Viewpoints

Microsoft Data Center Tour

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 05:49:00 GMT

Where is the Microsoft Cloud? In reality, it exists in globally distributed data center infrastructure, connected through a worldwide fiber optic network. This infrastructure supports over 200 online services, including Bing®, Hotmail®, MSN®, Office 365, Windows Live®, X-Box Live®, and the Windows Azure™ platform. Microsoft has been operating data centers since 1989, and we continue to make significant strategic investments in this area each year. Take a tour of one of Microsoft’s Data Center.

A Day In The Microsoft Cloud

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 05:43:00 GMT

Global Foundation Services (GFS) is the engine that powers Microsoft's cloud services. They focus on smart growth, high reliability, operational excellence, cost-effectiveness, environmental sustainability, and a trustworthy online experience for customers and partners worldwide. GFS delivers the core infrastructure and foundational technologies for Microsoft's over 200 online businesses. The infrastructure is comprised of a large global portfolio of data centers, servers, content distribution networks, edge computing nodes, and fiber optic networks. Their portfolio is built and managed by a team of subject matter experts working 24x7x365 to support services for more than 1 billion customers and 20 million businesses in over 76 markets worldwide. Dayne Sampson, CVP Global Foundation Services (GFS), discusses Microsoft's approach to operational excellence and how Global Foundation Services innovates to drive greater data center performance, efficiency, and reliability.

To learn more read the Global Foundation Services blog.

Economic Adaptability, business drivers and strategy for a private cloud

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 05:35:00 GMT

Written by Bryan McMillan, Architect, Microsoft Services

Businesses today are challenged to become more agile to facilitate their ability to innovate. To be competitive, IT departments must operate in an increasingly challenging economic environment, spend more time delivering new value, and do it more quickly while assimilating disruptive technologies.

IT departments are responding to these multiple requirements by exploring and adopting new computing models. Unfortunately, the immaturity of the public cloud, especially with respect to governance, risk management, and compliance (GRC), precludes many enterprises from contemplating it as an option. The remaining feasible options are private cloud and hybrid cloud.

Download the white paper that presents the primary business drivers that cause enterprises to consider using private clouds, and introduces the real options valuation method for evaluating private cloud strategies.

Window Maker Improves IT Service Delivery, Efficiency with Hyper-V Private Cloud

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 05:31:00 GMT

Pella has long been a trusted name in home and commercial construction, making beautifully crafted, energy-efficient windows and doors. But the construction business has been tough lately. Pella is a just in time manufacturer committed to continuous improvement and efficiency in all facets of its business. Watch the video to find our why Pella’s IT staff supports this efficiency by moving its virtualized data center from VMware to Microsoft private cloud software—the Hyper-V technology in Windows Server 2008 R2 and Microsoft System Center 2012. With the switch, Pella is able to reduce IT inefficiencies and move to a measurable, service-oriented IT model. It can focus its IT staff on new business initiatives rather than on server management and give them a more rewarding work environment. “We’re a pretty lean organization, and by ‘lean,’ I mean not only that we have a small staff but that we focus on things that matter,” Thomas says. “With virtualization, we eliminated many of the tasks associated with deploying servers and resolving hardware problems. But we wanted to become a true service-oriented organization, where we define the services that we provide and drive measurable improvements through metrics. We thought that the flexibility of cloud computing was the way to get there.” Watch the video to learn how Pella consulted with FyrSoft, a member of the Microsoft Partner Network with a Gold competency in Systems Management and a specialty in building cloud solutions using Microsoft software. FyrSoft helped Pella analyze its workload data, determine if the migration was feasible, and devise a migration plan.

Windows Server 2012 Powers the Cloud OS

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 03:25:00 GMT

On September 4, 2012 in a global online launch event Satya Nadella, president of Microsoft Server and Tools Business, announced the general availability of Windows Server 2012. In his keynote speech, Nadella described how Windows Server 2012 is a cornerstone of the Cloud OS, which provides one consistent platform across private, hosted and public clouds. You can view the launch event here or read the press release. Also check out what Forrester analyst, Rich Fichera is saying about Windows Server 2012 in his blog. Also you can read

Why Enterprise Architects Must Drive Cloud Strategy and Planning

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 03:19:00 GMT

Written by Mike Walker, IT Director | Enterprise Information Architecture , Dell Corporation

Previously, we talked about the ways to achieve a balance between value and risk in order to get the most out of your cloud investments. In that post I identified the methods and tools used to identify value and minimize risk for your company.

However, you maybe wondering what type of role is best to deliver on this? In this post I want to talk about why Enterprise Architects (EAs) should be on point to drive cloud strategy and planning.

Last year I presented about this at the Open Group Conference in San Francisco. The presentation was titled, "Why EA's Must Drive Cloud Strategy and Planning". There I drove the core message around why the EA should lead Cloud Strategy efforts but then quickly diving into how EA’s can drive this. I use a real world example and show a framework and method I created to provide a repeatable and predictable set of outcomes. This post elaborates on that session.

