Cloud Strategy - Cloud Accelerate Workshop

Editor's Notes

• #2: Key Points: This presentation is to help explain cloud computing, what it can do for your business and how Microsoft can help
• #3: Key points:Not just Web apps or leveraging a third-party’s datacenter but a fundamental shift in the way IT is deliveredFrom a competitive standpoint important to broaden the concept of cloud beyond Microsoft’s data-centers and across devices.Script:“the cloud” was originally coined to describe the otherness of the Internet but, increasingly, it is synonymous with the move to “cloud computing” or “cloud services”. As with many topics that blend technical subjects with business hype there are a number of competing definitions. Many of Microsoft’s competitors define the cloud in narrow terms that define the current – and often – restricted subset of offerings. Microsoft has a broad portfolio of offerings and these are available to a wide audience of users including consumers, businesses and governments and so Microsoft’s has bigger ambitions with the cloud and thus its definition of the cloud is necessarily broader.The cloud impacts every aspect of IT and it impacts the users of IT, the administrators and operators of IT, the purchasers of IT and the developers of IT. Because this fundamental impact on IT cuts to the heart of what it means to use the cloud, Microsoft prefers this as the basis for its definition of the cloud: delivering IT as a standardized service.For many, sound reasons, customers and partners will prefer to host the cloud platform and its services in their datacenters, or their partners’ datacenters. Microsoft – almost uniquely – in the software industry believes that the cloud is a software capability that it will provide in its datacenters but which it will sell to customers and partners to run in their datacenters too. So what? Why should I care?
• #4: Key Points:Script:Businesses are moving to the cloud. Analysts predict that the vast majority of large businesses will be using some type of cloud services in the next few years and that many will drastically be cutting the IT assets that they run and maintain in favor of pushing IT to the cloud and have others run the assets for them. Economics will always be an important driver in business. The economic cycle of recent years and the ongoing consequences have tended to put cost cutting above over factors in evaluating technology and this has led many companies to consider the cloud because – above all – it promises lower costs, shifts from more rigid capital expenses to the more fluid operating expenses and enables business to pay only for the computing that it consumes. Historically, economics tends to be a leading indicator for the success of a technology but the cloud dramatically democratizes technology too and enables hitherto impractical applications to become practical. You need to be very careful that your competitors don’t take better advantage of the cloud because it’s likely that, if they do, they’ll gain increased agility, lower costs and the ability to deliver better services to more customers more quickly. Do you want to take that risk?
• #5: Key Points:Much of the time, the economics of the cloud are the singular focus of discussions on its adoptionIn fact, the cloud represents an excellent way for businesses to connect with new customers and better serve customersThe cloud dramatically democratizes technology such that the smallest business can compete on a technology basis with the largest.Script:1. Performing IT more cheaply. This is the #1 opportunity cited for the cloud. It is not the only opportunity with the cloud! Taking early advantage of the cloud by switching non-differentiating technologies (such as mail servers) from on-premises servers to cloud-based services can significantly reduce TCO including increasing the Quality of Service (QoS) through using the world’s best provider of the technology.2. Capitalizing on new ways to serve new customers. The cloud provides an opportunity for a business to extend its customer base and improve its quality of customer service by making it more economical to take technology to new customers, by making customers more accessible and by reducing the complexity in serving these customers. 3. Benefitting from further democratization of IT.Doing things that were impractical before the cloud. The cloud makes it possible for the smallest business to take advantage of the most powerful technology. Super-computing, grid computing, high-performance computing, technical computing, massive databases etc. are all technologies that, even with the benefits of the democratization of PC technologies are still without the financial realm of many businesses. As these capabilities are transitioned to the cloud, businesses will only be constrained by the willingness to spend the money on these capabilities.4. Operating a business without IT limits. On-premises IT is constrained by its physical environment and the speed of corporate purchasing. A request for 100, 1000 machines is a non-trivial task for a corporate IT department. The consequence of this is business inertia. Some business goals are not possible because they are too ephemeral or too expensive. The cloud can satisfy some of these needs. The cloud could encourage the practical goal of a business that does not “think” in terms of the limits of IT. A business that has employees who routinely spin up compute jobs across thousands of machines to process massive data sets rapidly. So long as these costs are lower than the potential benefit to the business, this is a good thing.5. Leveraging the cloud for comparative advantage.If your business does not take advantage of the above benefits but your competitors do, this could provide them with a comparative advantage (cost, agility, scale) that could dramatically affect your business. The speed at which business proceeds increases inexorably, the cloud will power some of the next increase.
