Welcome to Microsoft Community Podcast , where we share insights from community experts . You stay up to date in Microsoft . I'm Nicholas and I'll be your host today . In this podcast we'll dive into Pulumi and Azure .
But before we get started , I would remind you to follow us on social media so you never miss an episode , so you help us reach more amazing people like yourself . Today we have a special guest called Alec Harrison . Could you please introduce yourself please ?
Yeah , sure , I'm Alec Harrison . I am a Microsoft MVP in AI and Azure . I'm located in the US , in Omaha , nebraska . Thanks for having me .
Thanks , Welcome . So since our session is called Pulumi , could you give us some like explain what's Pulumi and how is it used ?
Yeah for sure . So Pulumi is an alternative for infrastructure as code in the cloud . The most applicable thing it would be equivalent to or similar to is probably Terraform . I think a lot of people have heard and used that product . Pulumi is kind of similar to that , except it allows you to write your infrastructure as code in the language of which you choose .
Except it allows you to write your infrastructure's code in the language of which you choose . So think of like AWS has their CDK where you can do like TypeScript , all sorts of languages . Pulumi does that as well , but it's cloud agnostic .
So whether you're in AWS , azure , gcp , you can go ahead and write your Pulumi file to go to any cloud of your choice . Okay , so why would someone choose to use Glimmy in their environment and stuff like Terraform and Bicep ?
So I think Terraform scared a lot of people away when they first made their biggest change in their terms of service and the open tofu fork happened . So that was when they changed their terms of service . The billing model maybe looked like it could potentially change .
The community decided , hey , we're going to fork the open source repo and we'll manually keep that up to date . That's a lot of overhead and a lot of pain , particularly like somebody has to go out and do that and keep it up to date While the tech is being widely used . That's not a big issue , but you're then not getting first-party support right .
You're getting the somebody's taking the fork and updating it manually . The other thing is HashiCorp , or Terraform , was recently purchased by IBM . I don't think there's been any major changes right now but , as far as I can tell , like IBM owns them now , they could totally change how the system works or how the technology works .
So I think that's another reason why I'd potentially choose it Instead of using , like your primary cloud providers , ones like you have , Bicep Arm , CDK CloudFormation Instead of that , if you're running multi-cloud or want the potential of you know having a single source of truth while , like you , still have to write basically an if statement to say , if Azure do this
, else do this for AWS , you can still write it in one language or one technology suite . Right , so you could share scripts , you can share them around , and that would be for . If you don't want to be just in the proprietary languages , so say I don't know , maybe my product has a requirement . I want to be multi cloud .
If I'm trying to use the first party support tools like CDK and bicep , I would have probably two separate scripts that have two separate deployment processes that you might be able to have status checks in your pipeline , but it's not going to be the same deployment process to both , right ?
So I would have to say , hey , go deploy to AWS , go deploy to Azure , where , if you do it in a tool like Pulumi , Terraform is similar too . You can say , hey , here's my script for both clouds , go deploy it . It's the same deployment process and you could roll back as you see fit .
Pulumi and Terraform 2 also both have state files , so you can kind of see what the state is of your cloud and hopefully , try to get a little bit more monitor drift as well . So if your resources are drifting you can kind of get some alerts with that as well .
Okay , because I know that Terraform have their own SDK as well than Plumi .
Yeah , they have their own SDK and CLI that you can roll in and use . Plumi also has Plumi AI , which is new . So let's .
So let's talk about a little bit of AI at the moment . So how are you using Gen AI and AI overall ? Are you using it at work or in your spare time ?
Yeah , so I'm actually helping a company right now . It's about a $2 billion manufacturing company and we are working on building out some gen ai use cases for them . So we have one that we're hoping to go to production here within the month , which is kind of helping some end users with their questions .
I don't know if I can demo that specifically , but what it does essentially is somebody can ask a question and then it pings all of their internal documentation and tries to answer it because they also have a traditional call center .
So what it's trying to do is make the first person that , um , that bot , essentially right that hey , here's the answer quickly , and then we're also providing citations . So the experience is very similar to I don't know if you've used google lately um , how to use github copilot , let's do that . Okay , that's not going to do it .
Um , what I'll try to show you is the gemini model from sometimes we'll pop up here and try to answer your question . It's very similar experience to that that we've built , where we'll say , hey , here's what we think the answer is , here's the citations that we think go along with that , so that they then can click links like you would in Google .
