News

“There is a real opportunity for the UK to embrace technology and accelerate economic growth,” said Microsoft’s UK CEO, Cindy Rose at a talk delivered at London Tech Week 2017. She continued, “The future is bright for the UK, and London in particular. It has always been home to innovation, and it can grasp opportunities from the fourth industrial revolution…”

Read more about what she had to say about the UK’s and London’s technology future here.

^{Source: Microsoft News Centre UK}

The ASP.NET Community Stand Up happened yesterday and is available to watch now via Scott Hanselman’s YouTube page here.

^{Source: YouTube/Scott Hanselman}

There’s a handy video on YouTube for those working with Microsoft Power BI. Video description is, “Microsoft Azure Analysis Services and SQL Server Analysis Services enable you to build comprehensive, enterprise-scale analytic solutions that deliver actionable insights through familiar data visualization tools such as Microsoft Power BI and Microsoft Excel. Analysis Services enables consistent data across reports and users of Power BI. The demos will cover new features such as improved Power BI Desktop feature integration, Power Query connectivity, and techniques for modeling and data loading which enable the best reporting experiences. Various modeling enhancements will be included such as Detail Rows allowing users to easily see transactional records, deployment and application-lifecycle management (ALM) features to bridge the gap between self-service and corporate BI.”

^{Source: YouTube/Microsoft Power BI}

It’s Friday, which means it’s Azure Friday!

To stay up to date on the latest Azure happenings, join Scott Hanselman each week as he engages one-on-one with the engineers who build the services that power Microsoft Azure.

The latest webisode Introducing Azure Cosmos DB is available to watch now on Channel 9.

^{Source: Channel 9}

Societe Generale is one of the largest financial services groups in Europe and a Globally Systemically Important Financial Institution (GSIFI) i.e. it is classed as ‘too big to fail.’

In his article “Fintech: learn fast or fail fast, Aymeril Hoang, Head of Innovation at Societe Generale, discusses the importance of cooperation between financial institutions and start ups, importantly with regards to sharing technology to expedite bringing products to market. Hoang says,”Banks can learn about the latest technologies and creating good user experiences from FinTechs and FinTechs can learn about regulatory compliance, distribution and large-scale processing from banks.” It’s an interesting read for anyone interested in or developing fintech.

As a side note, Societe Generale has been working with Microsoft to become one of the first GSIFIs to embrace the cloud, utilising Azure. According to Bloomberg, by 2020 Societe Generale “intends to have 80 percent of its infrastructure on internal and external cloud networks.” This speaks volumes to the trust some of the world’s largest companies have for Azure.

^{Source: Societe Generale, Bloomberg}