You can find the slideshare presentation here:
http://www.slideshare.net/mikejwalker/why-eas-must-drive-cloud-strategy

Cloud Computing is Here
The cloud changes things quite a bit for IT. There are massive investments and internal changes that have to occur in businesses to support this new paradigm, as shown here:

Given this, cloud computing is one of the most transformational developments in information technology since the advent of the Internet, and it has entered into the environment at a very dynamic, volatile time. Driving significant impact for the enterprise, it has its own unique set of IT benefits and risks. Providing an environment where heightened IT business demands can dovetail with new, disruptive technologies, the cloud can eliminate many of the classic IT problems, while setting the stage for broad business opportunity.

Organizations still recovering from an unpredictable economy often take a conservative stance on investments in new technologies, however. In a 2012 study by The Standish Group, respondents reported that they felt 50% of all IT projects are a waste of money. The survey also unearthed even more negative feelings around IT projects, stating that:
• 31% of all projects are cancelled before completion
• 88% of projects run over schedule, over budget—or both
• 52.7% of projects will cost 189% of their original estimates
• Average time overrun is 222% of original estimates

A move to the cloud can be a terribly risky undertaking—especially for those of us who have been through a massive re-platforming like a mainframe migration project, or a large-scale new capability like CRM or ERP. Companies have learned from those very painful processes that they need their top talent and a rigorous repeatable and predictable process to achieve success.
To this end, which role is best equipped in the enterprise to solve this problem? Enterprise Architects. Owing to their breadth of coverage and level of responsibility, EAs function a lot like “mini CIOs,” and are an excellent fit for strategy and planning roles. They possess the skillsets required to execute meaningful cloud strategy, and they have the methods, models, and tools to get the job done right.

Now let’s examine the key reasons that EAs are best equipped to handle cloud strategy and planning.

Competencies
The unique skillset of an EA enables them to effectively drive IT strategy and facilitate or partner on the creation of business strategy, as shown here:

Methods
By leveraging enterprise architecture methods like TOGAF, the EA has a unique understanding of the broader transformation across people, process and technology, as seen below:

Tools
Enterprise Architects have a comprehensive toolbox of effective tools (see below) that allow them to accelerate and effectively build out strategies that can be used for transformative cloud initiatives.

Conclusion
There is a clear opportunity for IT to leverage enterprise architecture to overcome IT’s long-standing reputation for achieving “less-than-optimal” results, and not driving value back to the business. Careful strategic planning is a must. When it comes to the cloud, which represents the convergence of CIO business challenges and advanced technology enablement, the Enterprise Architect brings a set of core competencies that connect strategy to execution, resulting in an actionable transformation strategy that can drive impact down through initiatives, programs, and projects.

By applying a simplified version of The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) to cloud strategy and planning you can achieve the maximum return on investment. The macro phases to a cloud strategy and planning method are:
• Strategy Rationalization - Distill the business and IT strategies to identify cloud-ready capabilities that align to strategy, and provide the maximum amount of value with low risk to the business
• Cloud Valuation - Evaluate a prioritized set of cloud opportunities, and assess business and technology capabilities based on the value and risk they bring the company
• Business Transformation Planning - Prioritize investment opportunities, balanced across the enterprise and integrated into a transformation roadmap

Overall, Enterprise Architects facilitate the assimilation of extreme change. They have the business acumen to ensure that the right investments are being built into the cloud; they are the most equipped in the enterprise to manage these complex strategies; and they have the influence to manage the organizational change management required.

Microsoft Builds Trust in the Enterprise with Dynamics CRM Online

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 03:01:00 GMT

Written by Ayrianne Davis, Microsoft Public Sector Dynamics Lead

Enterprise adoption of cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) continues to grow as organizations realize the inherent benefits of easy online access to solve their needs in sales, marketing, and customer service. With this increase comes an accelerated demand for trust, as technology professionals navigate the evolving regulatory and compliance requirements across their respective industries as they relate to data privacy, protection, and sovereignty. Microsoft helps customers address these complex questions through our adherence to four commercial cloud service pillars: Privacy that Matters, Independent Verification, Leadership in Transparency, and Relentless Security.

To help customers understand the fundamentals, as well as the intricacies, of cloud services, Microsoft has developed public websites, termed Trust Centers, for each commercial online service. These sites help organizations easily find information and resolve questions regarding privacy, regulatory compliance, security, and transparency. An example of a question that the Dynamics CRM Online Trust Center addresses is: “Does Microsoft mingle my CRM Online customer data with data from other customers?” In the realm of privacy, Microsoft differs from other service providers in that our Dynamics CRM Online service does not use customer data to build search or advertising services. Furthermore, customers maintain ownership of the data stored in Dynamics CRM Online.

Microsoft is committed to transparency to help customers comply with diverse regulatory needs; we provide clear, up-to-date information about where data is stored, how it is transferred, how it is used, and who can access it. “If you are going to have any credibility with customers these days, you have to be forthright about how your service is being delivered,“ said Kim Boeh, Director Program Management, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. “The launch of the Microsoft Trust Centers has driven a fundamental improvement in the types of discussions we now have with our customers on the topics of security, data privacy and compliance.” During the evaluation process, the Trust Centers proactively address the key questions our customers’ security and compliance officers have. They offer great tools for them to use in performing their risk assessments and ultimately selecting the service provider they want to do business with over the long term.” For example, European customers may be concerned about how to sign European Union (EU) Model Contract Clauses to address the international transfer of data. The Dynamics CRM Online Trust Center quickly enables visibility into this area as well as other industry standards verified by third parties such as HIPAA/BAA, ISO 27001, and SSAE 16. Each year third-party audits are conducted by internationally recognized auditors to validate that we have independent attestation of compliance with our policies and procedures.

