Microsoft collaboration: promoting innovation with Azure

Our partnership with Microsoft has been growing through the years. What started as a small Business Unit inside the company has grown to a globally recognized team of experts in specific areas like Xamarin, Azure and Big Data. And all the work we’ve done in these past four years with customers has led to a very impressive list of companies with whom we’ve been able to develop outstanding solutions that are able to deliver great experiences to end users.

We’ve been working closely with Microsoft teams in different countries and, recently, we’ve been invited by Oliver Gomersall (Mobile Innovation Specialist for Central & Eastern Europe) to help share the “Art of the Possible” when it comes to Xamarin and Azure as technologies on which to build a successful and innovative Mobile practice. We’ve worked together for some years, and when we received the request, we didn’t think twice about accepting it – we did it on the spot! Little did we know that it would be the start of a great adventure! 🙂

In the past six months, we’ve been delivering Mobile Innovation workshops in many countries. We’ve been in Romania, Hungary, Lithuania, Estonia, Bulgaria, Malta and Cyprus. We’ve shared with participants what Azure can do when it comes to creating a robust backend for their mobile apps – independently of the technology they are using to build them – sharing stories about Xamarin, purely native development and even some experiences we are having with new tech like Flutter. We talked about things like App Services and Notification Hub, that are well known and used Azure building blocks, but we went further and showed what Cosmos DB, API Management, Cognitive Services, Chat Bots and others can do! We’ve shown participants that it’s not possible to create great experiences in your digital channels without having systems that allow you to deliver what you want in the best way possible. And this is definitely where Azure comes in and makes all the difference.

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From a professional standpoint, it was a very rewarding experience. We had the chance to meet a lot of great people, both from Microsoft and from its partners and customers, and to share what we could do to help – not only when it comes to working directly with customers, but also helping to enable the local partner ecosystem. After all, it’s the same Azure for everyone, and what we’re doing here can be done anywhere!

From a personal point of a view, it was great to get a feeling of the culture in all those countries, to taste some of the food and to be able to run on the streets of cities where I had never been before. It was a great experience that I’m sure will bear fruit! I must, however, mention the support of my family – especially my wife – during all this, for supporting me and taking care of our girls while I was travelling every two weeks to some other country, while coping with her own work. Without her support, this would not have been possible, so I’m sending a giant THANK YOU back home. 🙂

Finally, I would like to thank Oliver for inviting us on this adventure. I’m sure what we’ve done will just be the start of a string of initiatives regarding Azure in all those countries. And thank you to everyone from Microsoft who received us so well and helped in delivering the workshops, especially the people I mention below who have taken some of their time to give their feedback about all this – you guys rock!

Xpand IT’s strategy has always been based in technology. Our objective is to choose technologies in which we believe and then become experts, first locally and then globally. Even though this is not a complex formula, the fact is that there are not a lot of companies doing it – focusing on some things while letting others go. It not only means a lot of investment but also a very strong mind-set regarding what we want to do and be.

There are moments when all our work pays off, and this was one of them. And the best thing is that it’s just starting!

Sérgio & Jorge have been supporting me on scaling across CEE in Azure Mobile Innovation for the past 6 months. With the attitude and support of the guys at XpandIT we have been able to build a successful foundation to deliver world class Azure Mobile Workshops, the first Partners in EMEA to deliver this! Based in Portugal and the UK, they saw the opportunity to explore unknown territory, and it was of great happiness that they have helped me build a dynasty in CEE which will benefit Microsoft and its customers for years to come. Thank You!

Oliver Gomersall, Mobile Innovation Specialist for Central & Eastern Europe @Microsoft CEE

We worked very well with Xpand IT in Romania and we highly appreciated the great content that was delivered during the Azure Mobile Workshop in terms of technology and business knowledge. Following the very good feedback that we got from local partners and customers, I consider Xpand IT a strategic partner on our Azure Mobile application journey.

Veronica Enceanu, Cloud Infrastructure Solution Sales Professional @Microsoft Romania

My opinion for the workshop is that it has been delivered in an exceptional way, interacting with the audience. The covered topics were comprehensive and the level of detail was corresponding to the participants’ profiles. The received feedback is excellent, which opens the door for future initiatives on educating the dev professionals in the Azure technology field.

Vitan Kostov, Account Technology Strategist @Microsoft Bulgaria

We had the pleasure to have the team from Xpand IT (Sérgio and Jorge) in Cyprus and Malta, delivering a workshop around Application Modernization to our customers. The guys are very knowledgeable, with a lot of experience on the subject, and were very well prepared. The feedback from the attendees has been very good and everyone is asking for more!

Valentinos Georgiades, Product Marketing Manager, Azure @Microsoft Cyprus & Malta

Sérgio Viana

Partner & Microsoft Solutions Lead, Xpand IT

Sérgio VianaMicrosoft collaboration: promoting innovation with Azure

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