Some news is hard to write calmly, so I won’t even try.

Yesterday, an email landed in my inbox that I had to read twice, then a third time, just to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. I’ve been awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award for 2026–2027.

I sat back, made a coffee, and thought about the long road that led to this moment.

Where it all started

When I started this blog years ago, it was just a notebook for me. I was an Oracle DBA, fixing databases at 2 AM and writing down the solutions so I wouldn’t forget them the next time. I never imagined anyone would read it. Then people started leaving comments and sending messages. Someone in another country would say, “This post saved my production system today.” That feeling never gets old, and it’s the reason I kept writing.

Over the years, the blog grew with me. From Oracle databases and RAC to Fusion Middleware, then to the cloud: OCI, AWS, and Azure. Then came DevOps, Kubernetes, Terraform, and recently AI. Technology kept changing, but the idea stayed the same: learn it, break it, fix it, and share it so the next person has an easier time than I did.

What the MVP award means to me

The Microsoft MVP award recognizes people who share their knowledge with the community through blogs, talks, open source, and helping others. Being part of the Oracle ACE program and the AWS Community Builders taught me how powerful these communities are. Now joining the Microsoft MVP family feels like another door opening, with more people to learn from and more people to help.

To be honest, this award belongs to the community as much as it belongs to me. Every reader who left a comment, every attendee who asked a tough question after a session, and every engineer who disagreed with me and made me think deeper pushed me to keep going.

A big thank you

To the Microsoft MVP program team, thank you for this recognition and for building a program that supports people who love to share.

To my friends and fellow MVPs who encouraged me along the way, you know who you are, and I owe you one.

To my family, thank you for your patience through the late nights, the weekend sessions, and the conference travel. None of this happens without you.

And to you, the reader, thank you for being here, whether you’ve followed this blog since the early Oracle days or found it last week through a Google search.

What’s next?

More of the same, only better. Expect more hands-on Azure content, real-world cloud architecture, automation, and AI topics, written the way I’ve always written: practical and straight to the point, with as little marketing talk as possible. I’m also planning more sessions and community events, so if your user group or meetup is looking for a speaker, reach out.

If there’s a topic you’d like me to cover, drop it in the comments. Some of my best posts started as a reader’s question.

Thank you all. Let’s keep learning together.

Cheers,
Osama