February 8, 2025

Christmas eve was all the time associated to the grand planning course of – how we should always arrange a correct celebration and make these holidays as comfortable as we will. At ISS Artwork we begin preparations throughout early Autumn to make each element in time. At present we’re fully able to have fun our nineteenth Christmas. 

And we’re fairly certain that every one our IT colleagues around the globe are on the identical level. On this article we’ve collected a number of examples of how the most important IT corporations have fun Christmas.

Twilio’s SantaPhone

Twilio is an American firm that develops and offers cloud-based PaaS providers. Because of the Twilio platform, third-party builders can use the corporate’s platform to make calls and ship textual content messages.

One of many Christmas traditions that kids have is giving Santa Claus an enormous record of presents they need to obtain on December 25. Twilio’s challenge makes it attainable for youths to share their Christmas want lists with out going to the mall to see Santa himself. It’s known as SantaPhone, the characteristic is designed to let youngsters name and go away a recorded message that’s emailed to folks in actual time.

As part of this launch, Twilio has promised that it’ll donate $1 for every of the primary 10,000 calls made to SantaPhone.

Adults and kids can go to the SantaPhone web site and schedule a name with one in all Santa’s “elves”. After {that a} textual content message is delivered to confirm the authenticity of the cellphone quantity supplied. On the organized time, a cellphone name might be made, and a pre-recorded message will ask the kids what they need for Christmas. Afterwards, the recording is forwarded to a pre-designated electronic mail tackle to let Santa’s “helpers” know what their youngsters’ are dreaming of. It will also be forwarded to household and buddies simply by sharing the hyperlink or downloading the audio file. Lastly, an MMS from the North Pole might be despatched to the cellphone quantity, utilizing Twilio’s Programmable SMS product.

Why was SantaPhone created? Effectively, it’s the vacation season and it appears Twilio needed to construct one thing lighthearted and enjoyable whereas additionally giving again to these much less lucky — it has a sample of doing that. It’s additionally possible that SantaPhone was a byproduct of a hackathon host firm and was too nice to go it up.

Nutanix SaaS recreation

Nutanix is an organization who develops {hardware} and software program cluster virtualized complexes. The primary product is the Digital Computing Platform software program and {hardware} complicated, constructed on modular ideas from commonplace x86-64 structure server nodes. The nodes function below the management of one of many server hypervisors and are mixed right into a single pool utilizing software program.

In collaboration with ETWorks, Nutanix revealed a SaaS recreation – Santa As A Service. The sport is out there at Nutanix’ web site proper now.

By taking part in the sport, any exterior or inner particular person can compete with one another, overcoming the best distance by Santa operating on rooftops to earn factors (I’ve earned 2562). In the long run, gamers can publish the ends in leaderboards and obtain a pleasant likelihood to win particular prizes from Nutanix.

New attainable prizes are being revealed day by day till December 25’th.

Microsoft’s ugly sweaters

That is Microsoft’s fifth yr of Home windows-themed ugly sweaters and the third yr the corporate has been promoting them to most people.

“It began again in 2017, we had posted three made-up sweaters and mentioned ‘which ugly sweater would you put on this yr?’ and it was our greatest performing put up for your complete yr,” says Megan Muehleman, senior social media supervisor at Microsoft, in an interview with The Verge.

This yr, Microsoft has turned to Clippy, which is extra Workplace-inspired than Home windows itself. Born in Workplace 97, Clippy was resurrected in 2019 for Microsoft Groups earlier than being shortly killed off in a transfer that one Microsoft insider described because the “model police” not being glad that Clippy had returned. Microsoft has loosened the tight Clippy model shackles in recent times, with its Groucho eyebrows now the default paperclip emoji in Home windows and stickers in Microsoft Groups.

“Clippy has all the time been behind our minds. We’ve all the time mentioned it each single yr,” says Muehleman. “It was simply all the time by no means the appropriate time.” After a resurgence in Clippy utilization inside Microsoft, the speaking paperclip is now on an unsightly sweater you’ll be able to put on across the dinner desk at Thanksgiving or on Christmas Day.

Santa makes use of MongoDB

MongoDB is a document-oriented database administration system that doesn’t require an outline of the desk schema. Thought-about one of many basic examples of NoSQL programs, it makes use of JSON-like paperwork and a database schema.

Attributable to Christmas eve, MongoDB has revealed how Santa might use their MongoDB software program to ship 6 billion presents in a single night time. How he might acquire all these “Expensive Santa” letters, learn them one after the other, guarantee that there are not any errors, no missed presents, and no inconsistent state.

For instance, right here is how Santa maintains a file for every one in all us, the place he retains observe of the place he must ship the presents. He makes use of MongoDB with geospatial data to know the place to ship the items. Every file appears like this:

And since Christmas is well known at totally different instances throughout the globe, Santa wants to recollect about it when delivering presents. Santa is aware of, time zone is a vital discipline to take note of.

MongoDB permits making modifications to the appliance with out migrating the info. Santa and his workforce can simply undertake the evolving wants of the vacation season with out ever asking the world to reschedule Christmas:

There may be really an entire information of how one can grow to be essentially the most environment friendly Santa utilizing MongoDB at Mongo’s web site. Such an in depth method solely makes it extra attention-grabbing to analyze additional.

All represented corporations are making Christmas eve one thing particular, simply correctly. At ISS Artwork we fully share that method and want you a Merry Christmas and a cheerful New Yr!