Viewpoints

IT Leader Perspectives: Social in the Enterprise

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Fri, 25 May 2012 06:04:00 GMT

This is a guest post by Microsoft Enterprise Team.

See what IT executives are saying about opportunities and challenges on leveraging social media in the enterprise at the Microsoft's recent US CIO Summit in Redmond, WA. Are you building plans around this megatrend that will dominate the next decade?

Social Communities Allow Users to Connect, Innovate and Share

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Fri, 25 May 2012 06:02:00 GMT

This is a guest post by Microsoft Enterprise Team.

Enabling collaboration and communication using social tools can help businesses be more competitive by allowing people to work in a familiar way, accelerating innovation. At Microsoft, we can help organizations take advantage of social media and how to integrate new communication tools allowing them to effectively communicate with customers and improve internal collaboration. Sony Electronics and Telus discuss how connecting their mobile and distributed workforces in real time while simplifying how people share work and ideas.

CIO Priorities for the Next 3 Years

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Fri, 25 May 2012 06:00:00 GMT

Authored by Mike Walker, Enterprise Strategy and Architecture Chief IP Architect

In my last post, I was examining The Evolution of Today’s CIO and What kind of CIO’s will transform businesses?, and how it has morphed into a more strategic, business-driven role than ever before—one that directly affects top-line business goals. Today, I want to dig deeper into what this means for the future of corporate IT. Regardless of CIO Profile (i.e., Optimizer, Transformative or Innovative), what will CIO’s priorities be over the next three years?

My prediction is that by 2015, there will be a groundswell of CIOs that will have morphed into “strategy athletes;” that is, a stronger/faster/savvier version of today's CIO. We’ll see more CIOs who are entrepreneurial, adapting to and initiating major business shifts, and carrying equal responsibility with the CEO. These executives will no longer be measured primarily by the scope of their innovation; they will also be held responsible for the same financial metrics of the other C-level execs. That isn’t to say that all will suddenly convert over into a Transformative CIO or even that it required for all either. But I do think that there will be a majority that will move into this space. Not because of desire but out of need.

Converging Priorities

When we look at this there are two angles we need to come from. First the higher level strategic themes and objectives. This is where you will see soft or intangible goals that are meant to span across the entire enterprise and to last for more than one year. The second type of priority is the actionable tactical priorities and much more tangible goals and objectives. These tend to occur within a fiscal year and have very concrete success criteria.

Looking at the strategic priorities I see a convergence of IT and business strategy that means both the growth and innovation will be at the forefront of business decision making—but will the CEO and CIO be on the same page? According to IBM’s CIO study, The Essential CIO, it’s highly likely.

The IBM report, based on face-to-face conversations with more than 3,000 CIOs worldwide, found that the three key business issues that will be top-of-mind for both the CEO and the CIO in the coming years will be data (BI and analytics), people skills to manage growing organizational complexity, and client relationships.

As far for the second level of tactical priorities, there is variability in what I see as far as percentages on the predictions however the themes still stay the same. I would suspect that this is due in part by specific industry segments, their market needs and regulation.

So for these yearly priorities how do these joint CEO/CIO business priorities sync with CIO technology priorities? Will the core CIO agenda go out the window? Hardly. According to Gartner’s 2012 CIO Survey, CIOs have reported that they expect to spent 46% more over last year, and 61% plan to improve their companies’ mobile functions. The top technology priority, BI and analytics, is right in line with the business priorities, and mobile and virtualization (cloud) rank 2^nd and 3^rd, respectively.

The respondents to a 2012 IDG CIO survey had a slightly more focused take: Nearly 40% indicated that cloud services would take top priority moving forward. And the IBM group? They put data, mobility, and the cloud at the top of their lists.

CIO Priority Projection

So what does this mean for the prioritization of IT spend between now and 2015? Well there is a lot of data out there with different priorities and subsequent rankings. There are three priorities that do surface to the top every time though. Those common priorities include:

Cloud – The cloud has finally emerged from the 2011 purgatory of supplier propaganda, and is now being taken seriously—very seriously—by CIOs around the globe. It’s proven to be a game-changer, making competitive advantage more easily attainable for organizations regardless of size.
Information – Once a very stale topic, BI is now going through a resurgence thanks to new technology innovation like cloud and social. We are seeing the legacy reporting and analytics morph into Big Data and Collaborative BI. These new trends are helping companies build better customer relationships, and drive new business. According to Gartner fellow Dave Aron, “It is about more data, faster data, and the ability to crunch it in faster time.” These new technology enablers are allowing this to occur.
Mobility – In order to maintain a growth trajectory regardless of economic climate, more and more businesses have realized that having an employee base that can work from anywhere is key. Laptops, smart phones, and tablet devices have become the new standard equipment for organizations focusing on growth and innovation.

And since we’re on the subject, it seems like just about everybody is thinking about the cloud to some extent these days. It started out as a rather enigmatic concept, and was a catalyst for many a heated discussion in the industry as it emerged in the late 1990s. Now that the technology is becoming more ubiquitous, the benefits of economy, scalability, and administration are more clear and concrete. And as we’ve seen from the research, it’s garnered a position of top priority with technical decision makers.

With more and more CIOs now ready, willing, and able to invest in the cloud, my next post will look at the strategies around cloud implementation, and how to make true value-driven investments in the cloud to support strategic business goals.

SharePoint 2010: People working together drive business results

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Fri, 25 May 2012 05:58:00 GMT

This is a guest post by Microsoft Enterprise Team.

In the information workplace of today, a convergence of trends is changing the way we work together.

Younger people familiar with a whole new generation of social computing software are entering the workforce. People are more mobile, and businesses are more global than ever before. The speed with which business gets done and decisions are made is becoming faster and faster. Businesses find themselves working with partners, customers and other external organizations more and more often.

As well as these trends, an increasing body of business data supports the belief that better collaboration drives better business results.

This paper examines the value organizations can gain from enhancing their collaborative environment with corporate social computing capabilities. Not only does better collaboration in the form of business communities enable people to work more efficiently, it engages them more fully in the work they do. Studies show that highly engaged employees get more done, have more ideas, and stay with the company longer. Engaged employees also build stronger customer and colleague relationships. More engaged employees are more valuable employees in many ways.

This paper also offers a few key considerations and strategies for planning and implementing a corporate social network or community in a way that supports your business objectives. The ultimate goal is to build a work environment that is more valuable to your organization.

Download the whitepaper by clicking on the file below.

Understanding Which Investments Should go to the Cloud

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Fri, 25 May 2012 05:43:00 GMT

Authored by Mike Walker, Enterprise Strategy and Architecture Chief IP Architect

In my last post in this series, “CIO Priorities for the Next 3 Years”, we examined the future of Corporate IT, and made some predictions on what CIO priorities for the next three years might be. According to research from IDC, IBM, and Gartner, the three areas that CIOs are expected to invest most heavily in will be data, mobility, and the cloud.

Today, we will take a closer look at the most recent and most aggressively growing of these three niches: The cloud. Our friends at Gartner estimate that, over the next five years, enterprises will likely spend about $112 billion cumulatively (no pun intended) on cloud services. Another example comes from a new survey of 600 large companies by Tata Consultancy Services. The Tata survey points out that companies in all regions expect their cloud usage to grow dramatically by 2014. For example, U.S. companies expect that 34 percent of their total applications will be cloud-based in two years. European respondents said they expect cloud applications to hit 25 percent in that period.

Clearly, the cloud is here to stay, so let’s talk about the power of the cloud. Specifically, what game changing elements does the cloud bring to businesses in the future?

