Scott Nichols on the State of Azure - Part 2 - Episode 116

This episode is part 2 of the interview with Scott Nichols! Be sure to tune in to part 1 first before joining in on this episode's conversation.

Scott Nichols is a Sr. Cloud Solutions Architect, Scott works for the commercial enterprise division serving the west region. He is also the leader of the .NET and the Azure user groups in Boise, Idaho. He started his career in the IT profession in 1993 as a mainframe and web developer. Since then, he has served as a Lead Software Engineer/Solution Architect, a Software Development Engineering Manager, a Sr. Cloud Software Solution Architect, a Sr. Enterprise Solution Architect, and of course, most recently, a Sr. Cloud Solutions Architect at Microsoft since 2019.

In this second part, the interview transitions from discussing the state of Azure and the Cloud industry into talking about how customers are modernizing their existing applications and infrastructure for Azure. Scott shares about infrastructure as code tools he sees as having the most traction right now, his recommendations for those looking to get their application into Azure, and what he sees as being the most successful pathways for his customers utilizing Azure infrastructure.

Topics of Discussion:

[:38] Be sure to visit AzureDevOps.Show for past episodes and show notes.

[1:01] About The Azure DevOps Podcast and Jeffrey's offer to speak at virtual user groups.

[1:11] Clear Measure is hiring! Be sure to check out the link in the show notes.

[1:33] Jeffrey welcomes Scott back to the podcast for part 2 and shares about this episode's conversation.

[2:06] The infrastructure as code tools Scott sees as having the most traction.

[4:35] Does Scott have any customers that have used Azure Bicep yet?

[4:56] How Scott thinks about Azure infrastructure and what he sees as being most successful with his customers.

[7:42] For certain tweaks in the infrastructure, where does an ARM template work?

[9:45] What is the mechanism in Azure that would know that the Powershell script has not been run yet or has already been run so that it doesn't run it again?

[11:07] A word from Azure DevOps Podcast's sponsor: Clear Measure.

[11:38] For people looking to get their application into Azure, what would Scott recommend their next steps be?

[20:37] Jeffrey thanks Scott for joining the podcast and Scott offers some parting words of advice for developers.

Mentioned in this Episode:

Azure DevOps

Clear Measure (Sponsor)

.NET DevOps for Azure: A Developer's Guide to DevOps Architecture the Right Way, by Jeffrey Palermo — Available on Amazon!

bit.ly/dotnetdevopsebook — Click here to download the .NET DevOps for Azure ebook!

Jeffrey Palermo's Youtube

Jeffrey Palermo's Twitter — Follow to stay informed about future events!

The Azure DevOps Podcast's Twitter: @AzureDevOpsShow

Scott Nichols' LinkedIn

Scott Nichols' Twitter @TheScottNichols

Azure Architecture Center - Microsoft

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Azure Architectures - Microsoft Docs

Google Cloud (GCP)

Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF)

Azure Bicep on GitHub

.NET Conference 2020

Python

Terraform

Azure Resource Manager (ARM)

CICD

PowerShell

HashiCorp

Want to Learn More?

Visit AzureDevOps.Show for show notes and additional episodes.