[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] me [Music] gr for growth growth for greece [Music] hello everyone good morning and thank you very much for attending the the session on the greek data center and our streams plan skilling plan skilling is at the heart of the data center activities on the data center plan for us in greece we announced the data center in october 2020 it was an announcement with the prime minister of greece and brad smith as the prime minister said the creation of a data center upgrades a country it makes it an investment destination and greece not only has its sun but now it's getting its cloud we have made the commitment along with the data center to upskill to digitally upskill 100 000 of our greek citizens the data center benefits have three pillars number one it has benefits for the country number two it has benefits for our customers the microsoft customers and thirdly it has benefits for our partners let's double click in each one of these categories let's start with a country the benefits for greece are many first of all it's a vote of confidence for greece and it will attract future investors other technology companies that will come into the country and startups that we invest in the country it's our chance to play a leading role in the fourth industrial revolution it will create jobs not only jobs in microsoft but in the whole ide industry in greece at our partners but also enhance or increase the number of jobs in the i.t divisions of our customers we have also made the commitment to upskill 100 000 grids and finally we have an opportunity to bring some of the talent that left our country and is is already working in other countries in europe in the us but also in asia and in other places of the world to come back to greece but it also has benefits for our customers our customers will enjoy data residence in greece our customers will have an improved data latency they will have access they will be able to see the latest technologies as microsoft we will keep investing on the technologies and having the latest technology in our data centers and finally we will go and train train the idea executives in our customers on the cloud technologies at all levels ensuring that they have the basic understanding of cloud but also having advanced cloud certifications and knowledge for those that are needed and let's discuss about partners our partners will have an accelerated demand for our three clouds for azure modern workplace as well as dynamics there will be a big demand for infra migrations leading to extensive apps and data modernization projects we already play a role as an advisor to the digital transformation of our clients and we will keep doing that helping our customers design better models better processes we are the digital advisor the partner the point of authority the expert to our customers as a result we will also see growth in cloud native platforms and sas solutions so the scaling plan of a hundred thousand will not only affect customers and partners as we discussed but we will also go ahead and skip or focus a lot on students because they are the future of greece and we will also have a strategic segment we will also focus on the general public and ensure they have better digital skills we really believe in skilling we really put intent in our plan and we focus on all these four categories because we think that really focusing on skilling and driving volumes here it's a real game changer finally it's important to say that although we recently announced our data center and it will go live in two years the opportunity starts now so we treat this with urgency we're starting to do the migrations of our customers or designing their journey today and we are starting all these skilling activities now we think the opportunities now and we're putting real intent as a microsoft team to ensure we drive the volumes starting today let me pass to my colleague [Music] thank you thank you alberto let me also say good morning to all the people that have joined us today in our session i'm here today with another hat and the one that you are seeing here with the heart of the scaling enthusiast and advocate and i'm going to talk to you about something that is very precious to us here at microsoft and that is tech intensity i'm sure most of you have heard satya discuss tech intensity as it has been a key theme in most of his public speeches and keynotes in the last year in fact he has discussed about tech intensity as an important enabler of the cloud transformation journey for microsoft employees for customers and for partners alike but what exactly do we mean by tech intensity and how does it relate with skilling we view tech intensity as a mixture of three different components and these three different components can be thought as a serious a series of gradually increasing maturity stages first we start with tech capability build the skills that we need to be part of today's rapidly evolving tech landscape and digitally transformed economy text capability is the transfer to adoption we don't simply learn technologies but we also use them and the more we use them the more we want to learn about them and this creates a loop that brings skilling at the forefront and finally capability and adoption translate to confidence once we are confident we become even more productive and efficient in what we do and we even start searching for new ways to do things and this leads to further growth and eventually to innovation let's switch slides and get a bit more practical now microsoft supports skill intensity through a series of carefully curated learning paths that are split to generic as well as role-based take azure for example as you can see here there are learning paths for different areas of interest as well as for different audiences and roles let's look at them a bit more closely these learning paths build on one another so they take you through a journey starting with fundamentals like other fundamentals or data fundamentals or ai fundamentals and then move to more specialized tracks that allows you to become an expert on a specific area or topic and of course similar paths exist also for modern workplace and for these apps the information for about learning paths is publicly available of course on our site as well as on our ms learn portal speaking about ms learn let's go and see the key ways that microsoft can support you in your tech intensity journey we offer these free self-paced courses on ms learn which is an open and publicly available site and i'm sure that most of you know about ms learn and you are actively using it the courses are organized in paths and it's up to you to either attend them as a standalone or as part of the of a learning path they include text they include images videos as well as self-assessment exercises then we have digital webinars that take place on a regular basis some of them are global original events for example the virtual training days that repeat on a monthly basis while there are also a lot of local events that we are orchestrating orchestrating locally for our customers and partners in microsoft greece cyprus and malta and of course you can reach out to your microsoft account team for more details about these events and usually he or she is the one that invites you to