• #6: Key Points:Technology eras are bounded by three fundamental periods: the mainframe, client-server, and the WebMost technologists focus on the technological shift that triggers the shift but, in fact, the economics of the new technology are as importantThe economics of the cloud are profoundly better than alternatives and – other things being equal – this will lead to the success of cloud servicxesScript:We’re all accustomed to the rapid and continuous evolution of technology but, from a broader scale, technology can be viewed as having passed through 3 distinct generational phases. Each shift can be summarized as a combination of the technology that’s often the catalyst of the shift, the economic environment that makes the technology conducive (some technologies are “ahead of their time” – e.g. ASPs – when the technology is good but the economics at the time are not) and the business model of the technology. The audience can read the content of the slide for itself but you should point out that, by and large, if the economics are profoundly good (as in each of these epochal shifts), then everything else almost follows by default. With the cloud, the economics are so compelling (see next slide) that, all other things being equal*, there will be tremendous pressure on business to capitalize on the cloud.* - In reality, of course, cost isn’t the only motivator but what occurs is that the cost differential powers a powerful feedback loop that encourages investment, first movers and ultimately legislation that all serve to make the new technology almost a foregone conclusion. While legislative restrictions, trust, security and other concerns may encourage private cloud adoption in the near-term, eventually, these ‘impurities’ will be eroded.
• #7: Key Points:The TCO of a server in a large 100k DC is up to 50% less than that in a 1k DC Due to heterogeneity of customer demand ( industry, time of day and resource need variability), pooling demand can lead to ~3x increase in server utilizationThe multi-tenant model, only feasible in a shared cloud, reduces infra cost and drives app labor to near 0 on a per customer basisScript:Cloud economies of scale are stronger than commonly understood, leading to very strong first mover advantages and high barriers to entry. There are also, of course, very few organizations with the wherewithal (technical|financial) to run public data-centers of the scale (100k+) needed to reach optimum efficiency. At massive scale, the cloud provider is able to negotiate steep discounts with its hardware, power and bandwith providers which further secures its advantages. When 100k+ machines are on order, hardware providers will tailor everything from their hardware designs to their support capabilities to win business. Not only does the cloud provider require huge bandwidth today but it’s in a position to secure long-term contracts on such bandwidth with providers strong financial incentives to the bandwidth provider. The economics of scale continue. A public cloud provider is able to pool demand from a diverse customer base. Customers in different businesses require peak computing loads at different times. Customers across different industries are dischordant with some industries experiencing peak demand in the Winter (e.g retailers) while others experience peak demand in the Summer (e.g. energy companies in Texas). Customers in different timezones across the world are ‘awake’ at different times. The public cloud provider can dramatically increase the utilization of its hardware by multiplexing across a range of these customers and to a far greater extent than a provider to a single business.Lastly, through extensive automation and the ability to run fewer applications for many customers, the labor costs in a data-center become a very small proportion of overall costs. In a contemporary on-premises data-center an IT person may be able to manage 100 machines. In a public cloud data-center, one person needs to support 1,000s of machines.