When it comes to security, Microsoft’s practice results from a culmination of over 15 years’ experience in securing online data using the principles of Microsoft’s Security Development Lifecycle approach, which provides protection at multiple levels. These levels consist of both physical and logical layers. Further details on security practices including information management, cloud infrastructure, development principles, and service continuity can be accessed through the Trust Center. “Because the content on the Trust Centers is regularly updated, we are noticing that customers seem more engaged and eager to provide feedback on the approach Microsoft is taking to solve various enterprise requirements. The Trust Center initiative is not only about providing greater transparency to our customers, it demonstrates that Microsoft takes its obligations as a service provider very seriously”, confirmed Boeh.

An additional effort in transparency is Dynamics CRM Online’s registration with the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) Security, Trust and Assurance Registry (STAR). The Dynamics CRM Online self-assessment includes a detailed analysis of the specific controls that manage our online service and helps organizations evaluate the service before purchasing. The registry aims to reduce the effort, ambiguity, and cost associated with learning about cloud providers and their security and privacy practices. It is open to all cloud vendors and hosts their responses to specific questions pertaining to cloud security. For customers, this means more transparency and information to help them choose the best cloud provider for their specific needs. Dynamics CRM Online was the first cloud CRM service to register with CSA STAR.

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Trust Center is available at http://crm.dynamics.com/trust-center. To engage with or follow the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Twitter community you may do so at @MSDynamicsCRM, using #MSDYNCRM.

Microsoft IT’s Journey to the Cloud : An Application View

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 00:52:00 GMT

Written by Microsoft IT Showcase

Microsoft IT (MSIT) currently uses mostly conventional on-premises products, but is moving rapidly to a mixed-use environment in which it utilizes some combination of on-premises software, software as a service (such as Microsoft® Exchange Online), and Windows Azure products. Microsoft developed the Windows Azure platform as a foundation for developing applications that run in the cloud. Approximately 20 million businesses and more than a billion people use Microsoft cloud services, which are the products, services, and customer experiences that Microsoft offers through hosted and online services. The Windows Azure platform provides a group of cloud technologies, each providing a specific service set for application developers, and both applications running in the cloud and on local systems can use it. MSIT’s cloud-services strategy is consistent and highly complementary with the Microsoft on-premises offerings. Rather than an all-or-nothing approach, MSIT (and Microsoft customers) can leverage new cloud technologies and existing capabilities. MSIT estimates that by moving applications to Windows Azure, an enterprise can save between 35 and 40 percent of overall addressable expenditures for support; application development and maintenance; and hardware, hosting, and software licenses. MSIT has a three-prong approach to developing applications in Windows Azure:

Identify existing applications that are not mission-critical, that have solid fallback positions, and that have workload patterns that are suitable for the cloud. These are the first applications that MSIT migrates to Windows Azure, and are used to develop best practices and reusable components for other, more-complex migrations.
Ensure that new applications that developers can write or deploy on Windows Azure indeed are written and deployed on Windows Azure. Make Windows Azure the default application-development platform.
Create multiyear plans, and then begin moving some of MSIT’s biggest and most-critical applications to Windows Azure. This enables the leveraging of experience gained from earlier, less-complex migrations.

Moving Existing Applications

When an organization moves existing applications to Windows Azure,it is important to remember that it:

Can be more complex than building new applications designed for Windows Azure or cloud computing.
Is better to choose applications with lower risk and complexity for the first migration, to become familiar with the process. Enterprises then can attempt migration of more complex applications that have regulatory exposure, integration issues, downstream dependencies, or other complicated attributes.
Helps to understand an migrating application’s technical aspects and how the enterprise is utilizing it before migration.
Helps to understand the application’s monitoring implications and its life span, to ensure alignment with the Windows Azure solution plan.
Is beneficial to understand workload patterns, which indicate suitability with Windows Azure. The following table illustrates these patterns:

Pattern	Description
On and Off	Typically includes seasonal or time-bounded workloads that have processing requirements only during certain periods.
Predictable Bursting	Includes predictable bursts of activity during certain days of the week or times of the year.
Unpredictable Bursting	Typically includes unpredictable events that trigger heavy usage requirements. Therefore, the enterprise must scale design considerations to predict.
Growing Fast	Typically associated with new development, and in particular, with startups or specific groups in larger companies.

Windows Azure Projects

Moving a Low-Risk Application: the Auction Tool

The Auction Tool is a component of the Microsoft Annual Giving Campaign. The tool experienced very high spikiness (Predictable Bursting workflow pattern). Usage was low for most of the month, and then inadequate for the last-day spike, as 20 percent of all bids were made on last day. This left many bidders unable to contribute because the Auction Tool was unavailable due to heavy last-day usage. This roject had three sets of Internet Information Services (IIS) and Microsoft SQL Server® virtual machines.

Solution Highlights

Utilized a hybrid Windows Azure cloud and on-premises architecture.
Utilized single sign-on (SSO) through Active Directory® Federation Services (AD FS).