these events on top our learning partners offer instructor-led trainings that are aligned with their learning paths these used to be physical but of course have transitioned to a full digital delivery since spring 2020. and finally the last step of the journey is getting the relevant certification and become a microsoft certified professional and get this nice little badge that you can use on your social media and on your linkedin profiles before going deeper with the certifications allow me to make a special mention to a unique training program that we have developed for our customers and partners that is called esi the enterprise skills initiative the enterprise skills initiative is designed to support our customers and partners desire to build their employees technical expertise that align to their strategic objectives so they can achieve greater success with their projects and initiatives customers and partners that get enrolled to the program get access to the instructor-led trainings as well as to other complementary training programs that microsoft is running with the ultimate goal being to get as many individuals as possible certified with one or more certifications that apply to their roles current and future and finally let's spend the final minutes on my presentation on certifications and why we consider them as an important step in the tech intensity journey there are three main reasons why certifications are important and you should consider them as the perfect ending to a learning path first going through the training and the certification process helps you become better at what you do more productive more efficient and this can have multiple implications at multiple levels feelings of sense and senses of set of achievement or recognition from your peers and your managers and of course there are other more practical considerations you become more marketable certifications can be a cv booster as recruiters and potential employers are increasingly becoming more focused on attracting talent that has the necessary certifications for a specific role and finally compensation gets better as our research has shown that certified people tend to earn more money closing i believe i have offered you some food for thought regarding your tech intensity journey and why certifications matter expect to hear more from us about skilling upskilling risk healing and of course the certifications as we move along with our ambitious plan to train 000 professionals in the next five years now i'm going to pass it over to vangelis for the last part of our session and he's going to and i believe his session is going to be the most exciting one of all of all over to you vangeli thank you thank you mary hello everyone it's pleasure for me to be here with you today ignite uh all of our latest product developed a new announcement for our cloud services i'll already know to you from our product groups two exciting days with a lot of technology news and more functionality in microsoft cloud platform this is very important for all of us but as we move forward with our customers and partners and their digital transformation we identify something very unexpected an obstacle an obstacle that causes delays not only the cloud service delivery but also the adoption of our new innovative cloud technologies so what we have realized so far is that cloud technology skills is the key to success in order to accelerate microsoft style adoption with our customers cloud skills will give the opportunity to our partners and customers to identify the most appropriate cloud service that will treat and accelerate the digital business in that way there will be able to achieve more for the businesses with microsoft cloud services as you already know we provide several cloud services like azure and 65 dynamics in a lot of different areas such as infrastructure as a service data application ai collaboration security and several levels of expertise administrators architect analyst operators i can honestly share with you that i have some special requests in the past from my partners and also i strive for myself to find an expert even inside our subsidiary of course within microsoft you can find we'll always find an expert that will help you guide you and follow up on any request but what is happening to our partner ecosystem can we find the one the expert that always be there to support a special cloud service delivery as you heard from albertos earlier after the financial crisis in greece we had some side effects as well what we call hearing grease the brain drain effect skilled persons have left the country and struck professionals that that now work in companies outside with cyprus and mother so what's next where we can find the next generation of engineers that will not only further develop their skills to support their existing and potential customers and partners but also to drive and lead the country needs a transformation especially with our new azure data center announcement degrees the answer is one and it's in your screen with our cloud experts cloud experts is our key motion to skill train share knowledge from our existing experts to any individual that will that is willing to be the next cloud expert an open community that consists of microsoft certified professionals and newcomers with deep dive expertise in different microsoft cloud technology areas our goal is to develop 3 000 strong cloud professionals to lead microsoft cloud adoption in greece cyprus and mata we started developing the community back in october we have chosen linkedin because we want to have professionals members not only from microsoft partners but from other industries from other inventors isv service providers customers and why that because of a cloud platform it fits to every customer and partner and while the ecosystem is aware of how fast they can adopt and consume microsoft cloud services the most able will be to offer new modern and innovative services to their customers develop new neighbors new revenue streams and accelerate the digital transformation as well so rule number one no borders in the community everyone is welcome we have continuous growth we started near 250 persons and now we are near to 900 the target is 3 000. every month we have our gathering our meetup a free session that gives the opportunity to our members to develop their skills their appropriate certification path with many trainings two hours three hours and real world examples sessions that have more than 200 individuals watching four parallel streams and learn from our experts who are mcts mvps microsoft employees volunteers technology experts and more we plan to deliver four more until june the last one for this y will be a surprise i believe that now albertos is time to let the people know that we will have our first cloud experts event in june probably physical but filled with technology sessions award the plan for next year and of course our favorite t-shirt focus on skilling and how we can accelerate is another material every session is recorded published in our youtube channel and it's free for everyone we have already accomplished the fundamental level in the most of our cloud services for azure m65 power platform ai more than 10 hours of localized content of course our target is to have experts and our commitment is the