Microsoft is announcing the general availability of its newest datacenter region in Qatar, located in Doha. The new Qatar Central region will start offering Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365 and Power Platform services. The Qatar datacenter region includes three Azure Availability Zones, which will offer additional resiliency for customer applications. Other available non-Microsoft technology services are SAP, NetApp, Snowflake, Adobe, and MongoDB. The investment was first announced in 2019 in partnership with the State of Qatar.
The new Qatar region offers the following to customers:
Data residency in country.
In country Disaster Recovery through zone to zone synchronous replication.
High Availability of computing and storage by deploying in three zones allowing a higher service level agreement on virtual machines availability and storage durability.
Improved performance through minimal latency for workloads deployed within Zones, to meet our most exigent customer latency-sensitive workloads.
Microsoft says it has delivered on its promise to help in Qatar’s journey to becoming a regional data hub with the launch of the datacenter. Additionally, the company is introducing a skilling program to help improve the technical skills of Qatarians to meet the about 24,000 new jobs the industry will need.
Microsoft notes this will be its first cloud region to launch with two ExpressRoute points of presence (Edge nodes). AI and machine learning services such as Azure Cognitive Search and services, computer vision are expected in Q3 of 2022.
In June, Microsoft opened an advanced innovation hub in Lusail City as it seeks to increase its investments in Qatar.
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Microsoft announces Team Green Wavers as the winner of this year’s Game of Learners (GoL) university students hackathon competition. They won the climate change and sustainability-themed hackathon competition with a solution that encourages the public to plant trees. Team Wavers will have the privilege of working with the Green Belt Movement to develop their winning solution further.
Purity Jangaya (University of Nairobi), Ian Kariuki (Kenyatta University), Humphrey Kimathi (Kirinyaga University), Jessie Umuhire (African Leadership University) and Françoise Mukantwari (African Leadership University) make up the winning team, Green Wavers. The team got coaching support from Microsoft Africa Development Center’s Claire Limo (Software Engineer) and Loki Mutua (Product Manager).
The 5-week virtual hackathon’s objective was to propose solutions that reduce or reverse gas emissions and footprints, based on the theme Climate Change & Sustainability. Season 3 saw 40 students from universities in Kenya, South Africa, Rwanda, and Uganda participating. It also had 21 judges from the Green Belt Movement, Kenya Climate Innovation Centre, UNICEF, the USIU, and the Microsoft ADC. In addition, there were 17 coaches and 16 trainers.
Green Wavers – Climate change solution
Based on the critical theme of Climate Change & Sustainability, the team created a tree planting competition website to encourage tree planting in line with the season’s challenge, which sought to propose a solution that reduces or reverses gas emissions and footprints.
The solution works in such a way that once a user has planted a tree and photographs it, the website allows the user to register and upload the image. Azure Computer Vision recognizes the uploaded image and confirms that the object in the image is a tree. If validation is successful, the database is updated with the user’s name, location, and tree image URL. If the user uploads another image and it is validated, the user’s tree count in the database grows.
If the validation fails, the user is prompted to upload a new image. After a month, the user with the most trees planted receives an award. The website also includes an education page where users can learn about the importance of planting trees, the consequences of cutting down trees, and how to plant a tree.
Carbon dioxide is thought to be responsible for 80% of global warming. Furthermore, it is estimated that the world emits approximately 43 billion tonnes of CO2 per year.
“Trees naturally absorb carbon dioxide through the process of photosynthesis and release pure oxygen into the environment. Therefore, planting trees equates to reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the environment. However, the number of trees being planted is far less than the number of trees being cut down. For one tree that is planted, three trees are cut down,” said Jangaya, the Green Wavers team captain.
“This is the problem that we identified, and the challenge is how we can make people plant more trees than those which are being destroyed. As team Wavers, we have found a solution and have developed a website that makes people plant trees.”