Below is how I think about it from a Strategy and an Enterprise Architecture oriented way. This should resonate with most CIOs:

Convergence - The cloud is the ultimate power networker, bringing together the essential elements that enable both legacy and emerging technologies. The analyst community bears this out, positioning the cloud as the nerve center of the IT of the future. Gartner calls it the “CSMI Nexus,” and describes it as a junction of cloud, social, mobility and information. I agree with Gartner’s position that the future will be more integrated and connected when it comes to these four technologies, but the cloud will always be at the center, enabling all of this to occur.
A New Financial Model – Because the cloud requires no upfront investment for hardware and software, it enables a shift from capital expenditures to operational expenditures, wherein the bulk of the costs are absorbed into a utility model, with low monthly fees for applications and services. The challenge with this is that often, the implementation time and costs significantly reduce the value of the capital expenditure, and the investment is nearly depreciated before the value can be extracted. This can cause a bit of CFO angst.
Agility and Scalability - An agile, scalable enterprise is needed to support the rhythm of modern business—not all business cycles, after all, are static. Take for example the banking industry, which has a peak transaction volume between Thanksgiving and January 1; or healthcare and insurance, which are driven respectively by staggered enrollment periods and policy renewals. On-premises systems present a high barrier for agility, as they require sophisticated virtualization software, and significant investment in hardware and data communication equipment. Conversely, the cloud offers much greater flexibility via an on-demand environment that makes it easy to add more capacity as businesses evolve.
Streamlined IT – From deployment and management through administration and support, the cloud may deliver the biggest gifts to IT departments. Getting up and running is almost a no-brainer, often requiring nothing more than a standard internet connection. Standardizing PC environments and managing system and desktop updates are all made easier using the cloud. Cloud-based management also help drive down the cost of support. With a cloud-based system, it’s easier to proactively detect and manage issues to reduce help-desk calls, and to ensure that all managed PCs have the latest security updates using online distribution and management.
Productivity – The gains in productivity that can be garnered with the cloud are invaluable, given that more and more organizations have global workforces these days. Using the cloud to give users all the latest productivity tools is only the beginning. When employees have access to office desktops, files, and applications any time, from any location, they can get more done, faster—and even physically dispersed teams can collaborate more easily.

So what does this all mean for traditional, on-premises systems? The IBM Tech Trends Survey reports that 91% of IT professionals are anticipating that cloud will completely overtake on-premises computing in the next 5 years. Essentially, the challenge for on-premises systems with the advent of the cloud is their essential lack of innovation in the market. When faced with the explosive growth in the cloud paradigm that offers businesses more choice, extended capabilities, and exciting new emerging technologies, on-premises simply can’t compete.

The Financial Transition to the Cloud

From a financial aspect, it seems like a straightforward move: Operating primarily with a “pay-to-play” model, the cloud appears to be both cutting edge and cost-effective. But is it really that simple?

The truth is, most companies significantly underestimate the scope of change required to establish cloud services until it’s too late. In the traditional model, companies buy technology from a vendor as a capital investment, and continue to invest in maintaining and servicing it over time. With the cloud being a service, however, the financial model should be treated more like a utility, requiring the reallocation of budget from capital expenses into operating expenses.

We also have to consider that this monetization model could change over time. A recent in the Harvard Business Review Blog Network entitled, “The Truth About Cloud Economics” it talks about a potential and very valid shift in the way cloud providers will monetize their services. Below is the conclusion that Drue Reeves and Daryl Plummer make about this shift:

So, to combat this kind of risk, cloud providers will enter into what are called "enterprise agreements," where the two parties can define the parameters of the relationship based on mutual risk sharing. Essentially, this ensures that each party has a vested interest in the financial success of the other party. There's risk, but there's also reward for better service.

In the end, providers that deliver better service and better guarantees will ask for — and get — more money. Consumers, on the other hand, will get the flexibility of "pay-as-you-go." As long as they can figure out a way to pay for it.

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/04/the_truth_about_cloud_economic.html

What I think this means is that we should consider the value and risk for cloud providers as well as ourselves when making these decisions. The future financial viability for our cloud providers are important in this equation as well. Simply put, if they are not making money in the cloud business, there is no reason to have a cloud business.

From a CFO perspective, they will have a bone to pick, pointing out that this shift can present challenges when a company must still also pay to maintain legacy infrastructure. And if the new cloud services aren’t replacing existing services, new lines of expenditure must be created, which is rarely a smooth process.

Governance is also an issue to consider. With the ease of cloud deployment, it’s important to consider the ramifications of being able to add services quickly as a company grows and needs change. Having a predictable cloud requisition/governance strategy in place can go a long way toward making future service acquisitions easy.

Making the right choice

So now that we have identified some of the significant financial issues around the cloud, how do you determine what’s right for your organization?

Rationalize your strategy. Understand where your business wants to go, what is important, and why. In this process, you need to distill the business and IT strategies to identify cloud-ready capabilities that align to strategy, and provide the maximum amount of value with minimal risk to the business.
Get clear on capabilities. Understand what business capabilities will be a good fit for the cloud through a valuation process. This way, you’ll understand what investments should go to the cloud through a rigorous evaluation of the prioritized set of opportunities identified through strategy rationalization. Through this valuation an assessment of the business and technology capabilities will uncover the value and risk that each capability would bring the company if ported to the cloud.
Make a plan. Create a business transformation plan that will prioritize investment opportunities, balanced across the enterprise and integrated into a transformation roadmap.

Below is a simple three phased approach to making a top down, business value driven decision on which investments to port to the cloud. It’s important that we take this value driven approach to ensure that we don’t make the mistakes we made with other very large technology initiatives such as SOA, CRM or ERP. We should focus on the value add capabilities first to realize value sooner, more reliably and predictably.

We want to take a top-down business value driven approach to process, analyze and refine. This in turn will allow us to describe the business capabilities and to match those with cloud technologies enabling maps to the business-driven strategy that cloud services support. Entering into cloud assessments at a lower level can diminish the level of business impact—and the amount of value—that an organization will realize with the cloud, as seen below.

This picture tells is that the lower in the “stack” we go the lower the overall business value we will realize. This is critical for decision makers to understand as we make decision to go to the cloud.

By respecting both the business and IT dimensions of an organization, and balancing value and risk to identify cloud opportunities while mitigating threats, companies can be assured that the cloud solutions chosen will be flexible, adaptable, and reusable—and just the right fit for their needs.

So that’s it for today. Next time, I’m going to dig a little bit deeper, and talk about how we can balance value and risk through effective cloud strategy.

Simon the Intern and Evolution of Communication

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Fri, 25 May 2012 03:15:00 GMT

Guest Blog post by Marie Huwe, General Manager, Microsoft Dynamics

Originally published on Forbes.com on March 5, 2012

Open the information floodgates by letting customers and employees communicate the way they want.

A few years ago, one of our interns confided something unusual to a colleague of mine.

He doesn’t use email anymore.

Hearing this story, my response was something along the lines of, “Huh?” Perhaps I also made a quizzical expression.

The intern, Simon, was already organizing all his study sessions, happy hours and bowling excursions through Facebook. He felt it was easier because everyone was already right there in the same virtual room. He could send one invite and everyone would have the date, in writing, complete with reminders.

I’d forgotten about this anecdote until recently, when a customer came to us with a story about one of his employees, a developer. This developer was painfully shy and was known for remaining absolutely silent during team and company meetings. His wall of silence remained and nobody thought he had anything to say until one day the company enabled a social communications tool in its enterprise software that allowed him to share opinions via chat.

Suddenly, the floodgates opened. He not only had opinions, he had good ones, great comments and great ideas that the company never had access to until they allowed him to communicate in the way he was most comfortable.

In an age where big data is powering the next generation of business, communication is the key to connecting and empowering your customers and employees. You can have all the data in the world, but it’s people who turn that data into insight to make better business decisions. And people like to work and communicate in different ways.

