Microsoft Inspire — Session 1
Azure Cosmos DB Positioning and Compete Round Table with the Azure Cosmos DB Engineering Team
So, today was the first session for me (on a Sunday, I Know!) at Microsoft Inspire 2019.
After shaking off the Jet lag and unsuccessfully winning my house back on the Black Jack table, it was time to make my way across to the Park MGM on Las Vegas Boulevard — fortunately, you can do this all indoors, as opposed to walking outside in the 40 degree heat and turning up looking like you’ve arrived via the swimming pool.
So, the brief…
Azure Cosmos DB is Microsoft’s database platform for building planet-scale, high performance applications. In this round table led by the Azure Cosmos DB product team, we’ll discuss the core value props of Azure Cosmos DB, what customer scenarios to look for, and how it differentiates itself from other database offerings.
After a bit of a wild goose chase to find the correct room, the session was opened by Nikisha Reyes-Grange, Senior Product Marketing Manager across the Azure Platform. NRG (which Nikisha awesomely shortens her name to!) explained how Cosmos DB is a non-relation Database service aimed at the consumption and management of mainly operational data, and was developed to help application layer developers store data in a low-latency fashion all backed by high percentage SLA’s (99.999%).
Now, before you think “oh no, Neil has gone totally technical on us and I need to find a new blog…” dont worry; that’s as technical as I get. I’ll leave that to the clever guys at Ricoh Digital Services who utilise Cosmos DB on a daily basis, who will be following up this blog with how we are using it with our customer… I’m looking at you, Carl Follows and Nathan Thomas
The aim of this blog is to set up and introduce you to our more technical content on the Ricoh Digital Services Blog page.
Microsoft have three main use cases for Cosmos DB; Real-Time Personalisation such as focused ad’s in retail, IoT for use in Manufacturing and Real-Time Operational Analytics such as movement of people in offices or conferences, for instance.
Interestingly, we are using Cosmos DB at Ricoh Digital Services for our meeting room utilisation in Smart Spaces, so it seems we are not a million miles away from the Microsoft aims. However, we chose to utilise Azure IoT Hub in our manufacturing space, but I am assured by the Cosmos DB team that this is not an issue and both products can be used in collaboration.
If you’re interested in out use of Cosmos DB, including our challenges and success stories, then leave a comment and we’ll get in touch. In the meantime, I’ll be tasking the team to give the more technical overview for those of you that are interested!
Neil Dallaway
Head of Digital Solutions, Ricoh Digital Services
