 Hey everybody. This is Christian Buckley doing another MVP buzz chat and I'm talking today with Armando. Hello. Hey there. Hello. How are you, Chris? It's great to have you. And as we were kind of talking before we got started, it's like you're down for the part of the world, like where I was born and raised down from, you're on the outskirts of the Bay Area. But I still consider that area, Fairfield Cordelia, as kind of the far eastern reaches of the San Francisco Bay Area. Yeah, people around here, they say it depends what's convenient. We call ourselves a North Bay sometimes just in the Sacramento area, depends the convenience. Yeah, it's just beautiful area. I was just down there like a month ago and driving all around and we went and saw like the Muir Woods and went up to the peninsula across down in San Francisco. And, you know, but of course out in the valley and visited family, state of the family out in Folsom and, you know, so still, it's great knowing where everything is. But, you know, having been gone, moved away from California in 2004, it's hard going back and seeing everything so developed. It's super developed. This area here, just this past Christmas, this house where I'm living, it's about I think 25 years old. And this Christmas I was going out for jogging and this family just stopped by and said, I used to live in this house and there was just like a half dozen houses around here. And down in concrete on the parkways and they got this kids, you know, hand impression, it was his. Oh, wow. That was my hands. I love that. But, you know, so Cordelia for those that don't know it's right at the junction of highway 80 so which goes coast to coast in the US and 680 which goes down through Walnut Creek and, and so it's a major. And it goes down through Benisha and across to the bridge and stuff. So it's, I mean, I remember as a kid driving past and going to the nut tree and going to, you know, Fairfield and Vacaville and up into Sacramento. There were three gas stations, it was that was it it was a trucking stop. There was nothing else there. And now it's just built in every direction around that but, but anyway, hey it's great to have you here and so why don't you tell us a bit about yourself who are you where and you talked about where you are. Yeah. So yeah, well, I'm, again, my mother was sort of and I was born in Brazil it came to us back in 2001. We work with Microsoft technologies for, you know, since forever. And when I got here was certified trainer, and there was a huge demand back then before the dot com bubble burst for trainers. And that's how I got my, my first job here in US and we always working on the data side of things start as a developer, long ago, like three lives ago, and then work when may frames and got into the database size of set of things and mainframes. And then we got to the next project was Oracle, and back then SQL server was like SQL server six, six, five was not really, really a big tool, a usable tool for data warehousing was okay for LTP but not for data warehousing. And then Microsoft came along with SQL server seven oh and they went around Brazil they were like you know we need people to evangelize this thing in here so we are promoting the product would like to join the team. And as a trainer, and I got seduced by the dark side of the force, I joined the SQL server team down there and never look back so we work with SQL services then. Yeah. How far did they follow the deal for about 10 years and then we'll be here to California. It's funny. I've commented a few times that so I like it in the in the 90s work in data warehousing and I had a number of projects I joined the phone company, formerly known as Pacific Bell in California. And it was based there in in in San Ramon and then pleasant in for for several years. One of them was the first one of my big projects was this data center consolidation so we actually consolidated if you knew that the phone company had a massive data center right next to the jelly belly factory in there. Yeah, yeah, so it's literally they share a parking lot with the the our data warehouse or buildings there. And so I did a consolidation of three different data centers out of Rancher Cordova Sacramento area, one down in I think Irvine, and then one in Hayward to the Fairfield facility. But we didn't touch much Microsoft technology I mean we were using office and other tools and stuff. But on the enterprise side, there was no Microsoft technology. We were on old SGI servers and and we upgraded HP servers we were dealing with, you know, a number of systems, none of which were Microsoft but yeah that was back in the I did like some Unix training, which well that's what about to say the things that running our cell phones today were used to use to run those servers back then. I always remarked is that I did one massive marketing database and we were, it was, it was huge and when we were getting ready to migrate it and update it with some GIS data, and it was going to be 1.2 terabytes in 1995. Right. Yeah, it was like it was like whoa. And now I have a six terabyte external drive that I only have music on. I remember back then, early 90s down there in Brazil, there were housing was like 1020 gigabytes. Yeah, and a SQL server was not able to handle those things on the Oracle back then set seven something. That was the brother could handle that massive amount of data when SQL server seven came around it was like oh we can handle like three terabytes of data. Yeah. Wow, I know. It's fun to