As you look to the future, your IT systems, increasingly built around these constituents, must be flexible enough to support everyone’s preferred style. We talk about the younger, millennial generation and their affinity for social networks, but the fact is, it’s everyone. Social networks are for more than sharing. Increasingly they are the preferred way for many people to create real dialog. By providing these tools you’re not just getting the millennials to participate, you’re opening avenues for all your employees and customers.

Microsoft Dynamics has been working to integrate social functionality into its ERP and CRM systems. You can learn more about how these features work and what they can do for your business here.

What is your company’s primary means of communication? Your team’s? Do you walk down to your colleague’s office or ping them online when you have something to share?

Social Networking: Build a Vibrant and Forward-Looking Enterprise

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 06:01:00 GMT

Guest Blog post by Bob Violino

Employees’ ability to share knowledge with their co-workers about market trends, customer demands, best practices and other information is critical to success in today’s highly competitive business environment.

Given the frenetic pace of change and the need to be continuously innovative, workers need to be able to effectively and easily keep in touch with each other, share documents, view demonstrations and otherwise work together to grow the business and better serve customers.

Enterprises find that they have an ever-increasing need to allow their employees to work in an environment that is more connected, using tools such as social media sites, unified communications and customer relationship management (CRM) to share ideas and collaborate in real time in a way that increases productivity.

Social networking is playing a significant role in helping to build more collaborative enterprises. Each day, more people are becoming more familiar with social media and how it works. And a growing number of companies are using social networking to support key business processes such as marketing and sales, human resources and customer service.

An InformationWeek Social Networking in the Enterprise Survey of 394 business and technology professionals conducted in October 2011 showed that 66 percent of the companies surveyed have an official or unofficial presence on Facebook (up from 55 percent in a survey conducted in 2010), 62 percent have a presence on LinkedIn (up from 58 percent) and 53 percent have a presence on Twitter (up from 45 percent).

Businesses have clearly taken to these online resources, which bring together large numbers of people who have common interests or personal connections.

“The world revolves around communities. People form and join communities to communicate and collaborate — to get stuff done,” says Reuben Krippner, director of technical product management for Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

“Communities have existed since time began: families, tribes, cities, teams, clubs and interest groups,” Krippner says. “Social technologies have expedited and simplified how people connect and collaborate globally in real time.”

Social networks such as Facebook have been adopted at an unprecedented rate, Krippner says. “Radio took decades to reach 50 million users. Facebook took less than a year to reach 100 million users ,” he says. “The sheer global scale of social networks such as Facebook has connected people unlike any previous mainstream communication technology.”

More and more of Microsoft’s content “is becoming socially friendly, and [we have] enabled the access to popular social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Delicious, etc., to have the customer-sharing content that they consider useful when they are consuming it in our platform,” says Nestor Portillo, worldwide director, Community and Online Support at Microsoft.

Apart from improved collaboration, the use of social media in the enterprise has some obvious benefits. Companies can support the next-generation workforce with tools that reflect how they prefer to interact with others. They can make the most of internal expertise, and can connect seamlessly with an increasingly distributed and mobile workforce.

“When used together, SharePoint and Lync provide powerful capabilities to help [companies] find knowledge experts and collaborate in real time within commonly used Office applications,” says Jared Spataro, senior director of SharePoint product marketing at Microsoft.

“For example, you can use People Search and Expertise Search tools from SharePoint to find contacts directly from your Lync client,” Spataro says. “The Presence capability in Lync lets you easily see whether a colleague is busy, on a call, away or available anywhere you see their name — whether it is from your Lync client, from an Office document or from an update in SharePoint.”

Workers can look up colleagues from other countries and use instant translation in Lync to have an instant messaging conversation in real time, or start a conversation with a colleague by clicking on a comment or edit they had left in a document.
The benefits include greater collaboration, increased productivity and efficiency, Spataro says. An excellent example of this is Revlon, whose global new-product development teams have been using SharePoint and Lync to collaborate on marketing plans.

“Between the collaboration features in SharePoint and the video conferencing in Lync, Revlon has shortened its product development time, allowing the company to increase product output by nearly 300 percent in two years,” Spataro says. “Revlon’s story is a great example of the real, tangible benefits of using SharePoint and Lync together.”

For about 20 years Microsoft has been investing in online communities, “and today we are using our technical communities as an enabler for peer-to-peer conversations” for support, how-to instructions and other collaborative purposes, Portillo says. “This vibrant and active global community allows us to mine the conversations and gather feedback or ideas about our products,” Portillo says.

Microsoft has a broader vision than just a social enterprise, Krippner says. “We are defining a connected and forward-looking enterprise, the successful enterprise of the future; an enterprise that connects its employees, partners and customers to what they need, when they need it, using the device and channel they prefer,” he says.

Connect with Customers Through Social Media

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 05:40:00 GMT

Guest Blog post by Bob Violino

The Internet and social media are making collaboration easier than ever, and many companies are finding that they have an ever-increasing need to allow their employees to be more connected — using tools to share ideas in ways that boost productivity and provide more direct links to customers.

Enabling collaboration and communication using social media tools can help enterprises be more competitive by letting people work in ways that are comfortable to them, accelerating innovation through the sharing of ideas.
Social media has benefits for both external and internal collaboration, and one of the best ways companies can use online media externally is to better connect and engage with their customers.

Companies can put data from social media resources such as Facebook and Twitter into context with existing customer relationship management (CRM) information to quickly respond to new market opportunities or challenges.
From the standpoint of sales and marketing, when social media is used in conjunction with CRM, companies can link social profile data with customer purchase histories so they can learn more about the preferences and interests of particular customer segments.

According to an InformationWeek Social Networking in the Enterprise Survey of 394 business and technology professionals conducted in October 2011, nearly 40 percent of the respondents said that marketing based on branding and promotion efforts was the primary driver in their approach to external social networking.

Businesses can also use social media sites to build customer relationships in an easy, fast and cost-effective way, and harness the power of social networks to help build relationships and communities with their customers by quickly developing applications that take advantage of cloud services to deliver on emerging opportunities.

Microsoft offers a host of technologies, such as SharePoint, Lync and Dynamics CRM, that can help companies reap the benefits of better collaboration with customers as well as business partners. Microsoft is also a big user of social media to engage its own customers.

“The first 10 years of SharePoint were about connecting employees. The next 10 will be about crossing organizational boundaries and making it easier than ever before to connect with customers and partners,” says Jared Spataro, senior director of SharePoint product management.

“There are some great things you can do today in both SharePoint and Lync to connect with your customers,” Spataro says. “Many [organizations] use SharePoint, for example, to create extranets and customer-facing websites. And when you’re looking for more real-time connections, Lync allows federation between organizations and with public instant messaging services. This is an incredibly important area, so watch for more here.”

Microsoft is using social media “to engage our customers, when they want and where they are,” says Nestor Portillo, worldwide director, Community and Online Support at Microsoft. “Social Media is part of our multichannel platform to be accessible for our customers and at the same time engage with them in meaningful conversations.”

The company’s approach in the social media space goes beyond “break-fix” issues with its products, Portillo says. “We are also using social media to listen to our customers and get useful insights [on] how they are using our products and their preferences or wishes, in order to share these with our product groups to evaluate them for future or current versions.”

Social media is also an “amplifier channel” to increase the discoverability among customers of Microsoft’s multimedia content, self-help tools, diagnostic tools and how-to/product documentation, Portillo says.

“By doing this, we are also targeting how our customers want to consume our content,” Portillo says. “We have, in partnership with the product groups, presence on different platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc., where we have a mix of content available for our customers.”

As a global company, Microsoft is also extending the use of social media to non-English languages and local popular platforms.

“Today, our agents are able to ‘rescue,’ for break-fix scenarios; ‘assist,’ for education and how-to scenarios; or ‘guide’ customers,” Portillo says. “In the Twitter space, we are using an internal listening tool to engage with customers that are talking about us but not talking to us. This proactive model has been recognized by journalists as a great model, and our customers have us [@Microsofthelps or the localized version of it] as their contacts.”

