Microsoft’s learning solutions pave the way toward data-centric jobs of the future
“It’s been forecasted 800 million people need to learn new skills for their jobs by 2030. In this time of change, people are hungry to learn, gain new skills, and grow their economic opportunity.”—Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft
Across Microsoft, we are helping a new generation of technology workers develop the right level of skills. Recently, Microsoft announced the availability of new virtual learning programs. These programs, focused on technical topics, are already helping people enhance their digital expertise and, for some, are providing a foundation for success in a new career path.
Building upon this goal, we’re excited to announce the Azure Data team’s latest additions to these educational programs.
Our all-new content will help beginners being introduced to Azure as well as SQL experts learn how to understand the benefits of Azure SQL. Since SQL Server and Azure SQL share the same engine, these new set of tools builds upon familiar content. This means SQL Server professionals can become Azure SQL professionals with just a little bit of help, such as:
Microsoft Learn learning path: This six-course Azure SQL fundamentals learning path provides a built-in lab environment for you to learn at your own pace without a subscription.
YouTube/Channel9 series: We offer more than 60 videos to help beginners learn more about Azure SQL. Viewers can experience on-demand training through Microsoft Developer and Azure SQL playlists on YouTube and Channel9.
GitHub content: Learners and educators can dig into open-source code in a scenario-driven GitHub workshop, where forking and redelivering is encouraged. You can access this content by visiting the SQL Server workshops page and selecting “Workshop: Azure SQL”.
Learn Live in the Azure SQL Bootcamp: In this four-day series of live sessions, Microsoft SQL experts Anna Hoffman and Bob Ward will help you get ramped up and support you as you learn. You can sign up for Azure SQL Bootcamp here to join us.
Azure SQL’s rapid adoption creates new opportunities
Azure SQL adoption is accelerating at a dramatic growth rate and will continue on this trajectory for the foreseeable future. Azure SQL unlocks new opportunities for our customers to optimize costs, build resiliency, and promote agility with AI-based features, rapid scaling capability, and much more.
A few weeks ago, a Morgan Stanley report noted, “The key insight of [the] 2nd edition of our New Stack monthly is that the relational database, commonly viewed as outdated for the digital era, is not only not dead but is seeing a resurgence reflecting strong growth in cloud. MSFT is a key beneficiary with the top share in cloud and overall”.
It’s a terrific time to join the Azure SQL community and fine-tune your technical skills. If you have questions about the benefits, opportunities, or process of making a move from SQL on-premises to SQL in the Cloud, we can lend a hand to guide you. Our new learning materials answer these questions and go into greater technical depth. On Twitter, you can follow us @AzureSQL and get more involved in the community with the #AzureSQL.
Kudos due to our SQL community
I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge a few members of our team who gathered feedback from customers, took that information to heart and developed our new curriculum. First, a heartfelt thank you to Anna Hoffman, Data Scientist, for your dedicated efforts to providing customers the latest content and for enabling more scalable platforms to deliver it. I’d also like to thank Bob Ward, one of our SQL visionaries, who has invested over 26 years driving SQL development. Last but not least, I’m grateful to Buck Woody, who has written hundreds of articles about databases to help educate future data experts.
Jumpstart your journey
In these uniquely challenging times, it is more important than ever for Microsoft to equip our SQL community with new tools and resources to help you succeed. Whether you are a SQL expert, or someone just starting, I encourage you to visit our latest resources and find out how you can jumpstart your journey to learn about Azure SQL.