Auction Tool Results

The solution scaled easily from four to 24 instances for last day’s high traffic.
Every user that wanted to bid could actually do so.
It was a record year for the Microsoft Annual Giving Campaign, with approximately $500,000 U.S. dollars raised.

Lessons Learned from Moving and Using the Auction Tool Learning curve for development was relatively small, because the Windows Azure development tools are similar to the current Visual Studio development environments.

Scaling the environment to meet demand is a strong point of the Windows Azure platform, and the process was straightforward and easy to implement.
The Windows Azure platform is consistent. Development, preproduction, and production environments are the same and allow for a smooth path to production.

New Application—Social eXperience Platform (SXP)

The Video Showcase site on Microsoft.com provides access to more than 8,000 marketing videos. Personnel used the previous on-premises solution to manage the site’s comments and ratings, filter profanity and spam, and perform site moderation. However, there were problems with scalability, maintenance costs, upgrades, performance, and availability.

Solution Highlights

Utilized a hybrid Windows Azure cloud and on-premises architecture.
Enabled multitenant capabilities. Any subsite on Microsoft.com can use SXP. The first tenant was the Video Showcase site, and as of mid-2011, the service has 57 tenants.
Utilized a separate SQL Azure database for each tenant, in which to store comments and ratings.
Utilized the Microsoft System Center Operations Manager Connector to provide alerts and notifications via Systems Center Operations Manager.

SXP Results

Reduced monthly costs from $15,000 USD to $45 USD.
Increased availability from 99.1 percent to 99.997 percent.
Improved the speed of new releases dramatically. Previously, issuing new releases could take as much as six weeks, but was reduced to 45 minutes.
Facilitated easy push-button upgrades that had no planned downtime. Ten upgrades have occurred, and no transactions have been missed.
Enabled 10,000,000 error-free transactions since December 2011.
Reduced the average response time to less than 10 milliseconds (ms). MSIT’s service-level agreement mandates 250 ms.
Enabled MSIT to replace more than 37 separate instances of a third-party competitive product with a Microsoft cloud-based solution that operates at enterprise scale.

SXP Lessons Learned

Windows Azure greatly decreases the time and developer participation necessary for application maintenance and upgrades.
Engineering and operations departments must partner early to ensure that application development includes operational integration, such as monitoring and maintenance.
Windows Azure presents a fundamental shift in how IT departments approach the spending and resource allocation on which cloud computing is based. Spending patterns now focus on operational costs and not capital expenditures, while resource allocation now focuses on development and innovation, rather than maintenance and operations.

To learn more about how Microsoft IT established and implemented segmentation and Azure migration strategies across its application portfolio watch the video -How Microsoft IT Built Application Segmentation and Migration Strategies for the Cloud.

Additional Education Resources can also be found at

Customer conversations: The Cloud

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 00:45:00 GMT

Written by Susan Hauser, Microsoft Corporate Vice President

One of the most rewarding parts of my role is getting time to spend with the field and engaging with customers. I come away energized and with deep insights from every meeting. Every customer engagement represents an opportunity for me to learn, hear new perspectives and offer insight while building and fostering relationships. I have been at Microsoft for 23 years and have relationships with customers that have spanned the entire length of my tenure at Microsoft. FY13 is one of the most exciting and important years for us to engage with our customers and position Microsoft as a strategic partner to transition to the Cloud with innovation and cost efficiency. We have more products releasing and more innovation than any other company in the industry. I intend to use this blog to detail what I’m hearing from our customers, partners, and field and also share my perspective on how collectively we can respond to changes in technology and evolving business requirements.

There are multiple blogs out there talking about how to make the move to the Cloud and how Microsoft has made the move (for example, Tony Scott’s video blog) but I want to take you into the conversations I’m having with our customers who are already “in” the Cloud. In recent months, I have witnessed a change in the way customers are speaking about adopting the Cloud. The conversations about the Cloud have changed from “if” a customer is going to embrace the Cloud to “when” and “how” they are going to make the Cloud work for them.

We have customers from around the world in industries ranging from education, retail, manufacturing, and entertainment to financial institutions and governments who are creating new business value and/or reimagining existing business value. We have traditional businesses moving to the Cloud and businesses being born in the Cloud that need to scale.

One of the things that makes Microsoft unique is that we make the Cloud work for your business with enterprise Cloud offerings that span on-premises and online. You choose what to deploy into the Cloud and we work with you to strike the right balance for your business with private, public, and traditional infrastructure environments that all work together.

In our discussions, customers share that the enterprise class customer relationships we provide are a key differentiator in doing business with us versus our competitors. They appreciate knowing they have an account team available at the ready. They also like the flexibility, the ability to choose private, public, or hybrid and of course, they like the cost savings. I’d like to share two examples with you to demonstrate the benefits our customers are experiencing when they move to the Cloud. I also encourage you to think about your business needs and how together, we can drive benefits for your organizations.