Microsoft Game of Learners
Speaking about the competition, the Game of Learners founder, Ruth Ferland said: “The focus of GOL is in fostering and encouraging continuous learning. It’s not about winning a prize but rather learning hands-on as much as possible in 5 weeks. Prizes and incentives are based on items that promote and assist learning including smartphones, Azure Credits, LinkedIn Learning Vouchers and MS Certification Vouchers.”
The participants’ journey is documented and released online as a weekly episode on the GOL Show with the finale having aired this week and can be found on the Game of Learners website. Volunteers support all GOL activities from Microsoft and partners as coaches, mentors, judges, speakers, and trainers.
Taking part in the Game of Learners competition is a winning experience for all participants considering the amount of learning that each participant is exposed to. The winning team gets an opportunity to have their winning solution adopted by an organization to develop it further.
“Another winning experience for Game of Learners participants is having the experience elevate them to become suitable candidates for various tech roles in the industry. From the previous Game of Learners seasons, we have seen a conversion rate of about 40% of our participants gaining meaningful employment with reputable companies, including Microsoft” Catherine Muraga, the ADC Managing Director emphasized.
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Microsoft is announcing the Developer Cloud Summit: Middle East and Africa 2022 technical conference scheduled to take place March 30, 2022. At 12 PM – 16:30 PM (GMT+4). The event will bring together speakers from across Microsoft, GitHub and the developer community. Where it will provide deep-dive learning opportunities and hands-on experience on trending and innovative platforms in the cloud.
The Developer Cloud Summit topics include Cloud Native futures, AI-based applications, Remote DevOps practices, Rapid Innovation methodology and best practices on modernizing legacy .Net & Java applications with new cloud capabilities. Learn about app migration and modernization, low code apps, coding in the cloud, GitHub Copilot and many more. There will also be a party to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the .Net platform.
Stormy Peters, VP of Communities GitHub will talk about “lessons we learned working with Open Source at Microsoft”. Whilst Jeff Hollan, Director of Product, Azure Apps, Microsoft, will dive into “build scalable apps faster than ever before”. Other speakers include Adir Ron, Cloud Application & Innovation, Middle East & Africa, Microsoft.
Microsoft says that an ecosystem of developers, innovators and open-source communities are teaming up to build together the future of technology in the current Cloud-Native era.
Click to visit the Cloud Summit: Middle East & Africa 2022 technical conference page for more details and to register.
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Microsoft Africa Development Center is organizing a free virtual event as part of its ADC’s user group series themed Azure Developers Connect for Developers and Software Engineers in Africa scheduled to hold on the 24th of February, 2022. Time 3 PM GMT, 4 PM WAT, 5 PM SAT, 6 PM EAT.
The event which would be held virtually is targeted at Azure user groups & communities, developers, engineers, working professionals; Tech communities in West Africa and Kenya in a bid to expose them to the many capabilities of Azure for building next-gen apps and driving global transformation as a developer or software engineer in Africa.
Developers and software engineers would enjoy practical sessions with Top Azure experts, as well as get insights into existing cloud features, they never knew were in existence. Speakers at the event will include Scott Hunter (VP DIR Program Management, Azure Applications, Microsoft), Matt Soucoup (Senior Cloud Advocate, Microsoft), Donald Okafor (Principal Software Engineering Lead, Microsoft ADC), Kehinde Ladipo (Software engineer, Microsoft ADC).
Panel discussions will also feature Adora Nwodo (Software Engineer, Microsoft ADC), Olaitan Adeboye (Software Engineer, Microsoft ADC), Samuel Adranyi (Senior Software Engineer, Mekorma), Frank Odoom (Software Consultant, Accede) and other Microsoft ADC software Engineers.
Topics: – 5 career paths you can explore as an Azure Software Engineer, – How to become a software engineer at the Microsoft ADC, – Leveraging Azure for continuous deployment & integration.