Social media technologies provide simple collaboration for employees and new means of understanding and interacting with customers, adds Reuben Krippner, technical product management lead at Microsoft. “However, it is important to put this technology wave in perspective,” he says. “Telephone has not replaced face-to-face meetings; email has not replaced telephone. Social technologies are simply another means for people to connect and interact. Social [media] should be used in the appropriate context. Your customers expect flexibility in the way they engage with you, whether that is via the Web, face-to-face, phone, email and now social [media]."

The Evolution of Today’s CIO

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 05:21:00 GMT

Authored by Mike Walker, Enterprise Strategy and Architecture Chief IP Architect

The face of today’s CIO has changed dramatically. Once upon a time the CIO was only concerned about the business of IT, from the development process and implementation to the operation of the IT world. What these CIO’s have learned, and some the hard way, is that isn’t enough. This narrow view has gotten IT in a load of trouble over the years.

This is manifested in many ways, the first being how consumers leverage our products and services. In 2009, the Better Business Bureau in Vancouver Canada listed Computers and Technology as the number one complaint across all areas.

As shown in the report, computer software and services are worse than those pesky car salesmen hunting you down on their lots. We not only see this from our consumer base but also from within our four walls. It is easier to not look at but there are systemic issues with the business of IT as it is today. As an example, the Standish Group released a report stating that 50% of all technology Initiatives are a waste of money. So what is the CIO to do? Stick with the status quo or make a change? It’s time for a change in how IT is operated.

It used to be that aligning IT with the Business was strategically in vogue for CIOs. And it still is. However there is a fundamental shift elevating the modern role of the CIO to that of not only doing the business of IT, but also transforming and innovating along the way. With 54% of mid-market CIOs viewing IT as the critical enabler of business and organizational vision, CEOs are now looking to the CIO as the trusted enabler, the mainspring for IT solutions that meet the demands of the business, in real-time.

Figure 1: Pressures of the Modern CIO

The traditional lens of the CIO focuses on providing technology platforms that “allow” the business to function while aligning IT priorities with business priorities, reducing solution cost and ensuring proper controls are in place. This is the CIO as Optimizer, immersed and concerned with driving internal IT process, efficiency and responsiveness, keeping pace with the needs of the business.

Today however brings a new set of business pressures that stares the CIO as Optimizer squarely in the eye and asks the question: “How are you helping the business adapt and cope with accelerating changes in market conditions and technology disruptors?” The answer lies within the new-fashioned role of the Transformative CIO.

The 2010 State of the CIO Survey provided by CIO magazine highlighted that nearly nine out of 10 (89 percent) anticipate assuming some additional area of non-IT leadership responsibility three to five years from now, compared to 61 percent who are currently responsible in a leadership capacity for one or more non-IT areas of the business. Security (55 percent), strategy (49 percent), and risk management (41 percent) are most frequently cited by IT leaders as areas they expect to assume leadership responsibility for in the longer term.

The Transformative CIO will help in this fashion by striving to partner with the Business, truly advancing the business relationship beyond pacing alignment. He becomes an expert of industry solutions; understanding, rationalizing and recommending strategies that meet the ever-changing demands of the Business. And as council and advisor to the CEO, he empathizes and takes action on his concerns.

Figure 2: Understanding the Maturity of the Modern CIO

As CIOs gain a foothold with the Business thought process, maturing strategic business value through the IT lens means continuing to find new ways of delivering value, service and cost containment. Enter the CIO as Innovator. He sees that in order to support business growth, he must be out ahead of the game solving real strategic business problems through innovation.

The new CIO also provides clarity of IT utility by understanding how competition can affect the company and by making strategic big bets on emerging technologies that are directly in line with business goals. He truly believes in a business first organization. In fact, fully 70% of the CIOs surveyed in the 2010 State of the CIO report said long-term strategic thinking and planning will be most critically needed in the coming year.

CIOs are starting to realize this in a substantial way. CIOs are actively moving their focus to not only the transformational areas in partnership with the business but also in an innovative role as well. The 2010 State of the CIO Survey also includes an interesting point that 54% of CIO’s will focus their time and energy on driving business innovation. That is a substantial amount of time for any role, especially the CIO. This will completely change the tone of the IT organization.

The modern CIO is one who not only understands the mechanical aspects of IT but also harmonizes the elements of IT culture, business maturity and industry innovation. And by having a seat at the business decision table, embracing enterprise architecture and running IT as a utility, he or she can incubate these elements in to a set of enablers the business can count on.

The pressure to deliver beyond the traditional role of the CIO is evolving in to a key asset for CEOs. A blend of CIO as Optimizer, Transformer and Innovator provides a powerful profile mix that amidst the constant of change will emerge a stronger and more service-focused business partnership with IT. After all, without IT there is no Business. Or is it the other way around?

CIO Perspectives: Big Data and SQL Server 2012

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 07:59:00 GMT

Take a sneak peek at some of the buzz around Big Data at the Microsoft's recent US CIO Summit in Redmond, WA. CIOs share their thoughts on opportunities around Big Data and how SQL Server 2012 will help their companies lead the way in this new world of data.

The Data Deluge

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 07:58:00 GMT

Take an exclusive look into the Microsoft US Spring 2012 CIO Summit as Kenneth Cukier, Data Editor from the Economist shares his thoughts on the data deluge.

Is "big data" on your agenda? According to most analysts, it should be. How a business uses data today has significant implications for how competitive can be. As data volumes continue to explode, the challenge is not only how to store and manage that data but also (and equally importantly) how to use analytics to effectively derive insight from the data to make smarter business decisions. How can you transform the raw data available to your business-both captured by your systems and available through public and commercial sources-into business value and strategic advantage?

In this session, Kenneth Cukier, Data Editor for The Economist, will look at why big data has become one of the most important topics for both technology and business leaders today and the opportunities (and challenges) that big data represents for every enterprise.

Want to hear more from Kenn? follow his blog at http://www.cukier.com/ or on Twitter: @kncukier.

Bruno Aziza on Big Data

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 07:50:00 GMT

Bruno Aziza, Director Product Marketing, Microsoft Server and Tools Business

Microsoft’s BI expert, Bruno Aziza shares his perspectives around Big Data including: opportunities and challenges associated with Big Data, ideas on the role Big data can play in driving success as companies evolve and grow and best practices from companies who are leveraging SQL Server 2012 to help advance their data integrity and improve business insights.

Join Us : Microsoft Virtual CIO Summit, April 24, 2012

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 09:44:00 GMT

Jordan Chrysafidis, Vice President, US SMS&P, Microsoft Corporation

I would like to personally invite you join me on April 24, 2012 at 8:30am (PST) as I host the 2nd Annual US CIO Summit Virtual Event. This exclusive event will be broadcast live from MS Studios in Redmond, WA and feature session presentations and interviews with Microsoft leading solution experts to help you solve for today’s real-world IT challenges.

The US CIO Summit virtual experience focuses on the role of strategic executives of IT organizations as business leaders, innovators and drivers of new revenue streams for their corporations. This unique event will showcase the ‘best of’ the CIO Summit offering content and experiences exclusive only to the virtual broadcast.

During the 4 hour broadcast, you’ll have an opportunity to learn more about solutions to meet your business challenges including:

• BI for the Enterprise
• Office Productivity
• Private Cloud and Infrastructure
• Windows & The Transformation to Devices
• CRM and ERP for the enterprise

You will also have the chance to download related session materials, share ideas and ask questions to Microsoft experts and executives through chat rooms and live Q&A.
I know your time is valuable and I hope you will join me from the convenience of your office or home. You’ll have the flexibility to tune in for the full broadcast or view only the sessions that are most important to you. I appreciate your investment in time and thought leadership. I will be honored to have you join me for this exciting virtual event.