A government agency moved to the Cloud with us this past year and in talking with the CIO, he told me one of the key drivers was the speed at which they were able to get there and the flexibility of the solution. He shared he had considered different traditional hosters, but the time, flexibility, and cost didn’t meet expectations as they all were reliant on data centers. When the CIO explained his business problem to our Microsoft account team, we provided a Cloud solution that reduced time to market, didn’t require deployment of infrastructure, lowered costs (saving millions of dollars with lower operation and maintenance costs), and provided flexibility and scalability on demand along with a dedicated Microsoft team for support. They trusted us for their mission critical applications and the Cloud-solution we created and they are extremely happy with the results.

Partners play an important role as well in helping our customers achieve the benefits of going to the Cloud. I was just speaking with a partner last month who shared a story about helping a customer store data locally while performing the processing in Azure. The hybrid solution satisfied the customer’s regulatory compliance and data sensitivity concerns and the processing went into Windows Azure. Together, Microsoft and the partner developed a hybrid Cloud service offering that provided the retail customer with complete flexibility for the location of their data and applications. The result, a cost effective solution that supports the retailers desire for a fully managed service while providing immediate access and ownership of their data.

These are just a few examples of customer success stories. I’d like to hear from you about your experiences moving to the Cloud and the benefits you and your company are achieving. If you are still contemplating your move, I’d like to learn more about your business challenges and how we can help you.

The cloud – Unlocking new enterprise paradigms

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 01:05:00 GMT

The late 90’s saw the advent of online presence. Enterprises started realizing greater opportunities beyond the traditional brick-and-mortar business model. The millennium saw the momentum shift to “as-a-service” models. Organizations built business by leveraging innovative business models, low cost to entry and unbridled entrepreneurial spirit. Traditional powerhouses realized the sway in momentum albeit a little lately and in the process lost some ground. The cloud provides yet another such scenario and opportunity.

The cloud has been in existence for a while now. Most enterprises have a cloud presence. Often times, these are about standard workloads such as Email, Collaboration and Calendaring. The very best of them talk about sandbox environments to provide on-demand power and storage. Contrarily, enterprises have a strategic advantage with their IP. Organizations which nimbly adapt such IP would gain competitive advantage and realize greater benefits.

Though the cloud lends itself for “optimizing the cost” models, the larger benefit comes from “growing the revenue” opportunities. With the advent of the cloud, CIOs are now expected to play the part of a strategic executive who works toward bringing about business transformation through Cloud. The CIO is also uniquely positioned to aptly guide the leadership on the development and execution of a cloud strategy. The cloud provides a window of opportunity to CIOs, a unique and sustainable way to enable business value, innovate, and differentiate their organizations in the marketplace.

Enterprises have been gearing up for such momentum shift. During the recently concluded Mobile World Congress, Ford motors unveiled their connected transportation vision and how the cloud is a critical cog in such an initiative. Evolution in complimenting technology-enabled paradigms such as Mobility, Social Computing and Analytics are accelerating value. Importantly, such approaches are best realized by embarking on the journey jointly with business functions than attempted from the IT organization alone. It is imperative to look at the cloud journey holistically and evolve a value-based approach for creating a robust enterprise fabric. Creating a unified charter, aligning workloads to business functions, and adopting an incremental approach as part of the roadmap will optimally drive value realization.

Interested? The author expounds a prescriptive approach that Microsoft has distilled into seven major principles to realize greater synergy and deliver optimal business value.

As Mike Walker suggested in his earlier blog (The Evolution of Today’s CIO), 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. What better way to do this than identifying and realizing newer business opportunities.

Visualizing the History of Everything

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 07:06:00 GMT

Written By Microsoft Research

ChronoZoom is an open-source community project dedicated to visualizing the history of everything. Big History is the attempt to understand, in a unified, interdisciplinary way, the history of cosmos, Earth, life, and humanity. By using Big History as the story line, ChronoZoom seeks to bridge the gap between the humanities and sciences an enable all this information to be easily understandable and navigable.

Strong Union Technology Brings Mobile Banking to Millions

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 06:50:00 GMT

Many large banks in China were looking to add new services for their commercial customers. Strong Union Technology developed a mobile banking solution that uses Windows Embedded Standard to create kiosks that introduce customers to mobile banking in a way that simplifies the process and earns their trust.

How to Accelerate Insight from Data

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 04:32:00 GMT

Tim O'Reilly, founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, talks with Microsoft Technical Fellow Dave Campbell about new tools for data. While Microsoft creates its own tools for data, it also works within the larger data community and ecosystem. Thinking of data as a platform, how can a new agenda for tools speed up the process to insight?

Strategy is Innovation

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 04:02:00 GMT

Vijay Govindarajan, the bestselling author of Reverse Innovation and professor at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business, and keynote speaker at Microsoft’s Global High Tech Summit shares a strategy framework, based on innovation, that he believes can position organizations for the future.

Cloud Strategy Begins with Value and Balances Risk

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 03:10:00 GMT

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

In my previous post, Understanding Which Investments Should Go to the Cloud, I opened the door to a discussion around qualifying opportunities for the cloud, and looked at the best ways to determine what’s right for your organization. Today, I’m going to take that discussion one step further, and talk a bit about how to achieve balance between value and risk to get the most out of your cloud investment.

In recent years, cloud service providers have faced quite a bit of fear, uncertainty, and doubt from customers. The broad and impactful benefits of cloud can be overwhelming for decision makers as many aspects of their solutions need to be re-evaluated in a world where solutions are not safely behind a firewall.