go back and look at that some of that stuff. I still have a lot I've got a box in the garage is one of those things where my wife is like, Why don't you throw this out and a lot of Microsoft people have that where I have disks from releases of products that no longer exist. I mean, I have a drawer that I've got four or five zooms in, you know, but it's fun to go back and hang on to some of that stuff. One of the I used to run, you know, help run like SharePoint Saturday events on Microsoft campus and one of my favorite things to do was to get Microsoft people to donate things to give away and what in the offices there in Redmond used to be that people would go and dump off like old computer books and things in the kitchen areas on each floor. And so I would go through and get access to those areas and find a these people throwing out these books, and we would give away these ancient books of again technology that was really grossly outdated. It was a lot of fun to do that. But yeah, I remember like three years before COVID they think I was down there in Microsoft for some conference and back then they were doing a reorg and the DX department division there was going away. Yep. But you just remind me that down here in Mountainville they have the computer museum. And sometimes I take my my daughters there and I show them look I started on this little tier s 108 here for the Sinclair computer super small. They have it there. I love it. It's fun to go back and look at that stuff I learned basic programming on a little amber screen pet computer and in six and seventh grade so yeah, as an MVP we do a lot of talking and sometimes we have to kind of reflect a little about what topics we want to present. The other day I was putting together top one spark. And I was like okay spark let's do some comparisons and compute separate from storage whatever you do with memory. And it suddenly came to me it was pretty much like how I started back in the 80s you know you have the cassette tape. You load into memory you do your stuff and then you write back to the test. So kind of the same idea computers to computer same way. Well, so what was kind of your what was your path to becoming an MVP. Oh, well, hey what's funny, I don't know what happened to you but a lot of my friends they cross me and they're like, you're not going to be yet. I can find depressed you know what expect I don't have any handle on that one. I hold tons of certifications news I can you know it's under my control but MVP think depends on you'll be noticing people evaluate your work. So, I think I was being evaluated for about three years I think. And finally, I'm at Christian at the sequel Saturday in Portland. And he was there and he saw one of my presentations there in bed with my my entire list of submissions. And then he was like you're going to submit your name to the team and we'll see if you get it if you get approved. And I did get the award that year was was 99 was just the year before COVID. That's always it's it's a difficult thing where where a lot of people that are especially technical people that are kind of heads down doing the work they're involved and even those that are in the community. And where it almost seems like I have to kind of self promote I have to like do something and you have to do it in a way that you're not like, look at me, you know, you know, right. But you need to do in a way that that is a little bit more humility in that but kind of give back. One of the things that I hear from MVPs and I say this again and again is that look, even if I didn't have the MVP award I'd be doing the same things I'd be writing I'd be blogging I'd be speaking for a couple years. I was speaking at conferences hadn't really thought much about the MVP it was aware of the program and same just like you I was at a conference in Boston, and I had two or three MVPs that were there. I don't know how long have you been an MVP I'm like yeah I'm not MVP they're like. Like you're presenting at all these conferences you're writing all this content like you're doing all this stuff how are you not MVP I'm like. See, I'm wicked that front I don't write much be having a blog has been on my bucket list for like 10 years or so, but never put it once again I really like to present it. Like I said I'm a certified trainer we're doing Microsoft training for 26 years. I think one of the things that rendered me from getting the MVP before is because you have to do voluntary contributions right you're not supposed to be paid for those things and I love presenting and because a lot of present people like to hire me to teach them classes but so those doesn't count. Right. Those right. So, yeah, when I stopped. Yeah, it was about three or four years ago when I decreased my, you know, I switch my hats a little started with more consulting got fun more time to present your user groups and conferences. So when I got more noticed. Yeah, that's a great thing that for folks that don't know to like your great point that the things that you're doing for your job the things that you're being paid to go and do. Those aren't contributions that you can submit as part of like if you're being considered for that. It's, it's about the things that you're doing for the community above and beyond what your regular job is. I remember as I was chief evangelist for a couple is fees and people be critical oh your company is paying for your time I said look I true that I had the benefit of a company that supported the community activities would