Regards,
Jordan Chrysafidis
Vice President, US SMS&P
Microsoft Corporation

Owens & Minor: IT Modernization Effort Funds Itself

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 09:27:00 GMT

Interviewed with Rick Mears, by Bob Violino, TechWeb

When Owens & Minor, Inc., a Richmond, Va., distributor of medical and surgical supplies and a healthcare supply-chain management company, needed to move its business applications to a more cost-effective platform, it migrated its custom code to the Windows Server 2008 environment. By moving mainframe applications such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) to the Windows Server 2008 operating system, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 data management software and server-based hardware, the company created a much more cost-effective computing platform that provides agility and the ability to adapt to changing requirements.

We spoke with Rick Mears, senior vice president and CIO at Owens & Minor, about how this updated IT environment has opened up new opportunities for the company.

How can modernizing an application portfolio and platform help organizations build a more agile IT operation that supports rapid change?

Mears: The primary reason is as you create new products and services, to improve value to your existing customers as well as to enter new markets, if you to try to simply use your existing legacy technology for each new service or new product, it’s just not a workable strategy. On the other hand it’s not wise to implement new systems for each and every new business.

How is your company taking advantage of the modernization of its application portfolio and IT infrastructure?

Mears: We are not unlike many companies that are looking to build new, relevant businesses and services to further support our customers, and we need our technology to support those efforts. Our IT modernization strategy is [not only to] improve what we’ve done in the past, but to extend our capabilities beyond current markets. And in order to do that we are making sure, as we enhance our systems, that we don’t just implement a bunch of new stovepiped systems. We set out to update and enhance our suite of capabilities to support our entire enterprise consistently.

For example, one of the areas we are focused on is master data management. We look at all of our current businesses and new businesses that we are entering and we aim to have a consistency around customers, products, suppliers, pricing and even employees. Those are five areas where we want to have consistent data and not stovepipe data around the company. This gives us consistency around how we view those things, and we feel that’s core for us as a technology group. A risk of any business is to wind up with separate data stores for each business process or for each business unit or department. Our master data management approach how allowed us to avoid that.

We are also investing heavily in e-commerce, building Web portals for our customers and our suppliers to really create a deeper integration with them and to improve supply chain visibility. End-to-end supply chain visibility is so critical for us. Updating our IT environment to the Windows Server platform really set the stage for these efforts.

What are some of the other benefits you’re seeing from the IT modernization efforts, such as cost efficiencies?

Mears: One of the aspects of our approach that we’re most proud of is that it funds itself. It does require some capital investment, but it’s not increasing our operating expenses. The way we achieve that is through the operating expense savings that are generated by the new environment. We get recurring savings by migrating our customer ERP system off a mainframe platform. The Microsoft computing platform is significantly less expensive.

Also, we are shortening the time to market for new services and products. We can now launch many new services, such as a logistics business, in one quarter rather than in a year.

How does a CIO get buy-in from senior management, such as the CEO or CFO, for an IT modernization effort?

Mears: I think that one of the keys is that recurring operating expense for IT is always going to be scarce. One of the biggest benefits of our approach is that with these migrations we are going from a high total cost of ownership platform to a lower-cost computing platform. We are not increasing our recurring operating costs. Also, we need to diversify and create new products and services and enter new customer markets, and if your technology platforms support the necessary speed-to-market at no incremental cost, then that’s a pretty compelling approach. We demonstrated a business plan for doing this. Fortunately our management team understands the value of technology and is not just looking to take the operating expense savings to the bottom line. We understand how important IT is to our efforts to continue to innovate.

Does modernization help IT become more of an agent of change at your company?

Mears: It really makes it possible for us to come up with new, innovative services and products that we believe make us a better company and that can serve our customers better. This allows us to go from concept to reality much quicker and in a much more cost-effective manner.

A Modern Application Portfolio Makes CIOs Agents of Change

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 09:17:00 GMT

Written by Bob Violino, TechWeb

No matter what industry a company is in and whatever the size of its operations, chances are it is looking for ways to enable IT to better address the ever-changing needs of management, end users, customers and partners -- all while continuing to innovate and invest in strategic priorities.

The reality is, time and financial constraints are forcing many CIOs to make difficult choices when it comes to meeting business needs. One strategy that’s taking hold at enterprises is to build an agile IT environment—one that’s able to support the rapid pace of business change—and the way to do that is to modernize the application portfolio and platform.

“By modernizing applications, by definition you are moving them through various methods such as rewriting, rehosting or replacing in order to run on the modern platform,” says Scott Rosenbloom, platform modernization specialist at Microsoft.

“What makes these platforms ‘modern’ is the use of frameworks, rules engines, OO [object-oriented] technologies and service-oriented architectures, among other elements that make it easier to modify applications once deployed,” Rosenbloom says. “Also, many functions of legacy applications were typically done in code because that was all that was available. Today, many of these functions are replaced by built-in functionality.”

For example, historically, many programs were written whose sole task was to generate reports. “Today, on SQL Server, that work can be done declaratively, and further, end users can customize the reports themselves — saving huge IT backlogs and making the information more relevant for that user’s purpose,” Rosenbloom says.

Another example is workflow. “In many organizations, approvals must flow through an organization, such as a purchase order or expense report,” Rosenbloom says. “Historically, this would all be captured in code. If a change had to be made to the workflow, [for example, if a new regulation required purchase orders over $1,000 to be signed off by a vice president], you would have to write additional code.”

Today, that can be done more efficiently through tools such as SharePoint or BizTalk, and as a result companies are able to react quickly to changing requirements.

One company that’s launched a modernization effort and is reaping the benefits is Owens & Minor Inc., a Richmond, Va., distributor of medical and surgical supplies and a health care supply-chain management company.

In 2009, the company began moving its enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform off an aging IBM mainframe environment to a Windows Server and SQL Server platform. The older platform was running out of capacity, and was inflexible and costly to run. It would take the company weeks to write and run custom reports, and months to implement software updates, limiting its ability to respond to fast-changing business needs.

To move business applications to a more modern, cost-effective platform, Owens & Minor elected to migrate — rather than replace or rewrite — its custom code to the Windows Server 2008 environment, says Rick Mears, senior vice president and CIO at Owens & Minor.

“We are not unlike many companies that are looking to build new, relevant businesses, products and services to further support our existing and new customers,” and an IT update supports that, Mears says.

By moving the mainframe applications to the Windows Server 2008 operating system, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 data management software and server-based hardware, the company created a much more cost-effective computing platform that provided agility and the ability to adapt to changing requirements.

With the savings in operating expenses made possible by the move, Owens & Minor was able to invest in other IT endeavors to improve the business and further enhance its IT environment, Mears says. These include a master data management system to generate more consistent information about customers; and e-commerce Web portals for customers and suppliers, which enhance the company’s supply chain visibility.

Most modernization projects will include several elements: including retire, retain, replace, rehost and rewrite, Rosenbloom says. “They are not necessarily a process, flowing one to the next, but are options a customer can take to modernize its environment,” he says.

A company might use several of these approaches in parallel or in succession. “For example, [the company] might rehost the application to derive quick savings on total cost of ownership and then reinvest those savings into rewriting the application over time to better serve its needs,” Rosenbloom says.

Through modernization of the application portfolio, CIOs can become agents of change for their organizations.

“By doing a thorough job of managing their application portfolio, they will finally have the visibility they need to perform strategic planning,” Rosenbloom says.
Many organizations have multiple ERP systems, reporting systems, etc., because new solutions are added in silos without a cross-enterprise perspective, Rosenbloom says. “Once you have that, it is far easier to determine priorities and limit redundancies — all with an eye on understanding what applications within your infrastructure provide the most value and therefore can have the most impact on a modernization strategy,” he says.