So maybe they don't trust our AI answer . They can go ahead and click here and see more data , whether it's their own internal , you know , pdfs , their own internal documents , their own internal , what have you ? Okay , so it's only for internal use .
Is it only for internal use , like document search and stuff ? Okay , Is it like a ? Is it on production ? Or is it just normally like a proof of concept , Like is it on production ?
or is it just normally like a proof of concept ? We're in the process of deploying it to a small subset of users . So I think when you talk Gen AI , there's two big fears right now it's security and it's cost . I think , security-wise , the company I'm at is fairly confident that they feel like security is okay because we're using all Azure products .
So Azure , you know , keeps all of your data within your specific subscription . They don't use it to go back to the models , to train it , it just stays where it is right . So , security-wise , they feel really confident that Microsoft and Azure has their back there . The biggest thing they're concerned about is cost .
So I think we've proven with different POCs that we think it's accurate enough to be put in front of end users Because , worst case scenario , they still call the call center . So we still have that backup , that escape route , if you will . And then , best case scenario , they get their answer and they're off .
So that leaves cost and right now we just don't know , kind of , how well people will use it or how much people use it . One thing I will call out is , with Azure open AI , gpt 4.0 mini , azure OpenAI , gpt 4.0 Mini the cost for AI has pretty drastically dropped .
So this is per thousand tokens , but I guess you can just yeah , but I guess you can just customize it and what you want . But you just have to keep testing it like whatever you want , search and document only , and limit it .
Yeah , and we've locked it down too . There's a configuration in the API to say , basically , only use my data I've provided you . So that should help cut down on hallucinations , hopefully , because then you can't you know , for example go find an answer on the internet that's completely wrong or off-base or not applicable to our company .
So that's how we kind of solve that one . Just say you don't know . If you don't know Otherwise , only use the documents we have .
Okay , that's good . So , aside from the application that you build or you're going to do from work , what other exciting things you've seen around Gen AI that interest you at the moment ? Yeah , I think , Whether it's AI , Mac OS or any Go AR open .
any Copilot Studio is a really powerful one for non-developers . So if you're not a traditional app dev , it gets you , I would say , especially like chat with your data right , being able to connect to external data sources and drop it into different things . They have a bunch of integrators out there , like Teams , slack , any of those .
It's really exciting because then people with low-code , no-code skill sets can jump in and build these chatbots that could potentially help their companies out .
Okay , yeah , that's good so in your opinion . So I just want to ask what do you think AI would help you to do in the future ? Is that a general opinion ? Yeah , I think Over time .
I think it'll help people be more efficient in the roles they're doing . I don't think we're at the point where it's really going to replace people . I think it's just going to help people be more efficient and then hopefully then move people closer to the problems they're solving Right .
Like , instead of writing as much boilerplate , I can ask GitHub copilot to do that for me . Instead of spending time creating a PowerPoint , I can ask Office 365 Copilot to create a pretty PowerPoint for me and then I can focus on the job I was brought in to do .
Right , I can help write code , I can help solve business problems , and then the things that are maybe less important but still time consuming , I can get an assistant of ai to help me , you know , create it and get going there yeah , is there any particular trend ?
do you see that's coming up in the field of ai or in general ?
I think some people got really excited , and I feel like AI kind of got overhyped . I think we saw this in a lot of other fields too , like the internet and other technology . I think blockchain had a huge hype wheel too . So did especially with like NFTs , or non-fungible tokens , when they were like selling art for crazy amounts of money .
Uh , bitcoin's another one . Like a lot of these technologies , have super big hype cycles yeah I feel like we're waiting for the next big announcement from a big llm company , because I feel , uh , if you look , I think nvidia's stock is down or dropped a ton lately .
I think the hype is kind of subsiding and companies are now taking a more critical look and actually investigating of like will AI drastically change what I do ? I don't know say like 5% or 10% more productive , but it's not going to make it . So you're now , you know , a one-man company making $3 trillion . It's not anywhere near there .
Yeah , it's not going to replace us humans . It's still going to be there in a way .
Yeah , I think the phrase I keep hearing is you won't be replaced by AI . You might get replaced by a human using AI .
So this episode is coming to a close , so what other advice would you give people when starting with Pulumi or AI in general ?
With Pulumi . I would say I think both Just start building . You don't have to fill out a thing for Microsoft anymore to actually get access to Azure OpenAI , so just start building . See what it costs to ask a question . Learn how to index your data . There's a lot of quick starts from Microsoft on how to get going specifically with chatting with your data .