While many of these concerns are valid, they also hold us back from making decisions and we often defer, ignore or discredit. To further this point, the 2010 ISACA IT Risk/Reward Barometer survey reported that nearly half of US IT professionals felt that the risks of cloud computing outweighed the benefits. The survey also indicated that 45 percent of IT professionals think that the risks of the cloud far outweigh the benefits—and only 10 percent of those surveyed said they'd consider moving mission-critical applications to the cloud. And there’s more. In 2010, IDC stated that, “Cloud computing and virtualization change the risk profile of information assets. The layers of abstraction inherent in these technologies also pose challenges in effectively tracking and executing the technical controls around confidentiality, data integrity, and availability. These information governance issues impede higher adoption of cloud computing among organizations.”

Consider this: We have been implementing cloud-like architectural styles for many years before it was ever called “cloud.” As an example, think about the banking industry. They have been doing cloud-based work since the 1970s. The browsers were a bit more green and less graphical, but they nonetheless performed the same basic tasks as modern browsers. The service models were very similar, and the monetization model was eerily similar, charging only for usage, not the entire infrastructure.

Even the application of the technologies draws parallels. Software as a Service has been in use in banking since the dawn of Correspondent Banking, where a larger bank would build an application for its own purposes, but also build it in a multi-tenant way to offer it as a service to other banks. An example here is debit card services, where a bank can let other banks use all the debit processing services, and even issue cards under their own brand.

What has changed in the model is the technology enablement around this paradigm. It has opened this type of architecture for not just the largest of the large companies, but also for small and mid-sized businesses. Below is a depiction of how the modern cloud technologies have transformed how we handle this from a business, economic, and technology perspective.

So why do we start with value and then risk? It's very simple: That is how businesses make decisions. Starting with risk alone can lead down a path of minimal value; the two must be assessed in the right order and then brought together in order to get an accurate view of the potential gains.

It’s important to take a value-driven approach to correctly understand how investments are made. Companies don’t make decisions in an uninformed way. They start by asking, “What is the value this technology can bring?” As shown below, starting with how the company generates value is provides context into the decision making process.

Value enables selection of the right cloud elements for investment, taking into consideration business strategy, IT strategy, value drivers, and enabling capabilities.

If we start from the opposite end with risk we may disqualify high-value investments without even knowing. For an action to be value-creating, it has to do one or more of the following:

Increase operational efficiency with the solutions already in place
Increase the return on capital—no matter how risky they are, if they have a marginal return on capital that exceeds the cost of capital, they will create value
Leverage existing investments to avoid switching costs of new solution development and deployment
Reduce the cost of capital that is applied to discount the cash flows (cost of financing); reducing the proportion of the costs that are fixed will make firms much less risky, and reduce their cost of capital

To execute on this, below is a basic checklist that you can use to derive to the right investments that add value.

Value Assessment Checklist

Determine value

Understand key company strategies

Identify value-generating opportunities

Outline focus on business capability areas

Define an investment priority list to map to risk factors

Here is a starting point on creating a benefits frame:

Once you have determined what benefit levers you want to apply to your company, division, or specific business unit, you can then start to do the actual analysis, which may look something like this:

Once measurable value has been established, companies determine the level of risk that will come with making that decision. By listing the ways that risk can manifest itself in each specific scenario (business, governance, technical, operational), it’s easier to ascertain that risks identified are true business risks—not fear driven by uncertainty.

Risk Assessment Checklist

Clarify business intent

Analyze the solutions on risk value

Prioritize high-risk solutions with the highest business value

Determine acceptable risk tolerance

Understand impact and probability

Identify options to mitigate risk

In addition, there are also concerns around regulations in general, the US Patriot Act for Europeans, and data sovereignty. Despite those concerns however, the cloud is here to stay. It is quickly becoming the de facto platform for businesses, in a large part to the value it brings back.

By delivering on the concepts of decreased costs and increased business agility, the cloud has persuaded increasing numbers of organizations to move more IT processes and capabilities to that environment. Yes, there are still risks, but savvy CIOs are putting risk management processes in place that enable them to identify and mitigate risk prior to a cloud deployment. This approach to evaluating cloud opportunities doesn’t over compensate on value or risk, but instead takes a balanced risk-adjusted value view.

Through this risk a risk-adjusted value view you can generate capability opportunity sheets for each capability you want to cloud enable. Below is an example of such a opportunity sheet.

At the end of this exercise, you should derive a few models that can help you balance value and risk. Below is a sample of how this initial assessment can be overlaid onto a business capability model to aid in the prioritization process. As you can see, our sample assessment indicates that the high-risk solutions with the highest business value lie within internal control functions for HR, facility, and employee event management, and in management control and reporting for planning.

As we’ve discussed, balancing risk and value is the smartest, most efficient way to identify concrete opportunities in the cloud, and set the stage for the best possible outcomes. Through this top-down, business driven method we want to ensure that we maximize our implementation efforts, reduce the risks of project failures, increase the value to the business and ensure that the right investments at the right time move into this new way of computing.

In my next post, I want to look further into who will lead a cloud strategy effort. It takes a unique role with both business and IT savvy. Thus I will discuss the reasons why Enterprise Architects are vital roles and should step up to drive cloud strategy and planning efforts for enterprises.