pay for my flights and hotels to go all over the week with I said but the things that I was doing for the community. Like I gave up. I think one year. I'm trying to remember if it was like 2013 2014. I spoke at 18 SharePoint Saturdays in a year. So that's 18 weekends that I gave up plus all the travel time plus all of that. Plus I did have my day job and things to go and do throughout that you know they were my sessions they were my time they were neutral topics. I wasn't a you know pitching for my company and writing and doing the other thing so it's like like now I mean I blog I present on and it's I'm writing on weekends on week and evenings outside of my day job to do those community things so those are the things that considered that I have a list of other things that I'm doing which if I weren't being paid as part of my job to do it, you know, great content would be, you know, fit right in with the rest of what I do but it's part of my job so I don't submit those things. Yeah, we're not supposed to. Well, I think I'm going to get close to your number this second half of the year. There are so many conferences coming up specially on the data platform, you know, side of things. I think the next one is Denver. Actually, no Denver is September 17 sequel Saturday endeavor before that will be Chicago for that week so I'm going to fight from Chicago to Denver. There is Orlando, there is Dallas that is there's somebody that doesn't have the funds to go on to the locations like I, I prefer the in person events over the online makes the two of us. And but I know that there are some that like can't or prefer just to do the virtual. There are now so many other virtual events. I'll just say this hey the we call it the Microsoft user group Utah or mug it, which is an ugly acronym but it works. I like it. We're always looking for speakers it's more collaboration topics. So SharePoint teams and the like, but you know that there there are user groups everywhere. So if you want to break into the space, or if you're even an MVP currently, like, you can do more. You don't have to get up from the couch. Yep. Just yesterday, I was presenting for the local group here in the Bay Area with Martin of all. And he announced that the next meeting might happen on a physical location down there in San Francisco. And if it does, it's going to be hybrid. So there will be people in the room and it will be open for and whoever doesn't want to commute there. We're doing the same thing. We're hybrid. I was on there in LA Francisco Saturday last weekend. And Steve told me that they don't plan to come in person anymore because driving around the lead is always horrible and now that they are all comfortable doing remote. It's going to be remote. They don't plan to be in person anymore. Yeah, again, for for us that prefer the in person I like the relationship building the connections that you make the conversations I mean it's I don't think you can replace it by doing the virtual it's it's great when when you're not able to be there but yeah it's it's so important to to make those physical connections to to to meet people and yeah it's yeah anyway. Yeah, I don't think you got to but gotta be on promising any person again, but don't only it does make sense to do the user groups remote. Yeah, anytime you open the map and to see the traffic there is all red rubbish red. Right. Well, and I just I see a future of personal jet packs that will solve all of the problems. I heard that there was somebody testing that by the airport couple months ago down there nearly have to see the news. No, there was this pilot talking to the towers and there's a guy with the jet pack flying around here. I bet the fine for that. If they caught him was pretty hefty to the probably yeah they didn't get a guy. So within the data platform like so what what's your kind of your core focus what's happening in that space what's of interest. Yeah, I mean my focus has always been SQL server. I've been a SQL server guy for 20 years and help companies, you know, doing things faster in SQL optimizing the platform, getting things to run better to run faster. Sometimes unlocking them if you actually two years ago there was this guy using Azure SQL in the clouds. You know the company was dead and all of a sudden the whole thing came to a crop. And was, you know, some settings on parallelism. So, sometimes you get into those things. But if the and SQL server, it seems it's going to be around for very long time there was this, you know, this fear that the DBA role will die that the SQL server will go away because the clouds chip and all of that. I think everybody's at peace now Microsoft has been showing that from all their products SQL service the one that still have growing adoption on premise. And the cloud. So, you know, futures looks looks right for SQL, but what's really really hot nowadays is on the data engineering site data transformation and data cleansing for especially for AI. Clouds cloud scalability and Microsoft does have a product for that in Azure Synapse. There's a particular engine called the dedicated SQL pool, which, you know, brings all your knowledge, you know, your expertise background and SQL server and you can do computer analysis on that one. But the one that's come really strong really promising I mean it's already promises not the right word because it's been around for a while but it's getting more and more adoption is on the spark site. So, on that side you have data bricks that's been was the first one, the