Welsh Azure User Group July 2025 Meet Up! – Cloud Computing with a side of Chipz

Welcome and Community Spirit

This month’s Welsh Azure User Group session opened with a warm welcome from John, who celebrated the group’s nearly five-year journey. He emphasized the importance of community, encouraged idea sharing, and thanked sponsors Servant and Creditsafe for their ongoing support. 1

Table of Contents

Mastering Azure Exams: Insights from Jake Walsh & Steve Brown

Jake Walsh and Steve Brown led an engaging session on how to ace Azure exams. They shared personal stories of exam challenges and successes, discussed different learning styles (hands-on, visual, audio), and offered practical tips for preparation. Their advice included using resources like Microsoft Learn, GitHub labs, John Savill’s YouTube, and Udemy courses. Attendees learned about effective revision methods, the importance of setting goals, and navigating both in-person and home proctored exams.

Building a Resilient Azure Payment Subscription Service: George T’s Case Study

George T shared a detailed case study from Check, highlighting the company’s migration from AWS to Azure for its payment subscription service. He discussed the challenges of involuntary churn, retry logic, and compliance in the subscription economy. George explained their Azure-based architecture, which included API gateways, microservices, Logic Apps, and event-driven design. He described the evolution from static to AI-driven retry strategies, fraud prevention tactics, and the resulting improvements in payment success rates and cost efficiency.

Interactive Azure Quiz and Community Engagement

The session concluded with a lively Azure quiz, where participants tested their knowledge for a chance to win an Amazon voucher. The chat was active with encouragement and quick responses, making for a fun and interactive close to the evening.

Essential Azure Learning Resources Shared

Throughout the event, a variety of valuable resources were shared in the chat to support ongoing learning:

Closing Thoughts and Next Steps

John wrapped up the session by thanking all speakers and attendees, encouraging everyone to stay engaged and look forward to next month’s event. The evening was a testament to the power of community, shared learning, and the ongoing journey with Azure.

The evening went superbly and we had great engagement thank you to all that attended!

A recording can be found on my YouTube Channel – CloudTalk with Jonnychipz