• #8: Key Points:An easy way to understand the nature of the cloud is to compare it to existing, on-premises technology stacksEssentially, the cloud represents the separation between the responsibilities of the consumer of technology from the producer of technologyThere are degrees of separation, Microsoft belies a “sweet spot” will be in running software platforms (e.g. Windows) for developersScript:Cloud services are often discussed through one of the 3 lenses: Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-service (Paas) and Software-as-service (SaaS). This approach provides a straightforward way for people to view the differences between today’s on-premises model and the different ways that the cloud may become manifest. In a nutshell, the cloud is about division of labor. It’s about dividing up the ‘stack’ of tasks that are required to operate IT and then letting the people best suited to operating the pieces do so. Let’s be honest. Most business are not the world’s best technology providers nor do they have any wish to be. A widget company should make the world’s best widgets and it should use technology to achieve this goal but it need not be the world’s best Exchange server provider to do so. In a similar way to the fact that many businesses lease their aircraft (airlines), buildings (most companies) and outsource non-differentiating tasks such as payroll, the cloud represents the realization that business need not operate all the computer hardware nor all the software in order to have the world’s best technology. This simple insight underpins the rise of the cloud. So, what types of cloud service are there?The earliest approach (and by some measures the simplest) was to offload the entire stack of technology to a 3rd-party. This has been done since the beginning of IT with the mainframe bureaux and in the 90s with the rise of Application Service Providers (ASP). More recently, the rise of the Web led to the creation of service such as Hotmail, Google, Expedia, etc. that led to the realization that, if these services could be offered to consumers, why not also to business. Hence Salesforce.com’s success with its CRM and sales automation offerings and the creation of Software-as-a-service (SaaS).Amazon then captured many technologists’ attention when it announced Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and essentially created Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS). The difference between EC2 and outsourcing was the lack of any intimacy (no relationship beyond a credit card was required) and the commoditization that Amazon employed. Taking a leaf from the Henry Ford playbook, any server was possible on EC2 as long as it would run on an Amazon virtual machine in Amazon’s data center. It’s important to understand what IaaS is. It’s essentially ‘rent-a-server’. This is hugely valuable but the renter must still maintain the software on the server.Lastly – but probably the most differentiating type of cloud service – is Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and examples of Google App Engine and Windows Azure (Platform). The unique differentation here is that, like Goldilock’s, the level of offering is “just right” for the majority of businesses looking to take advantage of the cloud. PaaS is neither too low-level nor too high-level. PaaS provides all the underlying software that the business needs to host its own and unique IP. The business need not worry about hardware, servers, virtualization, operating systems or even databases. PaaS provides and maintains each of these. What PaaS enables developers to write code that helps business. Once a solution is deployed to PaaS, it is provided as SaaS to its customers.
• #9: Key Points: Microsoft has a long history of providing some of the largest cloud services in the world.These cloud services run on Microsoft software and Microsoft improves its products with its learnings offering the servicesMicrosoft customers uses any of the underlying software technologies benefit from these improvementsMicrosoft gains access to and insights from the users of its services that become valuable to partners building in the Microsoft ecosystemScript: We’ve actually been in cloud computing for a while:We’ve been delivering some of the largest cloud services on the planet for almost 15 years.Our online properties (WL, MSN) see some 600 million unique users every monthXbox pushed out some 5 petabytes of content over Xbox Live during the week of Christmas (2009)9.9 billion messages a day via WL MessengerWe have over 500 million active Windows Live IDsThe Office 365 guys have a million paying users in 36 countries and regionsEven MS Update/Windows Update … operates at incredible scale - pushes out over a petabyte of updates every month to millions of servers and hundreds of millions of PCs When you look at our experience, our commitment and our continued leadership in cloud computing there are a number of fairly substantial differences between us and other providers.
• #10: Key Points:No competitor has the breadth of cloud services of MicrosoftOnly Microsoft has a set of cloud services that complements on-premises softwareScript:In addition to our consumer-facing cloud services, Microsoft offers the most complete set of cloud-based solutions to meet your business needs including advertising, communications (email, telephony, meetings), collaboration (document storage, sharing, workflow), business applications (CRM, business productivity), storage, management and infrastructure services. In October 2010, Microsoft renamed its collection of communication, collaboration and CRM applications into an offering called “Office 365” that will become available during 2011. The offering includes Office, Office Web Apps, Lync Online, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. The goal is to show the cohesion of these services and the richness of functionality that the provide to Microsoft’s business, educational and government clients.And unique to Microsoft these sets of cloud services complement a full and rich set of on-premise software enabling often times to add cloud functionality to your existing software or move between cloud and on-premises systems.
