Join the Welsh Azure User Group for our July 2025 event, held virtually. This month, we have an exciting line up of speakers and topics to help you enhance your skills and leverage the power of Microsoft Azure. Whether you're new to Azure or an experienced user, there's something for everyone in this event.
SAVE THE DATE! - 16th July 2025 6.30pm-8.30pm BST
AGENDA
The bridge will be open from 6.00pm for people to join before we kick of promptly at:
6.30pm - Welcome and House Keeping
6.45pm – Jake Walsh & Steve Brown - How to Ace those Azure Exams
An overview session of all of the resources, methods, help, and tips we can think of to help you ace those Azure exams. Two seasoned Azure exam takers will guide you on how to get the most from your exam preparation and discuss all things Azure exams and more! Our core focus will be on learning methods, and resources, but we will also cover wider aspects and learning options that have helped us both pass a range of Azure Certifications.
As well as exam prep and tips, we will delve into how you can learn and develop as best possible in the Azure ecosystem - expect lots of anecdotes, chat, and time for questions!
7.30pm – George Thomas - Building Resilient Payment Subscriptions Services with Azure Cloud Services
The subscription economy has transformed how businesses operate across Wales and beyond, creating unique payment challenges that require robust, scalable cloud architectures. This presentation explores how Azure's comprehensive cloud services can be leveraged to build resilient payment systems that handle the complexities of recurring billing, payment failures, and customer retention in subscription-based businesses.
We'll dive into practical Azure implementations including Azure Functions for intelligent payment retry logic, Azure Service Bus for reliable message orchestration, and Azure SQL Database for managing complex subscription data. The session demonstrates how Azure's serverless architecture can automatically scale to handle payment processing spikes while maintaining cost efficiency—crucial considerations for Welsh businesses of all sizes.
The presentation covers real-world scenarios where Azure Cognitive Services can predict customer churn through payment behavior analysis, while Azure Logic Apps orchestrate sophisticated dunning processes that recover failed payments without impacting customer experience. We'll explore how Azure Key Vault securely manages payment credentials and how Azure Monitor provides comprehensive insights into payment system performance.
Attendees will discover how different subscription models—from B2C mobile apps to B2B enterprise platforms—can leverage Azure's flexible architecture. We'll examine usage-based billing implementations using Azure Event Hubs for real-time consumption tracking and Azure Cosmos DB for global data distribution, particularly relevant for Welsh companies serving international markets.
The session includes live demonstrations of Azure DevOps pipelines for deploying payment infrastructure, Azure Application Insights for monitoring transaction flows, and Azure Security Center for maintaining PCI compliance. We'll also discuss cost optimization strategies using Azure Reserved Instances and spot pricing for batch payment processing workloads.
By the end of this presentation, attendees will understand how to transform basic payment processing into an intelligent, Azure-powered system that reduces involuntary churn, increases customer lifetime value, and scales with business growth—providing Welsh businesses with competitive advantages in the global subscription economy.
8.15pm - Quiz time!
8.30pm - Approximate Close!