Seeing Red: A Pilgrimage to the Boston Red Shirt Tour

By THEODORE STABILE

Contributing Writer

Microsoft recently unveiled their new cloud friendly database management tool, Microsoft Azure. To present its capabilities and show off source code and tech demos, the vice president of Microsoft, Scott Guthrie, was orchestrating tours all through Tech Valley and beyond. On Oct. 19, the tour would be stopping in Boston. A free bus ride from Albany was being offered to local tech companies, but the invitation was open to students as well, so myself and three other Saint Rose students decided to piss with the digital big boys. I return from my expedition with newfound belief in the phrase “The beauty is in the journey, not the destination.”

We had done it, eight hours later after giving fatalism the end of “Of Mice and Men” treatment, and burning through three modes of transportation. Describing the feeling as cathartic would be an understatement. The event was halfway over by the time we arrived, but the event hall was adorned with pulsating red cubes. The future looked quaint, yet bright.

The epicenter of the convention was filled with groups of people representing Tech companies nationwide. It seemed almost like our ragtag Saint Rose group was the only student representation. Once the presentations resumed, Guthrie gave our group a shout out and a spiritual pat on the back for our obligatory endurance. Seeing Azure in action was nothing short of gorgeous; like a never ending swan song. In a bejeweled nutshell, Azure’s design is based on four pillars: Productive, Hybrid, Intelligent, and Trusted. Databases used for apps could have development times of a few weeks to up a month, however Azure, when implemented correctly, can do the job within days. Currently 3 million databases run on Azure, which computes, globally, 100 trillion database transactions every single day. With little network latency can transfer 700 GB of data within a min-