Last night my 10-year-old son, Danny, approached me with a question. He had always heard me talking about BizTalk and more BizTalk when describing what we did as a company. But this time Danny wanted to know all about Azure, the cloud, Logic Apps, and everything else he’d been hearing me yap about for many months now. He asked, “Papi, what’s so good about Azure and Logic Apps and all that? What is it?”
The changing face of IT
Here we go. Gotta think this through, How to explain? I thought long and hard before saying a word. Our world is changing, I thought. I wasn’t thinking about our entire world, even though that is changing. I was focusing more on our software integration world.
Things like the cloud, APIs, artificial intelligence, and IoT, to name just a few have been around for some time now, but they are converging in such a way that it is revolutionizing (I don’t use this word lightly) the way message-oriented middleware, workflow, and application integration happens. In IT, we often refer to “where the magic happens,” and at this point, the magic is happening everywhere.
But I sometimes find it hard to explain these things to IT professionals and our customers let alone to my 10-year-old. There are so many business benefits, so many technical benefits. But I was about to lose Danny who was staring at me waiting for his answer, so I took a deep breath and went for it.
The wonder of Azure
It’s fast, I said. Everything can happen so fast on Azure. We can whip up an integration in like minutes. We can run it in production in minutes. There is no need to order servers, physical or virtual, or wait until software is installed or configured. Heck, in many cases there’s not even an operating system to worry about. You can just go. It’s nimble. You can go from here to there very quickly, add capabilities almost instantaneously, pivot from one solution to another in the blink of an eye.
It’s fiercely powerful, you can grow to meet nearly any demand with little or no upfront investment. It’s like Azure is a bunch of Azures. You can bring in more Azures at any time if you need them for defense or to attack. And if it doesn’t work right, you can just turn off your entire Azure army and easily bring in another one.
I paused here to try to see if he was getting it and there it was, a look of happy understanding. An “aha moment” if ever saw one. With a smile on his face, Danny looked up and said, “Papi, what you’re telling me is that Azure can beat a Velociraptor.”
Hmmmmmm. Need to consider my answer carefully here. Would Azure win? I need to weigh everything I had just told him. He patiently waited until I made my decision, “Yes Danny, you are absolutely right, in a fight to the finish between Azure and Velociraptor, Azure wins hands down every time.”
Danny and I laughed about this, and it looks like he’s an Azure fan now. He actually went online searching for more info on Azure and maybe a little on dinosaurs too. Who knows, maybe the battle already happened a long time ago, and hey, we know which one is extinct don’t we?
It’s great to see the curiosity in the little ones. If you’re curious about what Azure integration can mean for your company, please give us a call. Danny will be ready to explain.
Happy integrating everybody!!!
