am – 8:35am  Keynote Speaker Presentation
8:35am – 9:00am  Panel Discussion
9:00am – 9:30am  Q&A
9:30am – 10:00am  Networking

Keynote Speaker and Panelist

Jim Bowyer is a technologist and business leader with deep experience and knowledge of enabling business through Information Technology. In his current role as the National Leader of Azure Customer Success, Jim leads an organization of Cloud Solution Architect teams dedicated to assisting Canadian customers successfully adopt Microsoft’s Azure Public Cloud Services.

Panelist

Pablo Garcia is a cloud advocate, currently working for Finning Digital as their Global Software Development Lead. Through his personal experiences dating back to the dot-com bubble, he creates clarity and gives direction in the uncharted waters that is delivering digital transformation for the biggest caterpillar dealer in the world.

Panel Moderator

Mukund Mohan is a business leader and experienced product executive with a demonstrated history of success in the internet industry. He has extensive experience working with startups and is also skilled in eCommerce, Direct to Consumer and enterprise software at Amazon, Microsoft, HP and Cisco. Currently, Mukund is the CTO of BuildDirect Technologies where he oversees BuildDirect’s global product and engineering teams.

Security Software Shortcuts

Where do you start with security test cases? How do you ensure your dependencies aren’t adding to security risk? What threat models and attack vectors are common in a cloudy world? What are quick and free wins you can use to reduce risk and improve security?

Come learn about how to get started, some quick wins and a few master level tricks for dev, DevOps and QA in the intersection of security and development.

About the Speaker:
Michael Argast is an experienced cyber security professional with over 20 years of industry experience. He is the co-founder and CEO of Kobalt Security Inc., a start-up security service provider for small and mid-sized organizations. In addition, Michael founded the Sky Northern Security Alliance of independent security consultants (now a part of Kobalt), ran several security functions within TELUS for 5 years, and ran Sales Engineering worldwide at Sophos, leading 120 staff in 17 countries. Michael has been a guest speaker at previous ISACA and BC Aware events and at the Privacy and Security conference in Victoria as well as global lectures in Moscow, Madrid and Oxford University. Michael is a strong supporter of growing the skills, breadth and diversity of the security community and welcoming students and career changers into the field. You can connect with him on LinkedIn or Twitter (@michaelargast).

Agenda:
5:30-6:00 pm – Registration & Refreshments
6:00-7:00 pm – Presentation and Q&A
7:00-7:30 pm – Networking

Important note: Because you do need a access key to use the elevator, we ask that you please arrive no later than 6:15 PM, so that we can ensure everyone is able to get up to the event with ease. Thank you!

The Art of the Possible

Join us on October 9th, 2019 to explore Digital Transformation that organizations have already accomplished and The Art of the Possible. 

Digital Transformation requires leaders to re-envision existing models and embrace a different way of bringing together people, data, and processes to create value for their customers and drive business outcomes. Organizations that embrace technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, and Advanced Analytics will be able to drive effective innovation that will transform their industries. Right now is the time to take advantage of these technologies to drive rapid transformation in a cost effective manner due to the vast amounts of data we are generating and the incredible capacity we have at our fingertips on the cloud. Since this rapid pace of change has never been seen in our history, we need to ensure we adhere to ethical principles and innovate responsibly.

Keynote Speaker
We are excited to have Nuzio Ruffolo, from Microsoft Canada as our keynote speaker. Nuzio has more than 25 years of experience in the technology industry, spanning product development, services, sales, and customer success.  With a proven track record of delivering significant business value for organizations across Canada, Nuzio is passionate about driving technical innovation and taking a customer-obsessed approach to his work. As the National Transformation & AI Officer, Nuzio is also responsible for providing leadership to drive and accelerate Microsoft AI engines across all the segments of the business to fuel digital transformation with organizations in every industry.

Register
To register for this event, please send an email with your full name, company and title to jessalynn.tran@optimusinfo.com.

Agenda
7:30am – 8:00am Registration, Hot Breakfast and Networking
8:00am – 8:40am  Keynote Speaker Presentation
8:40am – 9:00am  Fireside Chat
9:00am – 9:30am Q&A
9:30am – 10:00am Networking

Technology is Becoming the Core to Every Business

By Goran Kimovski, SVP Global Customer Solutions (Onica)

For many decades, technology businesses were considered a separate industry sector. These were typically companies whose revenue was dependant on developing technology-based products and selling those products to other businesses. The majority of other businesses were relegated to the role of technology consumers. Wanting to reduce their technology budgets, these technology consumers focused on minimizing their technology costs by standardizing their business processes and tools. This approach worked for a while, since everyone in their industry and market were in the same race. However, with the advent of ubiquitous technology – in the form of cloud services, mobile and edge devices – a new wave of companies emerged. These new companies shifted technology from the periphery to the core of their business model.149 Technology is Becoming the Core to Every Business

Technology Became the Differentiator

New businesses in sectors ranging from healthcare to transportation to financial services were able to compete and steal market share from existing businesses. We started using terms like fintech, healthtech, and transportation as a service to differentiate these businesses from the respective industry sector they were competing within. They almost always looked more like technology companies based on their R&D budget and technology innovation. This new wave of hybrid startups has attracted tons of investments across the globe.