following by the end of this physical we will have at least the up to the architect level accomplished all the trainings but it's more than a community training we also share free training days from the ce technology news within the community networking with our members with our learning partners advances for exam content standard with a contest with a brand new platform that was developed from our fellow member and microsoft employee and staff needs and an award and a word that expresses for everyone a secret technology session delivered by our subsidiary css our cloud solution architects with deep dive sessions examples hands-on labs et cetera et cetera this is something that no one would like to miss recruit our experts is our number three role as i mentioned in the beginning we need experts in our ecosystems partnership with local recruiting agencies microsoft partners and customers followed by internship programs and career days will give our experts the chance to further develop their careers by engaging into real world cloud cases and be the next generation workforce that will drive microsoft cloud adoption in the country let's go to the next slide thank you okay nice this is our logo a lovely banner so don't be late join us today in the linkedin and please subscribe to our youtube channel in order to stay updated for news events gathering and more surprises this initiative will be would have never been delivered without microsoft uh greece cyprus and mata subsidiary support i would like to special thank you rgm thirdos michalopoulos and albertos himself for their full support in this action our internal things that helps and of course a big thank you to all of our volunteers who support this initiative with their commitment to success let's go to the next slide as you realize we're not unknown in this journey not the previous one okay here as you realize we're not allowing this journey our goal is not only to develop one community but also to connect the existing technology communities from certified professionals mvps mcts learning partners other local technology communities with microsoft partners we need experts to share their knowledge be mentors trainings in several areas from infrastructure administrators to data analysts and machine learning experts security experts network experts in a microsoft cloud platform there is room for everyone every single individual will be part of the country digital transformation let's go to the next slide last but not least our plan our community event calendar full with activities until the end of the fiscal year every month there are several activities happenings career days and more a tight schedule indeed but everything happens with pleasure in every gathering you can feel the positive vibes even the digital ones interesting discussions questions terms analysis geek discussions several subjects to be honest we love what we do and what we want is actually to be better professionals we want to be the next generation of cloud experts thank you very much do you have any questions again i'm checking our questions so there is a question that has to do about future trainings and how people can find more information about the future trainings can you shed some light here to the people yeah of course you can find us on linkedin we are sharing information every day we are sharing our gatherings our meetups our mini training sessions so please find us on uh on the linkedin cloud experts greece certified professional greece is our hashtag our hashtags so please join us and we will share all the information that is needed in order to to join our sessions and our trainings [Music] okay and i believe this answers another question about how we can find your community and how we can find the community uh can you just repeat the the hashtags and then the names for everyone to get it cloud experts greece we have several ones cloud experts greece microsoft certified professionals recycles mata of course you can find myself on on linkedin and i have all the information that i shared with you okay so we can reach out to van gaalis for more information directly i think he will be happy to to to accommodate and take any any questions about the community okay i know that you had a uh the second meetup of the community just last week if you can share uh some you know uh some uh some of your experience uh you know give us some of the vibe of the community from the meetup last week if you can if we can talk about it you know in in this digital format yes i believe that it's not that we are in a digital format right now you can feel the vibes actually in the community imagine that you have 200 250 professionals been there with you for two and three hours they are not stopping you know to to uh communicate with each other to ask questions you can feel the vibe that actually the uh the the technology professionals here they want to you know to to learn more about our cloud technology they want to listen from our cloud from from our cloud experts and from our professionals i believe this is the key here on how you can share the information and the knowledge and the path in any technology technology professional in greece and they will realize that by learning our cloud platform they will be ready for tomorrow actually this is the case here uh i i believe also albertos has joined us a lot of times and he also realized that the vibes within the community is amazing where i feel like you know a big uh a community actually that sharing all the information that led to the to the next day for the career development for the cloud you know knowledge transfer and the certification of course thank you for kelly i i don't know if there are any other questions uh i don't see any more of the river we provided also the link for the group on the on linkedin for everyone so if if you want to find out go check the q a and you will see the link there uh so alberto any final thoughts from from your side as we close this session i i just wanted to let you know that uh we really mean skilling is top priority for us we have put it it's on our every day we have a meeting on this every day we discuss how we're going to make it better how we're going to improve the certifications the knowledge the skilling everything for our pastors our customers and the greek society as a whole we have a great chance in front of us with the data center but we we really need the foundation and the foundation for that is our people and people or the microsoft family is not the people that work only in microsoft it's the extended family the technical people the i.t professionals that love our products that believe on them that are well certified and informed on our technologies we will expand this family we are determined to do that because we believe in it and will create a much stronger community as expressed by my colleagues because we think that's the way forward and this is a game changer and it will help take the greek society and the greek i.t market to the next level to the new era so thank you very much for listening we have the passion we have the willingness we know how to do it and if you are interested to be part of this community you know how get on on the cloud experts community and participate in our sessions thank you very much for listening
2021-03-14