For more information on IT modernization, check out the full interview with Owens & Minor’s Senior Vice President and CIO, Rick Mears.

Is it Still Big Data If It Fits In Your Pocket?

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 09:06:00 GMT

Presented by Dave Campbell, Microsoft Technical Fellow from the Strata Online Conference on Wednesday, 12/07/11

Big Data is all the rage. While the big data systems, patterns, and value were initially demonstrated at Petabyte scale with large scale Internet services, Big Data is applicable in any organization, regardless of organization size or volume of data. In fact, many early adopters of Big Data technologies in the commercial space are seeing significant top and bottom line enhancements through their use of these emerging technologies. The ultimate question is around new business value gets created out of the abundant “ambient data” produced by existing and emerging IT systems. How do we transform these raw data into new knowledge that matters for the business in an efficient fashion?

Microsoft Fellow David Campbell has spent time over the last several years trying to answer many of these questions to his own satisfaction, particularly determining how "data finds data" and how to turn data into knowledge in new ways. As part of the journey he's witnessed a number of natural patterns that emerge in big data processing as well as encountered many companies that are understanding how to think differently about their data influx and use technology as a key differentiator in this strategy. In this short talk he will present examples of success from several industries and describe several Big Data patterns and illustrate them across a scale spectrum from megabytes to 100s of petabytes. Finally, he will offer some thoughts around how the market may evolve in response to these opportunities.

Design-Led Business Transformation

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 08:42:00 GMT

Guest Blog post by Roy Sharples, Principal, Enterprise Strategy Services, Microsoft Corporation and Fred Warren, Lead Architect, Office of CTO, Microsoft UK

Putting people and culture right at the center of the experience

We have always identified with the way “outsiders” and maverick designers thought about the world around them and the inhabitants within it. We admire they go about solving problems and/or see new opportunities by creating new innovative experiences, products, and/or services that have a deep connection by putting people and culture right at the center of the design. In many cases, it may be said that the more you build solutions in this spirit, the higher probability that they’ll be a sustainable success.

A resounding example of this of is the famous Fallingwater house by Frank Lloyd Wright, designed in 1935. The house remains one of the most visited houses in the world. In terms of approach, Frank spoke to the clients beforehand and asked them what they wanted. They said they wanted a house that was part of the country. Perhaps they expected a house looking at the waterfall? What the design gave them was a house over the waterfall. It really made the house part of the country. Inside the house, you constantly hear the waterfall. It is a part of the experience of the house. He knew deeply the needs of his client and delivered a vision, and ultimately a solution, that met those needs. The functional, but beautiful, design remains an inspiration today. It still retains its beauty and is timeless!

Of course, design is always subject to personal taste, though arguably great designers tend to share a common set of values that inspire innovation and creativity, resulting in customer-centric solutions that often endure. This can be pinned to creativity, being bold and brave, thinking from the outside, inside, top, bottom and sideways, a high degree of collaborative, or an intense focus on the customer experience.

Applying this thinking and practice to the enterprise, we’re increasingly seeing more and more customers move towards this approach, specifically related to how they differentiate themselves from their competition and create new market space. Business and technology leaders have opportunities in these two realms to contribute to design-led business transformation:

Competitive differentiation

In-depth identification of the intangible qualities of competitors and how those qualities create an experience aligned to a brand proposition as a part of an overall brand architecture.
Decompose competitive threats from existing competition, new entrants, substitutes or changes to market conditions beyond accepted understanding, traditional market research or financial comparison will help refine the potential areas for differentiation.

New market space

Deeply understand the needs, wants and desires of consumers outside of the focused set of existing products or services.
Explore the potential products or services that can reshape the market norms.

To capitalize on these opportunities, our customers are asking us for a complete and mission relevant engagement

The Microsoft approach is geared towards improving traditional sequential delivery models in terms of the quality and impact of the output, as well as reducing the overall time that would have been spent to achieve similar results using another method. This means helping co-create new value with our clients, improving our strategic relevance, and accelerating the deployment of initiatives using our technology in a manner that ensures a more sustained and substantial engagement. We identify and define previously undiscovered and often surprising opportunities for our clients, such as new market space or direct differentiation.

By looking at the problem from a business concept, technology concept and experience concept design point of view, it’s at the point of convergence between these that we find the breakthrough potential, helping get the organizational values, balance and structure right to better foster continuous transformation. We use the term ‘design’ because it encompasses intentional outcome and ambition, applied creativity (innovation) and experimentation, research and prototyping, aesthetics and human response, and market and business response.

Approach for Design-Led Business Transformation

Microsoft is expert at undertaking complex challenges and bringing clarity to define simple, elegant and valuable solutions, through proven multi-disciplinary approach, removal of inefficiencies and costly rework of sequential research and analysis models. We use unique insight and experience with an unparalleled technology portfolio. Learn more by visiting the Enterprise Strategy website or email goesph@microsoft.com to speak to us directly.

Do We Have The Tools We Need To Navigate The New World Of Data?

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 08:36:00 GMT

Presented by Dave Campbell, Microsoft Technical Fellow at the Strata 2012 conference in Santa Clara, CA on Wednesday, 02/29/12

In a world where data increasing 10x every 5 years and 85% of that information is coming from new data sources, how do our existing technologies to manage and analyze data stack up? This talk discusses some of the key implications that Big Data will have on our existing technology infrastructure and where do we need to go as a community and ecosystem to make the most of the opportunity that lies ahead.

Download and share the presentation with your colleagues.

O’Reilly Media Interview with Dave Campbell

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 02:23:00 GMT

Interview with Dave Campbell, Microsoft Technical Fellow at the Strata 2012 conference in Santa Clara, CA in February 2012

O’Reilly Media sits down with Microsoft Technical Fellow, Dave Campbell to discuss topics related to Big Data. Listen to Dave share his thoughts about today’s technology infrastructure, managing the recent influx of data, and the tools and systems needed. He also touches on the evolution of marketplaces over the next few years and whether they will be the primary area for data discovery. Lastly, Dave defines ambient data and how he sees companies putting it to use today.

SQL Server 2012 Virtual Launch Event!

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 04:59:00 GMT

By Eugene Saburi, General Manager, SQL Server Marketing Team

We are excited about the launch of SQL Server 2012. Please join us for SQL Server 2012 Virtual Launch Event kicks off on March 7, 2012 starting at 8:00AM Pacific (-8:00 GMT) with keynotes from Microsoft Executives including: Ted Kummert, Corporate Vice President, Business Platform Division and Quentin Clark, Corporate Vice President, Database Systems Group. Following the keynotes, you’ll have access to over 30 sessions to learn about the new capabilities of SQL Server 2012 at your own pace, on your own schedule.

The following sessions below are recommended for CIOs and IT Decision Makers who are interested in learning more about the business value that SQL Server 2012 offers. In these sessions you’ll hear from industry analysts, thought leaders and real-world customers on top-of-mind topics, including Big Data, Business Intelligence, Hybrid IT and the importance of an enterprise-ready data platform. Highlights include a session by Microsoft Technical Fellow Dave Campbell on the importance of Business Intelligence and Big Data to today’s leading enterprises, a Forrester Research session on SQL Server 2012’s business value, and a session featuring social networking analysis site Klout on how they leverage SQL Server Analysis Services to gain a sustainable competitive advantage.

Register today at www.sqlserverlaunch.com for the SQL Server 2012 Virtual Launch Event and start adding the recommended sessions below to your calendars.