Many traditional businesses have changed their direction to keep up with the competition. They had to take advantage of the same trends in cloud, mobile, and edge, to start catching up to (or in some cases outperform) their new competitors. These traditional businesses have recognized that these new businesses are using technology to differentiate themselves and grabbing market share from them. Some have been able to successfully change their direction and take their competition. Many found new solutions for their customers by partnering with these new vendors. Some have decided to acquire these businesses and bring them into the core of their operations. This effectively started a transformation towards becoming more and more technology oriented.

What Drives This Process?

Several technology innovations:

  1. Open and fast internet access
  2. Adoption of mobile in every aspect of our business and professional lives
  3. Extensive processing and sensor technology being built in every device
  4. Low cost and easy access to large computing power in the form of cloud

Screen-Shot-2019-05-14-at-11.14.03-AM Technology is Becoming the Core to Every Business

These innovations have converged and democratized access to technology. This enabled new business models like “everything as a service” to thrive. As businesses adopt more technology, they create a greater wealth of data and many new integration possibilities.

In turn, this drives innovation to:

  1. Make sense of all the data
  2. Help businesses drive better decisions and optimize the user experience
  3. Offer new ways for users to obtain services from their business
  4. Create additional revenue generating opportunities uniquely enabled by technology

What Does this Mean for Your Business?

If you’re not already on the path of transforming towards a technology-centric future, now is the best time to start.

This is how you can begin:

  1. Starting the Discussion
    Initiating discussions with your leadership (or, if you’re an executive, by leading such discussions) about making an initial investment.
  2. Create a Team
    Empower a small team to start experimenting with technology and exploring how to solve current business challenges in a different way using cloud-based or related technologies. It is critical that you truly empower the team to try different technologies. Give them a budget and authority for creating a sandbox with enough guardrails and support from your IT and security teams to enable them to safely run experiments fast. It is equally critical to hold them accountable for their learning and sharing the results of their experiments. Therefore, you can build a roadmap for transforming your business through the use of technology and get wider support from the organization to continue further investments.

If you’ve started the transformation and feel overwhelmed, you’re not alone. The technology driving the trends discussed here is largely developed for builders. These are companies that employ engineers and others that have the skill and know-how to build solutions from various technology components. However, many of the businesses outside the technology sector employ people that are good at customizing and managing solutions who don’t have the capacity to maintain their existing technology stacks.

Learning the New Model

Customization, integration, and maintenance is commonly outsourced to professional services or managed services firms. In addition, most of those firms are too invested in their existing technology platforms and unable to move as fast as their customers who feel the pressure of the market. They need to adopt new technologies faster than their vendors can. This leaves room for a new kind of service firms (Optimus Information and Onica included) that have been born in the new technology-centric world. These new service firms are not constrained by old business models or large numbers of customers with support agreements that keep their staff working with outdated technologies. These companies are more than happy to share the best practices they have developed over the years working with early adopters of technologies like cloud, IoT, serverless, Big Data, Machine Learning, etc. Larger enterprises are also great examples of this new model. Many have already started their journeys and have been relying on those new technology-centric services organizations to help.

Technology Transformation Trend

It is somewhat useful to think of all of these trends as enabling a transformation towards technology-enabled businesses. However, in my 6+ years offering cloud consulting and managed services in Canada and the US, I have often seen this trend of technology becoming central to the business. These businesses are on the path to becoming or have already become technology-centric; and many aspects of their organizations have been transforming to support that. I expect this trend to continue over the next 10 years. I predict that we will find ourselves in a world where almost every business will become technology-centric.

The Future of Automation

Automation is the new buzzword these days as organizations are moving to automate more and more.

Our speaker will be Jeff LaPorte, the CTO of Kobalt. He will speak to us about where he sees the Future of Automation.

More details to come.

Automated Testing on Azure DevOps

If you are looking for automated testing for any of your applications and would like to integrate it with your Azure DevOps infrastructure, Optimus Information has a “ready to deploy” Test Automation solution for you.

Our Azure DevOps based test automation solution uses the latest Azure CI/CD features and offers the following functionalities:

1. Configure automated test cycles using Azure DevOps

2. Schedule and execute Web UI and REST API test scripts on cloud using Azure VMs

    • Self-serviced virtual machines and PaaS resources for testing using Azure DevTest labs
    • Supports automated test scripts developed in Java or C# using Selenium WebDriver, REST Assured and RestSharp

    3. Distribution of apps to beta testers and your collaborators with Azure App Center

      • Selection from a large variety of test devices using the App Center Test Cloud
      • Supports popular frameworks like Xamarin.UITest, Appium, XCUI Test etc.

      4. Test result reporting and logging with screen shots and 6 month data retention with App Center

        • Support for notification over mail or other communication tools like Slack

        5. Data persistence support using AzureSQL service

        6. Integration with PowerBI Embedded for reporting and analytics

        7. Built in test script source code management using Azure DevOps

          • Supports integration with third party Git providers like Github if required

          8. Built in test case management for test plans using Azure Test Plans

            • Custom integration possible with other tools like TestLink where supported

            9. Concurrent execution

            10. Ability to start automated testing in short time frame with expense control

            Cloud is important to our customers. The Optimus test automation framework on Azure makes it possible for our customers to seamlessly integrate test automation into their cloud-based development as well as their test and production environments. Contact us to get a more in-depth look to to get a demonstration.

            Automated-Testing-Solution-on-Azure-2-e1554082144564 Automated Testing on Azure DevOps
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