• #11: Key Points:Microsoft is a platform company; platforms empower other companies to build great solutions for their customersMicrosoft’s platform is built on Windows Server and includes SQL Server, .NET etc.Microsoft’s cloud services platform is built on these same technologies and permits partners to reuse their existing assetsScript:Windows Azure is Microsoft’s operating system service for the cloud. It is built on Windows Server. It provides seemingly boundless compute and storage for Microsoft’s customers who wish to deploy their applications to it. Microsoft provides .NET as a first class framework on Windows Azure and so customers will find familiar applications running on Windows Azure, developers will use the same tools and languages and leverage mostly equivalent frameworks and runtimes (some things on Windows Server aren’t available on Azure and vice versa). Microsoft is committed to supporting a diverse set of languages and runtimes on Azure and, during PDC2010 announced that the Java language, runtime and associated frameworks – as well as PHP – will become first class citizens of Windows Azure. Additionally, for those customers wishing to bring legacy applications to the cloud, towards the end of 2010, Microsoft will add a Virtual Machine role which, like Amazon EC2, enables customers to migrate many of their existing applications.SQL Azure is Microsoft’s relational database service for the cloud. It is built on SQL Server. Like Windows Azure, SQL Azure aims to reduce the burden on the customer of setting up, creating, configuring, maintaining and operating databases. All of these activities are supported by the service and, where possible, the platform takes responsibility for providing them. Principally, SQL Azure is aimed at providing relational database services to applications running on Windows Azure; when the applications move to the cloud so does their data. However, SQL Azure can operate as a standalone database service for those customers who have no ability or interest or wish the comparative advantage in having Microsoft run their databases for them.Windows Azure and SQL Azure are the foundational services of the Windows Azure Platform. Over time the portfolio of services in the Windows Azure Platform will grow. Additional services will be added to further reduce the complexity and effort required by customers building applications in the cloud. Detail:Service managementDefine the rules and provide codePlatform deploys, monitors, and manages the serviceStorageSimple storage provided by Windows AzureT-SQL capability delivered through SQL AzureDeveloper experienceFamiliar tools, technologies, languages for MS developersSupport for non-MS technologies, frameworks and toolsIntegration with on-premisesExtend on-premises applications to the cloudFederate identities across cloud applications
• #12: Key Points:Microsoft is a platform company but in order to address its customers’ needs, it provides many world-class applications tooThe most well-known applications are generically called “Office” and include a rich set of client and server|services technologiesAs of October 2010, Microsoft has branded the entire portfolio as “Office 365”Script:Although Microsoft is primarily a platform company, it provides many world-class applications too. The most well-known and widely used applications are generically called “Office” and are used by over 500m people. With Microsoft’s move to the cloud, Microsoft began to offer the Offer server technologies (Exchange, SharePoint, Lync) as services too. These are known as the Microsoft Online Services and include Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Lync Online and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. Microsoft also provide services-based complements to the Office client technologies (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook). These are known as the Office Web Applications. All of this software is now known as Office 365 and this new branding will be used in 2011. Meanwhile, the services are available today and are powering 50% of the Fortune 100 and millions of customers have subscribed to at least one of the services. Facts:50% of Fortune 100 are using an Online service from Microsoft, etc.  (this stat does include Live Meeting and Forefront Online protection for Exchange which is like Google’s Postini)More than 5000 paying customers for BPOS. (I also don’t think that this number is public) I think we are close to 8000 partners signed up to sell and 100’s of new partners are signing up each week to sell the service.We have doubled the business in the last 6 months (1m to 2M paid seats for BPOS) – not public
• #13: So, if the cloud sounds interesting, what do you do?
• #14: Key Points:For other applications types, this business|technical matrix should help assess the risk-benefits of switching apps to the cloudBusiness issues including regulatory compliance and the mission criticality of the app will trump technical or economic benefitsHowever, business issues aside, there are many technical reasons why an app may not be ideally suited to a move to the cloudScript:A model to partition applications in your business’ portfolio according to their business and technical merits and score them for relocation to the cloud is a good first step in determining how to take advantage of cloud services. Clearly, if an application is not available as a cloud service, or the application and its data are covered by business regulations, then the choice for the application is moot. However, for many other applications, it may not be as cut and dry and this matrix can help. It is intended as the basis for a model rather than a hard-and-fast structure that your business should adopt. However, it does provide a good basis for the degrees of freedom that you should employ. Firstly, assess both technical and business issues concurrently. What may be possible technical, may not be suitable for the business and vice versa. Secondly, score the application simply. Perhaps a “yes” or “no” system would be even more straightforward but we’re using here a 3-way: no, maybe, yes. When you are evaluating the criteria, do not forget that few applications are islands and, just moving an application does not remove the need to retain the application’s integration with other applications. With the current state of the cloud, applications that are integrated with others are probably not ideal early candidates.As you navigate this matrix, it should become clear that applications including messaging and collaboration are almost ideal candidates for the cloud. They are generally unregulated and mostly already available in the cloud. They are lightly integrated (beyond identity and archive) with other business systems and – most importantly – they are non-differentiating. If, worst comes to worst, and the mail system is down, unless your business is a law firm, people may moan but it’s unlikely your business will fail. Your manufacturing|production systems on the other hand are business critical and should not be considered at this time for relocation to the cloud.