Breakthrough Insights with Microsoft Big Data
Are you wondering how to extract insights in a world where data is expected to grow by up to 44 times by 2020, with 85% of it coming from new sources? This session will outline how Microsoft’s Big Data solution enables you to unlock insights on all your data, including structured and unstructured data of any size. Through integration of Hadoop with powerful BI tools such as PowerPivot and Power View in SQL Server 2012, Microsoft empowers you to analyze all your data, including unstructured data from Hadoop.
Duration : 20 Minutes

Unlocking the Value of Big Data with Microsoft Business Intelligence
Klout is a groundbreaking company that extracts signals from social networks to determine which people are most influential. Hadoop is a core part of how Klout captures and processes over 3 billion signals daily, however translating and analyzing these signals into meaningful information requires a scalable and cost effective business intelligence solution. That’s where Microsoft SQL Server 2012 comes in, delivering “speed of thought” ad hoc queries, with response times of under 10 seconds on 35 billion rows of data. Learn more about Big Data and BI best practices in this session.
Duration : 20 Minutes

Independent Research on SQL Server 2012
Register for this session to join our guests Noel Yuhanna and Jeffrey North of Forrester Research to get first-hand insight into the benefits of SQL Server 2012.
Duration : 20 Minutes

Building the Modern Enterprise with Hybrid IT
In today’s modern enterprise you will likely have applications across multiple deployment environments from the Traditional non-virtualized, to Private and Public Clouds. This session will outline Microsoft’s Hybrid IT strategy and associated solutions to help you optimize your IT environment and your application portfolio. The session will focus on the database intensive application scenarios to illustrate the value a Hybrid IT environment can bring to your enterprise.
Duration : 20 Minutes

If you’re interested in learning more about these topics and how SQL Server 2012 provides an innovative, flexible information platform that delivers all this and more, you won’t want to miss the SQL Server 2012 Virtual Launch Event on March 7!

Visit http://www.sqlserverlaunch.com for more information and I hope to see you online!

Businesses Change the Game with Technology

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 04:33:00 GMT

By Bob Violino, TechWeb

The business world is becoming much more mobile, and the workforce more technologically savvy. At the same time, new opportunities are arising in cloud computing, social media, “Big Data” and data analytics.

CIOs who take advantage of these trends have a chance to add value to their enterprises, and be seen as strategic business partners, like never before. Those who choose to ignore them risk having their organizations be trounced by the competition.

Companies that want to create lasting value “must be able to reinvent themselves and adapt to near constant change,” says Julio Ottino, dean of the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. “It's critical for organizations to build teams that can identify opportunities and adapt quickly to this new world.”

Adopting this strategy can have a significant impact on organizations. For example, business intelligence (BI)/analytics and Big Data—extremely large volumes of structured and unstructured information—can help uncover new insights and magnify the value of knowledge; the cloud can be a platform for innovation and cost savings; and mobile devices can give users unprecedented access to applications and information and boost productivity.

“Information technology has already entered a Big Data era,” Ottino says. “Our handheld devices have computing power that shames the 1970s-era IBM mainframe, and we finally have the computational power to see simplicity within complex data. From social media to medical revolutions anchored in metadata analyses, we are on the cusp of new markets that were previously unimaginable.”

Avanade, an IT services provider in Seattle, is using technologies such as BI, cloud computing and mobile apps to gain a competitive edge and to make more timely and effective business decisions. Says Chris Miller, CIO of Avanade, “We actively embrace this data-driven culture where executives, employees and strategic partners are active participants in managing a meaningful data life cycle.”

The IT organization plays a key role in continually evolving the tools and processes available to more effectively collaborate, share information and make business decisions, Miller says. “We are also looking to [deploy] business intelligence capabilities to improve the effectiveness of our sales efforts, including targeting the right level of business development to the appropriate customers,” he says. Avanade has developed a new approach for customer segmentation by using the information from various systems to accurately assess and categorize customers.

Avanade is also developing several enterprise mobile applications, such as a time-and-expenses app for workers to capture expenses and manage their time from anywhere. With mobile applications that deliver business value, “We believe we can increase the productivity and engagement of our highly mobile and connected workforce,” Miller says. “We are also working on applications that will connect employee mobile devices with Avanade’s enterprise social computing capabilities, including employee profile pages, microblogging, video and media sharing, search, communities and blogs.”

The company is also utilizing cloud computing. Over the years it has been evolving its data center environment into a private cloud offering called Dynamic Computing Service (DCS). “Avanade consultants have used the self-service capabilities of DCS to quickly and cheaply develop thousands of solutions for customers,” Miller says. “By providing rapid access to development hosting capabilities and tools, DCS has delivered an important competitive advantage for Avanade that has helped drive the company’s success.”

Another company that’s taking advantage of game-changing technology, Biogen Idec in Weston, Mass., has launched efforts in mobile device usage, app stores and cloud computing. In the past 12 months the biotech company has equipped its sales force and other customer-facing representatives with tablets, and developed the Biogen Idec App Store to provide access to applications the company has created, says Greg Meyers, vice president, global IT.

The apps include customer relationship management (CRM) and specialized apps that show which insurers reimburse for certain medicines and for how much. The mobile applications are making sales calls much more effective, Meyers says. Most recently, Biogen Idec launched an “e-detail” app that allows sales reps to easily show physicians statistical highlights from publications and articles that might otherwise be difficult to find.” This is improving our ability to educate physicians on our drugs and the benefits they offer to patients,” Meyers says.

The company is using cloud computing services in Europe to support the data needs of its European operations. “Rather than having to build out data center capacity in Europe, we've found that cloud computing allows us to provide high-performing applications that are geographically local,” Meyers says. “We've strategically begun to replace premises-based, frequently used applications such as CRM systems and move toward a cloud model.”

As long as there isn't a lot of customization or technical integration needed, cloud-based applications can offer companies such as Biogen lower total cost of ownership, faster deployment times and better usability, Meyers says.

IT in general is under pressure to move faster in today’s business environment, Meyers says. “The speed at which information is available to competitors [creates] a pressure for IT to find ways to capitalize on these opportunities,” he says. “There is just an expectation that IT can implement new capabilities quickly and can do it in a climate where budgets are flat [or] down year over year. It will require innovation and agility to adjust to this new concept.”

From Information to Insights

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 23:05:00 GMT

An interview with Dave Mariani, Vice President of Engineering, Klout

Social networking analysis site Klout is in the business of measuring online influence. Vice President of Engineering David Mariani explains how deriving insight from large volumes of data is key to the company’s success.

How does Klout benefit from collecting data on its users’ online activities?

Data is at the heart of our business; it’s what makes the Klout value proposition possible. We process billions of user data signals – posts coming from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or blogs, as well as retweets, “likes,” and mentions – from the social web every day, and with that data we help users leverage their digital voice and help brands connect with key influencers. Just like search engines came up with page ranks to help people sort through all the documents on the web and surface the most relevant content for search, we do the same thing for people. We help influencers in a number of different areas reach their audience.

How do you make sense of all this data you collect?

There are billions of signals, and a lot of it is noise, so we have to pair analytics and science to filter out the noise. In order to do so, we store and process large quantities of very granular data with Hadoop, which is a Java-based programming framework that supports the processing of large data sets in a distributed computing environment. We don’t want to aggregate the data too soon, since you never really know what you need to do with the data until trends and insights reveal themselves. Hadoop is great for storing and processing lots of data cheaply, but it’s not great at doing any kind of interactive analysis or querying. So we use Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services as a super index or cache that we put on top of Hadoop to be able to take advantage of all that raw data and query it at scale. We picked SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) because it’s a full-featured business intelligence engine that provides a true business view of our data in the form of a cube with measures and dimensions, delivering a rich semantic layer on top of raw, unstructured Hadoop data; it’s also inexpensive, has widespread query tool support, great documentation and most importantly it scales. If you have to run a query and go have a cup of coffee it’s not as valuable as being able to do it at the speed of thought and get answers the second you hit the keyboard. Our average query time is under 10 seconds, and we’re talking about accessing almost half a trillion rows of data.

Why is being able to mine this data so important?

Klout generates information from data. If we were just collecting and storing signals there’s no value. So we have to have a foundation for collecting and storing data, but it’s the science and intelligence that allows us to create information from data and gives Klout users and partners the value they’re looking for.