There's a lot of quick starts from Microsoft on how to get going specifically with chatting with your data . There's a lot of services in Azure to make that a super slick and seamless process . So I'd say , get started . Same with Pulumi Start building . If you want to learn about DevOps , if you want to learn about pipelines , publish your own website .
I have a silly blog that was a Gatsby blog . That's how I got started into more infrastructure as code and pipelines . I just started building something and then go from there . Find the pieces you like , find the pieces you don't , and then , yeah , that's how you learn other concepts and other things . I'm a very practical person .
I'd rather learn with my hands dirty than from a textbook , if I can help it . Yeah , yeah , it's all by learning .
By doing so is there any other advice you would like to give to anyone ? One thing that's really good . If you're looking for like an artificial deadline , I would say try to get a talk accepted at a user group . So try to do something similar to this write a 30 minute hour , talk about some concept and then go learn it .
I guarantee you some people might know it better than you , but for the most part , communities like that are very nice and helpful and they'll help you out , or you can present it to them and learn some new stuff and network , and then they can .
If you hit any roadblocks , just say like I couldn't figure out x , and somebody in the crowd might be like have you tried this ? Or I had the same issue . Here's how I solved it .
So just go and share what you're learning . Speaking of community , you're quite involved in the community , alec , so can you tell us any ?
of the community involvement . Yeah , I host a few user groups here in the States . We are doing a AI workshop October 17th . It's going to kick off 3 pm Central time in the US , but it's hybrid , so if you search Iowa Microsoft Azure User Group on Meetup or follow me on LinkedIn , I'll be posting about it .
I also run a weekly podcast that you've been on , called Azure Cloud Talks , where we talk to other MVPs , other people in the community , about technology things , about how they got into their career and just anything that might be irking them at any point in time , just to show you know we all get frustrated , we all get past it .
It's just part of life , part of growing .
Yeah , Okay . So before we close the episode , we always like to know a bit more about the yeah yourself . So are you going to any ? Are you doing any events or going to any conference ?
uh , I don't think I have anything right now . It's kind of a talk preparation season so I'm writing some you know submissions for next year's conference , speaking . But yeah , nothing crazy in the books right now , just looking forward to next year and seeing the next conference season spin up .
Okay , Any any particular conference that you're looking forward to next year ?
I always have a good time at KCDC , so the Kansas City Developers Conference , that one's always a blast . Microsoft Build has been quite a bit of fun . The last couple of years I've gone to Trying to think of what else . Heartland Developers Conference here in Omaha is a thing that's been going on for a while . It's fun .
It's just down the road for me , so I don't have to travel very far for that one , which is nice . Yeah , those are all fun conferences that I enjoy .
Yeah , I heard that KCDC is quite popular developer conference as well . It's quite hard to get into as well . You have to know someone , don't you Know , someone quite hard to get into as well . You have to know someone doesn't know someone .
I forget what it was , but I think there was one track . I think it was the non-technical track . You statistically was about the same as I forget what it was . It was some crazy stat . You're more likely to be struck by lightning to get in or something like that , because they have an insane amount of submissions and they took like 30 of them .
It's a little bit easier if you do a technical track , but not much .
You probably got more chance when you do like a AMA or a group chat about something .
Yeah , I know my co-host for my podcast . Yeah , brian Gorman seems to always get one in , so he's a good person to emulate . He's an MCT and MVP and runs my podcast with me . I think the last two years he's gotten in .
Nice , okay now I have podcast with me , he . I think the last two years he's gotten in okay , nice , okay . Now , as of thanks , uh , where can people get into , where can people get in touch with you ? The best place if you want to advise anything yeah , I'm pretty active on linkedin .
uh , if you just go to linkedincom slash , I think I'm at Alec13355 . So A-L-E-C-13355 . I'm there . I have my LinkedIn learning course there . If you want to learn a little bit more about AI , or if you just want to follow anything else I'm doing , I typically post on there .
Okay , what course is that ? Is that the AI course , or ?
okay , what course is that ? Is that the ai course ? Or , yeah , it's a course over gen ai . So we cover specifically the ai 102 exam , the gen ai portion . So if you want to learn more about ai , you can sit learn a little bit more from me . And uh , yeah , it's on LinkedIn Learning .
Okay , yeah , no worries . Thanks for coming to this episode , alec . In a few weeks it's going to be on social media . Okay , thank you .
Yeah , thanks for having me .