BY:
Theodore Stabile
Staff Writer
Microsoft recently unveiled their new cloud friendly database management tool, Microsoft Azure. To present its capabilities and show off source code and tech demos, the VP of Microsoft, Scott Guthrie, was orchestrating tours all through Tech Valley and beyond. October 19th the tour would be stopping in Boston. A free bus ride from Albany was being offered to local tech companies, but the invitation was open to students as well, so myself and three other Saint Rose students decided to piss with the digital big boys. I return from my expedition with newfound belief in the phrase “The beauty is in the journey, not the destination”.
October 19th was a day of many firsts. It was the first time since starting college I was waking up at 3:00am rather than going to bed. It was my first ever time riding an Uber; my driver Joshua was an absolute lamb-chop (if you’re reading this darling I hope your sister-in-law gets that job with Microsoft in London!).
The rendezvous point for the Boston bound bus was 555 East Street, three miles away from Home. This was Joshua’s first time hearing of the address, so we opted to head to the Rensselaer Amtrak & Bus station, which all signs pointed to being the true address rather than the red herring I got in the registration email. There Joshua attempted a rapport with the gate keeper of the bus lot, Jake, in order to find out where the Azure Tour bus was located. This was the first time Jake was hearing of it. Joshua, in his wealth of generosity, drove me up to the train counterpart of the facility at no extra charge. It was time for us to part ways, but not before I humbled and somewhat perturbed Joshua with his first tip for being a GMO-free cherry in a blossoming thicket of madness.
The bus was scheduled for 5:00am, and my quest for information from the Amtrak proved fruitless. With no bus in sight and Father Time donning his late-o-clock lingerie I had to resort to my gut. In turn I essentially played hopscotch between the Amtrak and the bus lot. Right at the turn of five, I received a call from one of my classmates going on the tour, who was wondering where I was. She had ran into the tour group leading the Albany guests, who were located in the bus lot all this time (Jake you cur). Fatalism would hold this L yet, or so I thought. As I approached the lot, like a CGI mechanical whale, the bus cruised out of the darkness, and after much deliberation at the yellow/black striped gates, made it through Jake’s defenses. There it stalled, in all its dilapidated glory. This was my first time taking a Brown Co. Bus. With God as my witness, it will be my last.
We approached the highway when suddenly a chime went off, sounding as if all elevator music and every trite Christmas song in the world just got through a sloppy, violent divorce and made it a bigger public production than it needed to be. This turned out to be the bus lamenting it’s now overheated radiator. We were stuck, and would soon miss the opening ceremony. I became nostalgic of the smooth transport Joshua provided. We were then shuffled onto a new Brown Bus an hour later and resumed our voyage. We were viciously behind schedule but had traveled just outside the outskirts of Boston where the new bus decided to sing its own rendition of the chime. It was second verse, same as the verse as this bus had its own radiator overheat as well. The passengers were flabbergasted. However, I had the foresight to bring balloon animals with me in case we ran into trouble, so while I couldn’t fashion a dandy new radiator, I could at least make crowns, swords, dogs, and even flying rats to keep spirits up. The dauntless driver leapt out with a funnel and a bottle of antifreeze in tow. He was an elderly fellow, so as some boomers won’t not to do, a band-aid was applied to a situation where a tourniquet was in order. We resumed travel and a mile later, the bus gave a final encore as it chugged through the antifreeze and proceeded to succumb to the automotive equivalent of a heat stroke. This was the first time I doubted the potency of my lucky tie, which fittingly was adorned with multicolored automobiles of old. The bus driver, who I realized was the same for both buses, proclaimed that this was the first time something like this happened in his twenty years of service. A day of many firsts indeed.
I could tell hearts were sinking quicker than Clive Palmer’s Titanic II. Passengers were giving up hope, with lukewarm coffee and donuts as their only solace. Some regretted coming at all. There was an idea pitched to order a new bus or a mechanic, both solutions nonviable due to our location, cradled in the bosom of the I-90. However I wasn’t yet ready to drink tap-water flavored resignation Kool aid. I seized, unlike the radiator, the opportunity to compliment my increased balloon animal production with a passionate diatribe of how to kick fatalism right in the teeth. My esoteric motivation is what compelled me. Perhaps a weird hill to die on, but I refused to give up mainly because that I really, really wanted a free T-shirt.
The leader of our tour troupe was able to contact the organizers of the event, who came to our unorthodox rescue. They sent over two taxi vans to our location, but with the amount of people we had, we would’ve needed a second trip. However, a Honda civic pulled over, and out came none other than another Brown Bus driver. He was off duty but had noticed the broken down bus while driving. The two drivers had a meeting of the minds and out of goodwill the man offered to drive any stragglers so we could finally arrive to our promised land as a family. We loaded into our two Boston clown cars and a Civic, where I was fortunate enough to be driven by Michael, an Irishman through and through who had choice words about Uber and Boston traffic as well as choice swerves to avoid colliding with said ubers and traffic.
We had done it, eight hours later after giving fatalism the end of “Of Mice and Men” treatment, and burning through three modes of transportation. Describing the feeling as cathartic would be an understatement The event was halfway over by the time we arrived, but the event hall was adorned with pulsating red cubes. The future looked quaint, yet bright.
The epicenter of the convention was filled with groups of people representing Tech companies nationwide. It seemed almost like our ragtag saint rose group and Niel from RPI were the only student representation. Once the presentations resumed, Scott gave our group a shout out and a spiritual pat on the back for our obligatory endurance. Seeing Azure in action was nothing short of gorgeous, like a never ending swan song. In a bejeweled nutshell; Azure’s design is based on four pillars: Productive, Hybrid, Intelligent, and Trusted. Databases used for apps could have development times of a few weeks to up a month, however Azure, when implemented correctly, can do the job within days. Currently 3 million databases run on Azure, which computes, globally, 100 trillion database transactions every single day. With little network latency can transfer 700gb of data within a minute. Azure’s AI algorithms are nigh capable of measuring the previously unmeasurable: human error. What won me over was Azure embraced gremlin graphs and column families with open arms, a reassuring feature during these turbulent times. The future prospects of Azure are even greater, with even more robust auto-threat detection and profiling that shoots SQL attacks dead in their tracks, along with database sizes of 4 terabytes by the years end, and 64tb in the near future. To top it off, there along are data speed projections to hundreds of gigabytes per second now, to transfer speeds of 1 petabyte per second in the years to come (One petabyte holds enough data that would need 745 million floppy disks to store).
Azure is a few shakes of a lambs tail of sentient. The most impressive series of bells and whistles are its machine learning features; encompassing all five senses, with facial recognition and sentiment detection for good measure. Rest assured no one is playing God, but with Azure’s reasonable pricing and multi model/API functionality, don’t be surprised if Azure is tucking in our children at night and hammering the final nail into the nuclear family coffin.
Upon the end of the presentations, as a collateral for our tribulations, we were allowed an exclusive group photo with Scott Guthrie, and yes, after everything, exclusive Red Tour sweatshirts. I’m not fond of schadenfreude, but being the only group given Red Shirt apparel while other groups were turned away was nothing short of vindicating.
Was it worth it in the end? As I type this snug and smug in my oversized XXL sweatshirt I can safely say yes. Microsoft has shot for the clouds with Azure but seems to have landed among the stars. However there’s one question that I will probably, at little expense and inconvenience will take with me to the grave: Why call it a Red Shirt Tour if Azure is a shade of blue?
