"The move to the cloud is inevitable." Listening to Microsoft marketing and all the MVPs out there, it can certainly seem like we are getting further and further behind each day we aren't use cloud services. Sure, lift and shift of VM resources are straightforward at this point and they are happening with more frequency; however, this doesn't mean everyone is leveraging cloud services. How do you go about trying to prepare for the future when the company you work for isn't quite ready to make the leap? In this episode, we talk with Jim Donahoe about making the transition from our traditional SQL Server environments to using Azure SQL Database. We discuss some of the basics and some of the challenges you will face as you make the migration.

It can be a bit overwhelming to think about all the other services available in Azure. Lift and shift gets us to the 'cloud', but if we want to start doing the cool stuff, we will have to make our data available to start interfacing with these services. We know that cloud providers are pushing more hybrid models as not every system is ready for the cloud. New development initiatives make better candidates for the cloud services and this episode covers the first steps to help you on path to cloud services.

The show notes for today's episode can be found at http://sqldatapartners.com/2018/06/13/episode-139-getting-started-with-sql-server-in-azure. Have fun on the SQL Trail!