• #15: Key Points:There are a number of Microsoft applications that you can use todayEach of these is a functional analog of the on-premises application but, is run from Microsoft’s data-centers and managed by Microsoft’s trained personnelIt is very likely that one or more of these offerings will be applicable to your business and cheaper on an “everything considered” basisScript:First of all, are there things you can move to the cloud? Things that are cheaper, easier or can free up more time if you have someone else provide them for you? Email? Communication? Meeting software? Customer management? Managing PCs? Microsoft can help with online complements of programs you’re already familiar with. Microsoft provides each of these applications as services from the cloud today. Many of these fall under the Microsoft Online Service banner and have been called Business Productivity Online Suite or “BPOS” until recently when they were renamed “Office 365”.These applications are ideal candidates for relocation to the cloud because, in the main, while very important to the business, they are not mission critical (if they are, don’t move them) and they are lightly integrated with other applications in the business. In fact, because Microsoft provides these services as functional equivalents to its existing on-premises/server applications, the business need not even fully commit to the cloud service but may move part of the business to the cloud to test the applications.
• #16: Key Points:Irregular and extreme workload patterns are ideal candidates for movement to the cloudIrregular patterns represent potentially low utilisation of expensive capitalExtreme workloads can be a “worst case” scenario for a business that’s unable to address the demand from a successful product launch.Script:These diagrams provide an interesting sieve against which to categorize applications:On and Off: Similar to Predictable Bursting, On and Off can have seasonal or time-bounded workloads where there are all or almost nothing processing requirements. Important enterprise workloads including those that are run monthly, quarterly and annually exhibit this type of behavior.Unpredictable Bursting: Something happens that triggers heavy usage requirements so normally you would have had to scale design considerations to try and ‘predict’ what this requirement ‘could be’. This may be one of the worst cases for which to plan: consider an emergency response system for which normal operation is fairly well understood, but then a hurricane hits and just when you most need the system, it gets overwhelmed.Predictable Bursting: Think Dominos…on Friday Nights or Super bowl Sunday. Most of the year or days of the week, demand is much less. Even though the additional load is expected, it is expensive to maintain this capacity because it is under-utilized when demand is lower. Growing Fast: This is interesting in the case of smaller startup companies or groups in larger companies and/or can be associated with new development. How to plan, both during development and operation. Elasticity can be a huge opportunity/savings area.
• #17: Script:Enterprise-Class:You should not have to compromise to enjoy the benefits of the cloud. Only Microsoft provides a comprehensive set of cloud services with the reliability, security and global reach you should expect for your business or the wide range of services for individuals at work or play. We bring experience: With 30 years of consumer, 20 years of business software and almost 15 years of cloud computing experienceBreadth of Offerings:Microsoft offers the most complete set of cloud-based solutions to meet your business needs including advertising, communications (email, telephony, meetings), collaboration (document storage, sharing, workflow), business applications (CRM, business productivity), storage, management and infrastructure services. The Microsoft platform provides the greatest number of consumers, applications, and technical professionals in the world. There are more than 25,000 system integrators (SI’s) and value added resellers (VAR’s) that provide services and support for Microsoft products. More than 45,000 independent software vendors (ISV’s) build software and solutions that work with Microsoft products. With the Microsoft platform you choose when you run solutions in the cloud (public or private) or on-premises and you can change the mix as your needs change. New Capabilities, familiar programs: Enjoy the benefits of the cloud – lower cost, collaboration, ease of access – with the familiarity of applications you already know and trust. Deep investments and Global infrastructure:Microsoft is completely committed to the cloud: evolving existing products, creating new cloud-based offerings and building the infrastructure to support cloud services at a global level.$2.3B invested in cloud infrastructureToday 70% of the 40,000 people who create software at Microsoft are working on cloud products and services. By 2011 we expect that number to be 90%.Geo-replicated customer data: Despite having a cloud infrastructure that already supports over 1 billion customers and 20 million businesses a year, Microsoft is continuing to invest to increase capacityRecognizing that information is one of an organization’s most prized and protected assets, Microsoft has invested billions of dollars in its datacenters with a critical eye on security and privacy standards. Microsoft datacenters are ISO 27001:2005 accredited, with SAS 70 Type I and Type II attestations.
