Azure Weekly

Issue #258 - 19th January 2020

A few announcements to share this week: we've been told that Azure is now certified for the ISO/IEC 27701 privacy standard, there is a New Azure blueprint for CIS Benchmark, and that Azure Storage Blobs User Delegation SAS Tokens now Generally Available. Elsewhere, James Ding has written about Azure Data Explorer and Stream Analytics for anomaly detection, and Adam Bertram has provided a complete guide to Understanding Azure DevOps Variables.

Last year I worked on a very complex project that used many aspects of Azure; Data Lake Storage, Azure Data Factory, Azure Functions, Machine Learning Services, Azure Kubernetes Service, API Management, and Logic Apps, to name a few!

The system processes 1.5bn+ messages per month & performs complex geospatial analytics to detect suspicious shipping vessel activity which could signify illegal fishing, human trafficking or illegal salvage of heritage sites. The project was very successful & featured in Future Decoded and Web Summit keynotes.

We are awash with high level Azure architectures, and low level implementation details, but there is a paucity of information about thinking how you solve the problem of migrating or re-engineering an existing platform onto Azure and how to optimise for performance, TCO, & value, and the various trade-offs you have to make.

We've been big fans of Wardley Maps since we came across them 18 months ago. We were inspired after attending Map Camp in 2019 to share something with the wider community. Although there is a fantastic free ebook to get you started, real world examples of Wardley Maps are thin on the ground. So my my colleague Jess Panni created an absolutely awesome 10 minute video explaining what Wardley Maps are, and how we used them to think strategically about building this solution on Azure.

Wardley Maps - Explaining how OceanMind use Microsoft Azure & AI to combat Illegal Fishing

If you have any questions or thoughts on Wardley Maps, please get in touch!

If this cause & architecture interests you, OceanMind are currently looking for a Development Manager in the UK.