first big one, and you do have a similar engine inside Synapse, which is this part pool. And the thing with that one that some people are having a hard time to move into is because that was developed that was developed for developers. So you do coding there. When you are in the SQL side of things and you do data transformation and you are familiar with integration service more likely and integration services all visual is all graph use interface drag and drop parameters drag arrows and things like that. So when you're going to spark, it's all codes and probably the language that you have not dealt with yet like scholar are or if you're lucky can go into Python that's usually more is more similar to other traditional languages. But, but that's what is shining there. And on top of that, you also have the, the Delta Delta technology with Delta Lake and Delta tables addressing the problem of immutable files but you need to do transactions. So what do you do Delta addresses that what's interesting you brought up to us but with data transformation and just clean up and management of data is there there's always good. Well, with all of the growth of AI and automation that's out there where you have the power platform and and you have these people going and building these small applications and everybody's learning this skill set to go and build for themselves. There's a greater and greater need for, you know, clean data and be sorted through organizations it's like I look I'm not a AI guy I'm not I don't work in that world anymore, you know, to that degree. And so I'm kind of out of touch with the latest capabilities there. But what I do understand is for the people within my organization that are really talented with like Power BI and kind of the presentation layer of these things is that they make it look so easy. But there's so much work that has to happen to get the data ready and usable that they can go and do the presentation layer to make these usable dashboards and graphs and things. And so there is a tremendous need for people that still that that know the data and manage and massage that data so that it's usable by, you know, the front office with these other applications like Power BI. Yeah, definitely. So, you know, back in the days we have just SQL and was on premise, we have the clear division between transactional processing and analytical processing. So it's like you can get SQL server you got two boxes one for each purpose. And you, you know, capture your data on the transactional processing and you copy that data over to the analytical processing accumulative over there, in order to report with the cloud scale and the amount of transactions we have today that this two things are not so close anymore now they're very apart and right in the middle is where you find the data engineering and the AI elements are just mentioned, grabbing the data that's being produced by the transactional system ingesting to the transformations, creating those two artifacts and better polished data, and also the statistical models to work with predictions on top of those data, in order to be able to report the different and that you mentioned. So it's funny, they created this, which is the amount of data you have to process, and the scale of building on that one in order to deliver your your analyticals. It's, it's so so many things that are that are different. I mean, I spent a lot of my time as a technical project manager, back in the telecom year so the, the early to mid 90s. And it was, you know, customer internal customers would come and say, Hey, we like this data set. This is fantastic, but we want to go and, you know, modify the data add this these other things in there and be able to go and do the analysis. And it would sort of take us weeks to go in there and to integrate that in and, you know, chop that up slice and dice it feed it back through and we own the front end tools like business objects and data strategy and SAS modules for them to go in and do their analytics on that but all of the work that was involved took weeks and weeks and weeks to get all that prep just so that they could then go in and in a reasonable amount of time put in a query get a result back and actually show you create reports of things on that. And now you got the scale of the cloud I mean I just opened up it changed so much of that world. What is amazing how how storage has made so cheap by the cloud and it's so much cheaper to to to keep data that people usually just skip, you know, why throw the data away it's so cheap to keep it them. So let's just keep them and end up creating this thing I don't know if you haven't heard of it there is this kind of informal concept called the dark data. And the concept comes from physics and you know the astronomers analyzing the universe. So they say they're like 7075% of the mass of the universe is not really detectable you can see, but you can see the effects on everything else you can see. And they dark, they call that the dark matter. Here we follow the dark data because it's this amount of data that companies to decide to keep because they're, they represent something they're having that data is not information yet but can become information at some point. So they just keep it there because it's so cheap to keep right well with the skin ability. So you don't want to be I mean we ran to this arrow to where we were trying to build like, like a performance system. So we would remove data that we thought hey not really critical to what you're