Can you give an example of insight you gained from analyzing data that has helped your business?

Sure, one trend we uncovered using Microsoft’s BI tools was that the average Klout user retweets 15 times more than a non-Klout user on Twitter, and a Klout user tends to have 13 times as many Twitter followers than non-Klout users. This means we can tell Twitter that a Klout user will be a lot more active on their network, so there’s more value created and more opportunity to monetize.

Also, we’re working on new consumer tools that use this business intelligence to identify exactly what kind of content has the most impact. So when you tweet something we can tell if someone else did something with it, or if it fell on deaf ears. It all comes down to using business intelligence to be able to identify what kind of content is valuable and important, and which is not.

Watch the CIO Forum interview with Dave Mariani from Klout.

Meet the Experts Live: What is the Impact of Social CRM?

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 22:18:00 GMT

Join Microsoft® Dynamics CRM Director and industry expert, Matt Keenan, as he breaks through all the hype and shares his point of view on the importance of understanding the stakeholders in your social communities. In this session, he will focus on how Internal Communities can be designed to support new forms of communication and collaboration that can greatly improve team and individual productivity.

Join us Tuesday, March 8^th at 2PM EST as we explore:

How Social CRM can help you leverage online interactions to grow your business
Why your Internal Communities should be the foundation of your social media strategy
The pillars of Search, Connect, Collaborate, and Understand

Also, don’t miss the new blog series on Social CRM. Watch Part One now.

Automated Global Solution Helps GroupM Capture Multiple Data Sources From Its Agencies Worldwide

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 21:51:00 GMT

GroupM Customer Story

Turning to Avanade to address its collaboration challenges, GroupM is now empowered with an automated global solution which helps to easily capture multiple data sources from its agencies worldwide.

Business Situation

With 400 offices in 81 countries around the world and global staff strength of over 18,000, GroupM’s success and track record continues to grow as one of the world’s leading media investment management group. A truly global business operation, GroupM’s principal challenge was in the collaboration and consolidation of information and data across its many offices around the world. Existing processes to generate and collate global client reports were inefficient and could take up to a month to create the reports, thus hindering operations and speed-to-market.

Solution

Avanade developed an automated solution that would help GroupM extract, transform, and load (ETL) data to a global data warehouse to help track and capture complex data on ‘the state of advertising’. Leveraging Microsoft technologies, the first phase of the global project was implemented across three key markets in the UK, Mexico and Thailand. The solution deployed by Avanade automatically collects and consolidates data from each country’s local source systems into a local data warehouse, and from there it is automatically replicated into the global data warehouse without user intervention.

Results

GroupM is now empowered with an automated global solution which helps capture multiple data sources from its agencies worldwide. Client account teams can easily generate local and global cross-market reports via a streamlined and simplified process, thus reducing the long hours needed to manually complete the task. GroupM now has the ability to drive collaboration with its global offices and derive insights to make more informed decisions.

Embracing the Private Cloud

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 22:23:00 GMT

Jean-Philippe Courtois, President Microsoft International

As we begin a new calendar year, we’ve been excited to read analysts’ predictions that 2012 will be the year that many companies truly embrace cloud computing. Today, Microsoft is the only cloud provider which offers the full spectrum of cloud services spanning public, hybrid and private clouds. This choice of models enables you to build and consume cloud services from your datacenter, our datacenter and/or a partner’s datacenter. We expect that most organizations will choose some mix of all three models and that those preferences will evolve along with business needs. At Microsoft, we’d like partner with you along each step of your journey to the cloud.

For many of you, the first step will be into the private cloud. It’s here that you can begin to appreciate the advantage of cloud, reap its benefits, and increase your understanding of and comfort levels with cloud technologies. With that experience under your belt, you may feel more comfortable moving certain workloads to the public cloud, where your advantages only increase. But for this post, I will focus my comments on the private cloud. As I meet with customers around the world, there are four things about the Microsoft private cloud that I advise them to think about as they plan their own implementations.

First it’s all about the application. Microsoft is way ahead of VMware in understanding and managing your applications and services. Core business value lies in your applications, and we provide you deep application insight. We don’t stop at just managing infrastructure or virtual machines. Through System Center, we’re bringing our learning from building and operating public cloud services to your private cloud.

Secondly, the Microsoft platform is open and provides you choice. In the past we have supported multiple hyper-visors (e.g. ESX), and with System Center 2012 we are adding Citrix and supporting all of the big three. This means you can build a private cloud across anyone of these hyper-visors, picking the best one for your workload and run it in a Microsoft environment. The benefits of this cross platform approach is that you can use what you have.

Third is best-in-class performance. The simple fact is that the workloads that matter most run best on Hyper-V. Microsoft was included in the leader quadrant of Gartner’s 2011 Magic Quadrant for x86 Server Virtualization Infrastructure, in recognition of our vision and execution in this space.

Fourth and perhaps most importantly, Microsoft is committed to providing cloud on your terms – understanding that you will likely want to invest in physical, virtual, private and public cloud computing models.

We often hear from our customers that they worry about security and compliance, and these are valid concerns especially as we think about the consumerization of IT. The IT systems you manage are increasingly complex, so the demands being placed on you to understand and support the full IT landscape are expansive. Microsoft can provide you with both the peace of mind and the technology solutions to help.

All around the world today, we’re seeing public and private sector alike embrace the private cloud, and I’d like to tell you about one of these customers today.

The National Bank of Kuwait, in an effort to upgrade a legacy mainframe-based system, recently virtualized 75 percent of its servers for an astonishing 40% savings! The Bank is also benefitting greatly from the scale provided by the cloud. The holy month of Ramadan is its busiest period of the year, with many more customers visiting the bank in that month versus the average, making cash withdrawals in preparation for the celebrations at the end of the month, which include giving children gifts. This increases the demands on its banking applications, and the day after observances end, Internet and telephone banking spike as much as 300%! Virtualization and the private cloud are helping the Bank to easily scale up with demand in this peak period.

While previously the Bank’s IT department focused its efforts on provisioning servers, the private cloud infrastructure has freed up the department’s time to focus on delivering new services, such as mobile banking, that not only support the business but help move it forward.

It’s been fantastic to see momentum with customers like this one building around the private cloud. One development that we believe will help accelerate that adoption even more is a new partnership we announced in early December with HP. Our two companies have joined forces on a global, four-year initiative to jointly deliver Microsoft’s communications and collaboration solutions to large corporations and governments via the cloud. There were public, private and hybrid cloud components to the announcement, which you can read about here. Initially available in Australia, Canada, the U.K. and the U.S., we expect to expand the offering broadly to countries across Latin America, Europe and Asia. This partnership dramatically increases our global coverage for private cloud, helping our joint customers worldwide, particularly in regulated industries like financial services and public sector, to be able to meet demanding requirements for functionality and service levels.

We’re also proud to be working with service providers around the world which offer infrastructure as a finished, fully hosted service built on Microsoft technology. This option delivers a fast, cost-effective implementation for cloud services, both private and public. Service providers include Korean Internet Data Center; Fasthosts (U.K., U.S.); Agarik (France); and Hostway Corp. (U.S., U.K., Netherlands, Germany, France, Belgium, Romania), amongst others.

We are hearing from you that in these times of economic uncertainty, investing in technology to help you do more with less has never been more critical. We believe that cloud technologies can offer tremendous advantages, and we want to help you reap the benefits of the economics of private cloud. So I’ll leave you with this good news: as you get more efficient and increase your VM density, the cost per VM goes down, as our licensing options allow for unlimited virtualized instances and we don’t charge per-VM. There’s simply never been a better time to look at the private or hybrid cloud models, no matter where in the world you are. We look forward to the opportunity to help you realize your full potential in the cloud.