Predictions: Enterprise Architecture in 2020

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 02:28:00 GMT

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

At the Troux Worldwide Enterprise Architecture Conference I had the pleasure of being invited to an EA industry panel to answer and discuss questions from the conference attendees.

A question was posed to us panelists around the future of EA, specifically what EA looks like in 2020. I received such great feedback on my response that I thought I would share it with all of you.

In general, when this topic comes up there seems to be two very distinctive perspectives from folks I talk to. In the first camp are the people that don’t understand the value proposition of EA and feel that it will be abandoned as a discipline soon. This is even seen to some degree in the analyst community. When I was talking at the conference I remembered an example of this from the article “Gartner predicts that by 2012 40% of today's enterprise architecture programs will be stopped”. Obviously we are not seeing this prediction coming to true in 2012.

On the other side we see wild enthusiasm and grand predictions on how EA will change the world. There doesn’t seem to be too many people that I talk to that are in the middle of the road.

So what do I think? While there is a lot that can happen in the next seven years I do think EA is here to stay. However, I believe that it will look a bit different than it does today. I believe that there will be a natural evolution to its eventual state.

Many of the existing functions that EA performs today will be here however I think that there will be a pruning of the functions that don’t sense and additions to what does. The core charter will stay the same.

Orthogonal Drivers and IT Environmental Aspects

In a recent post titled The Evolution of Today’s CIO I discuss that IT and the CIO’s role is evolving to be more and more business centric. There is quite a bit of evidence here. Below is a chart that shows the CEO and CIO aligning priorities over the next 3 to 5 years.

Source: IBM, The Essential CIO 2011 Survey

While CIO’s are expected to uphold operational and technical excellence the data not only from IBM but from many others shows that the CIO is getting the unique opportunity to step into the business realm as well. Now that technology is so ubiquitous coupled with such deep business impact CIO’s are essential to business units.

As the CIO matures and becomes more business centric who will they turn to in their organization? The Enterprise Architecture function of course. This is the only function that has the charter of being at a business level and aspires to grow more and more into this area. This is emphasized by the desire of very many EA functions to move out of IT entirely so they can easily be business focused.

If this is the trend, EA is essential for the CIO and the CIO is essential for the EA group. Whether it be staying within the IT or being a strong supporter that remains to be seen.

Macro themes for EA in 2020

Enterprise Architecture will business driven
Increase EQ to balance better with IQ
There will be a separation of IT Architecture from Enterprise Architecture
Enterprise Architecture may move out of the IT organization while IT Architecture remains
Increased focus on corporate sustainability. Business capabilities with longevity.
Enterprise portfolio management will be a first class citizen

Predictions for 2020

I believe the following will be the key changes to EA in 2020:

Clear purpose
Understand & Operationalize EA Business
EA Activities
EA Competencies & Certifications
Lead through Emotional Intelligence

Clear Purpose

Thus far, EA has been a collection of many things without a perfectly clear, consistent & universally accepted purpose, definition and set of outcomes. You may ask why is this important? It’s so important for so many reasons.

A few of the key reasons below:

From an overall industry perspective it is essential to have the purpose and clarity to have sustainability as a profession. This allows for common expectations from the professionals that make up the EA industry.
Without purpose for individual EA teams within companies it can also be problematic. With loose or even random value propositions it will hinder credibility and ultimately results.

I am starting to see a great deal of changes in the industry to solidify this more. We see examples of this everyday with universities support, firmer standards, maturing enterprise architecture functions and a wealth of support from practitioners in communities like LinkedIn and others alike. To credit the discipline a little bit, for such a robust and complex as EA it is no doubt why it has taken so long.

At the current rate of change in EA by 202o the EA industry should have a clear and generally accepted answer on the purpose of EA. Whether that is fully adopted in EA organizations around world is a different story all together. Many other considerations are at play there.

For organizations today, it is essential to get to the root of the purpose of your EA function. Begin to think about why your EA function exists and what value does it bring to the company. Getting to the root of why is essential to be purpose driven.

Understand & Operationalize EA Business

Today when I ask, “describe the business of EA?” I often receive puzzling looks and brief answers on charters and such. What is troubling is that we expect to partner with the business but we don’t act the business. Often times we have our own language for things that have existed in the business for a very long time. This doesn’t help our cause.

By 2020 the industry should have matured much in this area with a revised focus on business acumen versus purely on technical architecture.

We are already starting to see operational and services excellence in EA teams. I believe this trend will continue. As we begin to interact more and more directly with the business they are going to want predictable and repeatable results. To do this, service enablement is needed to have clear SLAs and OLAs. Below is an example of a service model that I had created a few years back.

In the example above, the business or customer is able to request services from the EA team. This sets precise expectations on what they will get and more importantly what they will not get. With this comes metrics that can measure success or failure easily.

With this new focus and purpose, how EA operates will be different with a defined Enterprise Architecture Operating and Service model that will aid in repeatable and predictable results for its customers.

EA Activities

With a business centric EA organization the first priority should be to focus on value management. EA’s in 2020 will think first about what value is to be derived from a potential solution to a problem. Value can be many things; it just depends on what it means to the specific customer. It could mean:

Cost reduction
Productivity
Risk reduction
etc.