trying to do and, and that was one of the pains is that that we we've removed something and somebody would ask, put in request for something we're like, Oh, well, yeah to be able to identify that we need to go and add that data back in and sort through it but. But now that I mean, to your point, I mean the cost of storage drop down so dramatically, but also I think another thing that that helped explode this space is, you know, that is is the scalability of the cloud. So to have things out in place you're not as worried about the storage but being able to also it's the compute capability on those massive amounts of data so these are. The way that spending time when when I started to see other vendors that we're like oh yeah we're a big data platform provider I'm like, yeah, every company is in the big data space, every data problem is a big data problem, because we're not throwing anything away because we don't know what might be useful somewhere in the future what might correlate into some query that our customers are internal customers need around this. So why get rid of it let's just store it and so our data scientists can go back into it you know years from now and oh yeah hey we have we have this data. Exactly. Yeah, we are that each, like I said in the past to use to transform the data we have received and not keeping the original sometimes, because it was just raw information, not much meaning there. But at that stage where I know we just keep everything so if you needed to do it again we can go back to the original and see how it looked like at the beginning. Well as a collector I collect music and a few other things is the few artists, but I have thousands of CDs thousands of vinyl records. I'm digital, you know all of that. I'm in a constant battle with my wife that to to to to justify myself as not being a hoarder in general, but yeah we are hoarders of information, and there's a very low cost, you know barrier to data. It causes an explosion. And if not well governed. It can become a hassle you know because you start looking is like the formal thing you know the fear of missing out. Yep, you look at all those fires you know if you delete this thing what I'm going to throw away you're going to miss something, but it can become a problem but but definitely always better keep if it's not affecting the budget. Yeah, we'll worry about performance later. Yeah. They think about performance in like you said in a compute and like we discussed in the beginning right now with see when you when you're looking to SQL server and or going any other relational database there, they have their proprietary file format. So when you store data, it's only for that data engine with the data lake and the approach for open standards for compressed data and immutable data like pocket files. It's for any engine. So, like when you look at your synapse in Azure. So, the same repository can serve both this part pool, the server last SQL pool. And if you want you can share with Databricks as well. And any other engine that can read either parquet by itself or in the data language. So we have, you know, a plethora of options in terms of compute and each one of them is scalable into multiple modes with multiple capabilities per note of computing capabilities per note. So this could the separation between storage and compute and memory processing on those things. Kind of is a throwback to the 70s and the 80s but the revolution has the future of the design of data engineering. You could have a longer conversation and nerd out I could tell you stories about I was involved in a global grid forum as part of the marketing awareness council for for several years and and work with clients like cadence design systems and building technology to manage compute farms and it's a fascinating era. It just seems so long ago. It was long time ago. Plus years ago. But, yeah, fascinating space. Well, Armando really appreciate your time today for folks that want to find out more about you are getting contact. What are the best ways to reach you. Oh, best way is with the link in connect with me and links and it's perfect. I'm, like I said, I'm trying to get a log up so I'm moving my space to another URL with another name so that will be it will come up later and I'm definitely going to post that on each in. So it's as of today is the preferred place to get connected and follow along. I also, whatever I do and reflect so I was out in Twitter so we're going to follow my Twitter that's fine too. Awesome. Well, thanks so much for your time and you enjoy the the warm weather out there and in central California. Thank you Christian for having me once again thank you it's great to be here with you and I gotta tell you in Sacramento today is going to be one of four but early this morning it was raining here in my neighborhood. That's that's this has been like we've been here in Utah for six years. This is the wettest summer. I don't think it's impacting our drought like all the Western us is experiencing serious drought major drought. And I don't think this is hit because it, we need snowpack to impact ours. And it was a very dry winter. Yeah, the monsoon rains has been fantastic because I go out for to walk the dog in the morning and instead of being, you know, at 11am instead of being 95 it's like 78 big difference that's a nice walk in 78. Nice. Yeah, we're looking forward for the pineapple express in a few months, and hopefully we bring more water. Yes. Well, we'll talk to you soon. Thank you very much.