Data is the fuel for innovation, driving the development of transformative applications and artificial intelligence (AI). This session will explore how harnessing the power of data across the Azure databases portfolio can lead to groundbreaking advancements that enhance operational efficiency, deliver personalized user experiences, and revolutionize the way we interact with technology.
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Shireesh Thota
Corporate Vice President, Azure Databases
The mission of Azure Data is to help customers build a new class of data-first applications and drive a data culture where every employee can make better decisions based on data. Shireesh leads product management, engineering, and cloud operations for Azure Databases. The products in his team’s portfolio include Azure SQL Database (on-prem, Hybrid and Cloud), Azure Cosmos DB, Azure PostgreSQL, and Azure MySQL. Previously, as the Senior Vice President at SingleStore, Shireesh was responsible for end-to-end engineering and product vision of the company. Before moving to SingleStore, Shireesh was a founding member of Cosmos DB, where he architected, designed, and directly contributed to multiple key pieces of the services. Shireesh has 15+ years of experience on large scale, big data, scale-out, relational and schema agnostic distributed systems across SQL, Azure Cosmos DB and PostgreSQL/Citus.
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Arun Ulagaratchagan
CVP, Azure Data
Arun leads product management, engineering, and cloud operations for Azure Data, which includes databases, data integration, big data analytics, messaging, and business intelligence. The products in his teams' portfolio include Azure SQL DB, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure PostgreSQL, Azure MySQL, Azure Data Factory, Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Service Bus, Azure Event Grid, Power BI, and Microsoft Fabric. Previously, as the GM of the APAC Cloud & Enterprise Division, Arun was responsible for growing Microsoft's Windows Azure, Windows Server, SQL Server, and Business Intelligence for Microsoft in the APAC region based out of Singapore. Before moving to Singapore, Arun held WW accountability for growing Microsoft's SQL Server business with enterprise customers.
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James Codella, PhD
Principal Product Manager
James is a Principal Product Manager working to enable planetary scale applications with Azure Cosmos DB. Specifically, he focuses on the Cosmos DB Query Engine and leads AI product work including state-of-the-art vector indexing and search with DiskANN, text and hybrid search, and other advanced information retrieval methods.
In a previous life, James was a machine learning researcher. He holds a B.S. and an M. Eng. degree from Cornell University, and a Ph.D. in Operations Research from The University of Wisconsin – Madison. He currently lives near New York City with his wife, Angela, and their dog, Statler.
In a previous life, James was a machine learning researcher. He holds a B.S. and an M. Eng. degree from Cornell University, and a Ph.D. in Operations Research from The University of Wisconsin – Madison. He currently lives near New York City with his wife, Angela, and their dog, Statler.
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Charles Feddersen
Partner Dir Program Management
Charles is the Partner Director of Product Management for Postgres on Azure, which includes the portfolio of Postgres managed services as well as the contributions that Microsoft to open source Postgres. In his current role Charles is responsible for product definition and strategy, roadmap, customer experience and overall success of Postgres services at Microsoft.
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Aditi Gupta
Senior Product Manager
Aditi is a Senior Product Manager with Azure Databases for MySQL group.
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Bob Ward
Principal Architect
Bob Ward is a Principal Architect for the Microsoft Azure Data team, which owns the development for Microsoft SQL Ground to Cloud. Bob has worked for Microsoft for 31 years on every version of SQL Server shipped from OS/2 1.1 to SQL Server 2022 including Azure SQL. Bob is a well-known speaker on SQL Server, Azure SQL, AI, and Microsoft Fabric often presenting talks on new releases, internals, and specialized topics at events such as SQLBits, Microsoft Build, Microsoft Ignite, PASS Summit, Fabric Community Conference, and VS Live. You can also learn Azure SQL from him on the popular series aka.ms/azuresql4beginners. You can follow him at @bobwardms or linkedin.com/in/bobwardms. Bob is the author of the books Pro SQL Server on Linux, SQL Server 2019 Revealed, Azure SQL Revealed, SQL Server 2022 Revealed, and Azure SQL Revealed 2nd Edition available from Apress Media.