• #18: Key Points:We have invested $2.3B in cloud infrastructure.There are more than 9000 Microsoft Partners how can host. Over 40% of all hosters do so on the Microsoft platform.Script:Multi-billion dollar datacenter investment700,000+ square foot Chicago and the 300,000+ square foot Dublin, Ireland data centersAmsterdam, Hong Kong, Japan, and Singapore planned$2.3B invested in cloud infrastructureGeo-replicated customer dataPublic and private cloud flexibility30,000 engineers working on cloud servicesMicrosoft cloud services provide the reliability and security you expect for your business: 99.9% uptime SLA, 24/7 support. Microsoft understands the needs of businesses with respect to security, data privacy, compliance and risk management, and identity and access control. Microsoft datacenters are ISO 27001:2005 accredited, with SAS 70 Type I and Type II attestations.Choose hosting by Microsoft or a Microsoft partner. There are more than 9000 Microsoft hosting providers and more than 40% of all hosting providers worldwide are hosting with Microsoft products.
• #23: Key Points:Starbucks is a good example of a company that wanted to increase productivity (specifically by increasing access and collaboration) among remote workers (in this case their 10K stores). The choice of Microsoft cloud services enabled them to quickly and securely roll out new functionality without adding complexity to their IT infrastructure.Starbucks owns and operates 10,000 stores throughout the world. Starbucks has made the commitment to utilize BPOS Standard for all of its company owned stores for 18,000 users/Partners. The solution will provide Exchange messaging, Live Meeting web conferencing, IM and presence, SharePoint Portal, collaboration and Office for business productivity. In addition to BPOS, these laptops will be running CORE CAL, SPS Enterprise and Forefront Client Protection. Starbucks employees had no ability to do basic collaboration and communication with headquarters or nearby stores. As a result It was a very manual and paper intensive back of the store process for Manager’s to run their day to day business. Microsoft established itself as the superior long term solution over its competitor, Google. Starbucks felt that they could rely on Microsoft’s Online strategy, rich user experience and long term trusted relationship.Starbucks wanted to provide a dynamic platform for collaboration and communication between its stores and headquarters. The vision was to empower their store employees to run their multi-million dollar business in a more entrepreneurial way. A key design pillar was to prevent any loss of intellectual property therefore, cloud computing was a new way to share information through the web in a secure manner. Starbucks needed to make this deployment happen quickly without adding complexity to its infrastructure. BPOS provided a cost effective means to manage a globally distributed environment. This initial BPOS implementation will bring many other workloads with it in the future.
• #24: Key Points:RiskMetrics delivers risk management services to the world’s leading asset managers, banks and institutions to help them measure and model complex financial instruments. RiskMetrics runs its own datacenter but, to accommodate spiky increased demand for its services for specific periods of time, the company needed to expand its technical infrastructure. Rather than buy more servers and expand its datacenter, RiskMetrics decided to leverage the Windows Azure Platform to handle the surplus loads. To help its customers, RiskMetrics’ financial engineers develop complex algorithms known as “Monte Carlo” simulations. These simulations require lots of computing capacity and, to provide the best service to its customers, RiskMetrics benefits from running the same simulations multiple times with slightly different data. Essentially, the more times it can run the simulations, the better the results it can provide to its customers. Since each of these simulations is expensive in terms of the amount of computational resources needed, this is an ideal application for the cloud because RiskMetrics can consume vast amounts of computing for short periods of time and only pay for what it needs. RiskMetrics will continue to offer its own datacenter because it can leverage the datacenter’s capacity optimally BUT the company anticipates that, to be able to respond to its customers’ increased needs, it may need to impose very high peak loads on its infrastructure, often demanding 10 times the computing resources required during other periods. By combining the capacity of its own datacenter with the potentially limitless capacity of Windows Azure, RiskMetrics is able to satisfy the fixed demand on its own infrastructure and then spill-over high peak loads on to Windows Azure. Because the Windows Azure platform is highly compatible with RiskMetric’s existing application (Visual Studio and .NET), RiskMetrics is able to “develop applications locally and deploy them to Windows Azure very quickly.”. The solution is called RiskBurst “bursts of processing onto the cloud from our risk infrastructure.” Eventually, RiskMetrics expects to provision 30,000 Windows Azure instances per day!http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?CaseStudyID=4000005921