Microsoft Azure is Microsoft’s public cloud computing platform that provides a wide range of cloud services such as computing, analytics, networking, and storage. Microsoft Azure helps developers and software engineers to develop new applications or even upscale existing applications with its various cloud services. The public cloud computing platform is flexible and open which makes it globally recognized to developers and software engineers due to its reliability.
The Azure developers connect event will also serve as a great way for developers and software engineers to network with other Azure professionals in the field.
Developers and Software Engineers in Africa can book their seat by registering with the link https://aka.ms/AzureDevelopersConnect to get in-depth knowledge about exploring the Microsoft Azure Platform and its existing features whilst they prepare to build next-gen apps that would drive global transformations.
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Cairo ICT 2021 is underway in Egypt and Microsoft is taking the opportunity to showcase its latest technological innovations in the areas of the Cloud, AI, Security and modern work. It is also showing off the latest Surface products, the Surface Pro 7+, Surface Laptop Go and Surface Go 2.
The international telecom, information, technology and media trade fair and forum event is taking place from 7-10 November. The event is co-locating with PAFIX 2021 at the Egypt International Exhibition Center, New Cairo.
We are delighted to be participating as Official Cloud Sponsor at the 25th edition of Cairo ICT, says Mirna Arif, Country Manager, Microsoft Egypt. We are looking forward to welcoming you at our booth to reimagine together a stronger future for Egypt. And to explore how organizations can harness the power of technology to thrive in an increasingly digital economy, she adds.
Microsoft will be participating and contributing to the conversation on the Digital Challenge during the event. Mirna will join other technology leaders to discuss “How ICT is changing the face of the world”. Other Microsoft discussions to look out for include:
8th – Cloud-Tech & DevOps – Mr. Chadi Haddad, Data & Ai Regional Director, Microsoft
9th – IoT & IIoT – Leading the way to Industry 5.0 – Ahmed Farag, Public Sector Industry Lead, Microsoft
You can find the Microsoft Egypt booth on the Cairo ICT 2021 event floor at Hall E stand 3E2. Where you can have a hands-on with their products and learn about their solutions.
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At Microsoft Ignite 2021, Informatica announced a joint Modern Cloud Analytics program with Microsoft on Azure. To provide customers with fast, low cost and low-risk paths to modernize PowerCenter ETL and on-premises data warehouses to Informatica’s Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) on Azure and Azure Synapse Analytics. This offering is available on the Azure Marketplace. Helping customers streamline procurement and enabling them to fulfil their financial commitments with Informatica solutions on Azure.
“Microsoft and Informatica share a cloud-first vision and are committed to helping our customers accelerate their cloud migration journey,” said Scott Guthrie, Executive Vice President, Cloud + AI, Microsoft. “With the alliance of Informatica’s rich data integration capabilities and Microsoft Azure’s unified analytics platform, customers have a faster path to the benefits of cloud analytics.”
The Modern Cloud Analytics program is available to joint Microsoft and Informatica PowerCenter customers migrating their on-premises data warehouse and ETL workloads to IDMC on Azure and Azure Synapse Analytics. It includes:
Informatica’s Migration Factory for Informatica PowerCenter customers that automates 90% plus of existing data integration mappings to IDMC on Azure and Azure Synapse Analytics.
No cost access to cloud data warehousing and cloud data management experts from both Microsoft and Informatica to guide customers with best practices and ensure successful migrations.
Financial incentives from Microsoft and Informatica for software and professional services that significantly reduce the cost of migration.
The ability to purchase IDMC through Azure Marketplace, enabling customers to apply their entire IDMC subscription to their Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment agreement.
“We are thrilled to elevate our Microsoft integration with our new joint modern cloud analytics program and offer our customers a seamless, streamlined and financially compelling program to migrate and modernize mission-critical data workloads to the cloud with Microsoft,” said Amit Walia, CEO, Informatica. “As we continue to help our customers in their digital transformation, we’re focused on delivering a cloud data management platform that helps our customers reimagine their business in incredibly innovative ways.”
Sign up to receive additional information on the Modern Cloud Analytics Joint Program here.
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