By focusing on portfolios of capabilities the EA’s will be able to manage value in a quantitative and qualitative way. This will also aid the EA on focusing on what investments are important at any given time to allow for maximum returns for the business.

Instead of starting bottom up the standard mode of operation will be top down. Similar to what you see in popular frameworks like TOGAF.

This isn’t to say that the EA will perform all of these aspects of architecture but rather a model to follow.

EA Competencies

EA’s are being asked not only to align but to partner with the business. To do this they need the competencies and skills to be able to act and speak accordingly with the business. This space is advancing year over year.

I have built out a framework on how to separate competencies from other aspects. This is in the context of certifications. Below is a way to think about the separation of the different certification aspects.

Below is a description of each aspect:

Competency Based Certifications – These certifications are focused at evaluating your experience to validate that you are indeed an architect. Much like many other certifications in the industry (e.g., PMP). These are much different to others that determine what you know instead of how you applied the knowledge.
Industry / Specialized Certifications – Driven from a predetermined set of concerns such as the federal government or a specific industry is where these derive from. While these certifications are critical in that vertical, often times they do not transfer well across verticals given the difference in drivers and motivations of these very specific bodies of knowledge.
Foundational Certifications – Provides the essential skills for EA’s. These certifications are different from the other two in the respect that they validate that you’re an architect while foundational certifications validate that you know a specific methods, models and/or tools. These certifications are essential to EA’s as they populate the EA’s toolbox. For example, without an overall enterprise architecture framework how would we be truly effective as EA’s?
Applied – Divided into two primary areas, Academic and Vendor Tailored they either support a certification or provide a certification highly tailored. These are in a supporting function to Competency Based Certifications.
Supporting Certifications and Learning's – These certifications make a well-rounded enterprise architect. These are often referred to or leveraged in the day in the life of an EA.

For more detail see the post entitled, Enterprise Architecture Certifications Distilled.

Additionally, I have written several posts on this topic over the past year.

Certifications

Today there is a focus on specific architecture or EA certifications. Year after year I am finding that Enterprise Architecture certifications are becoming more important to architects. Back in 2007, I remember reading an article from Gene Leganza called, “Is EA Certification Important?”. In that article he stated that 65% of the people he had surveyed stated that EA certification is not important but he also noted that a significant minority stated they were including EA certification criteria in their hiring processes.

I believe this has changed quite a bit.

We continue to see the very positive trends in terms of investment in EA skills throughout the industry and the world. Below is a snapshot of some of the trends in a presentation I gave on certifications internally at Microsoft.

But there is one small wrinkle in this. The hypothetical question I ask is, “Does the business value your EA certification? Does that EA certification alone instill confidence in the business leaders?” To some degree. I would assert that alone it doesn’t because it doesn’t cover all the concerns of the business but does cover all the concerns of an EA.

Why do I say this? The reason for this is that the business expects you to have those certifications because you are an EA. That part is a given. However, if you want to be a true partner, they expect you to operate like the business and truly empathize with the business. Use their methods, models and tools. If that is the case, complement your EA certification with a MBA or equivalent is in order.

Lead through Emotional Intelligence (EQ)

Today we have some challenges here. Connecting with the business to facilitate, aid or participate in the decision making process is often a tricky task. It requires trust and credibility. While some EA’s are very good at this, there may be some opportunity to get better at this. Culturally architects of all breeds tend to some common traits:

Academic or philosophical discussions
Going deep really quick
Get hung up on technical accuracy or purity

These are not necessarily bad things in moderation, but when abused, it can be disastrous for credibility.

In an article I wrote several months back titled IQ Isn’t Enough. Enterprise Architects Must Balance with EQ Driven Approaches, I discussed that it is vital to lead less with IQ and more with your EQ. Now that’s not to say that IQ doesn’t matter. Of course not, that’s what got you in the door but it doesn’t keep your job. EQ does.

For EA to succeed in the future, this skill will need to be honed. The EA’s audience and customers expands greatly as it reaches into the business. Not only will they need to partner with IT but also with the business. This introduces a mixing pot of needs and wants that the EA must rationalize.

To get us there on that journey there is a great article from a close friend J.D. Meier on his blog Sources of Insight called, 101 of the Greatest Insights and Actions for Work and Life. In this article, he outlines both the everyday improvements you can do to your routine but also shows the shifts that you can do to be more in tune with EQ.

Interfacing Innovation

Microsoft Enterprise Team — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 02:07:00 GMT

Emerging technologies in the areas of the cloud, big data, mobility, social computing, and natural user interfaces (NUI) present new opportunities for companies to rethink processes, deliver new customer experiences, and gain competitive advantage. The NUI based applications that are being developed for education, healthcare, finance, retail, manufacturing, and many other industries, have the potential to revolutionize products and processes.

In February 2012, Microsoft released Kinect for Windows SDK that allows any application to leverage the power of Kinect. We also launched the Microsoft Accelerator for Kinect program, designed to foster a new generation of businesses. Check out the blog post and video to meet some of the start-ups participating in Kinect Accelerator 2012 and to get a sneak peek into what started as their dreams and now could become the latest wave of entrepreneurial innovation.

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]."