• #25: Key Points:Coca-Cola Enterprises had done both a BPOS implementation and a separate Azure project.Great example of both moving functionality to the cloud and using cloud functionality to augment existing systems.Script:Coca-Cola EnterprisesCoca-Cola Enterprises is the world’s largest marketer, producer, and distributor of nonalcoholic beverages Initially they faced a pretty common realization for most large companies: do they really want to be in the email business? They worked with Microsoft and Sapient Consulting and Slalom Consulting to move their email to Microsoft to host as well as building an intranet portal on SharePoint Online to connect their workers. After moving a number of business applications to the cloud they saw another opportunity. They needed to build the infrastructure so that their customers (restaurants, stores, etc.) could order via a Web site instead of the phone-based system they were currently using. Like many businesses, the amount of orders varied a good deal throughout a year (big increases around the Super Bowl, etc.). If they decided to build the datacenters themselves they would have to build to accommodate the largest amounts, letting hardware go idle at other times during the year. Instead of investing in hardware and other resources to build out the infrastructure to host this online order system they built it on Windows Azure. In this way they can quickly scale their systems up or down based on need, paying only for what they need, when they need it.The other aspect of the cloud is that Coca-Cola Enterprises made their data, their systems available to their customers and partners through the site.Organization Profile Coca-Cola Enterprises (CCE) is the world’s largest marketer, producer, and distributor of nonalcoholic beverages, which it delivers with the industry’s most effective marketplace execution.Business Situation CCE’s increasing competition was resulting in declining revenues. This required company executives to launch a new strategic direction, mandating a platform to communicate and engage with all employees.Solution CCE implemented a Microsoft-based hosted worldwide intranet with messaging and collaboration tools, which are accessible to all employees from any device, enabling employees to boost productivity and time with customers.Benefits Productivity and customer focus Companywide intranet IT transformation Effective remote teams Deskless worker accessSoftware and ServicesMicrosoft SharePoint Server Microsoft Office Live Meeting Microsoft Lync OnlineMicrosoft Online Services Microsoft Exchange Online
• #26: Key Points:Script:Siemens Expands Software Delivery Service, Significantly Reduces TCO Siemens is a global powerhouse in electronics and electrical engineering, operating in the industry, energy, and healthcare sectors. The company has around 410,000 employees, and a worldwide reputation for innovation and achievement.Situation/Solution:To deliver software efficiently, reduce costs, and get more complex software packages to more devices, Siemens wanted to expand the capacity of its software distribution system.Siemens used the Windows Azure™ platform to deliver software packages from a central Internet-based storage location to thousands of devices.Key Advances:Dynamically scale global software distribution while reducing costs, enhancing services, and avoiding significant new capital investmentLink to case study and video: http://mscomapps/gcrpinternal/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?CaseStudyID=4000005945
• #27: Key Points:http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?casestudyid=4000004663Unico manufactures and sells small-duct, high-velocity heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning equipment. The company used Salesforce.com to track sales leads that it sent to its manufacturer’s representatives. Because Unico’s sales process involves several different companies, Unico lacked visibility into how and where sales representatives were selling its products. With help from Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner Quilogy, Unico deployed Microsoft Dynamics® CRM Online and integrated it with several of its business processes. Sales representatives have increased their usage of the new solution by 30 to 45 percent, giving the company a more complete view of its sales processes with more accurate, up-to-date information from sales representatives, distributors, contractors, and customers. Because of this, Unico can save money and target its marketing efforts more effectively.
• #29: http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?casestudyid=4000005460Organization Profile Second largest pharmaceutical company in the world, GlaxoSmithKline supplies a quarter of the world's vaccines and produces some of the leading prescription medicines and consumer healthcare products.Business Situation GlaxoSmithKline needed to improve collaboration with partners, to improve effectiveness in growing markets, to move away from customized solutions, and to lower the cost of operations and investments.SolutionGlaxoSmithKline chose to deploy Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite – including Microsoft® Exchange Online, Microsoft® Office SharePoint Online, Microsoft® Lync Online, Microsoft® Office Live Meeting and the Microsoft® Deskless Worker Suite.Benefits Reduce Operational Costs Drive Innovation Improve Collaboration Simplify User ExperienceSoftware and ServicesMicrosoft Exchange OnlineMicrosoft OfficeMicrosoft Office SharePoint OnlineVertical IndustriesPharmaceutical IndustryCountry/RegionUnited States
• #30: http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?casestudyid=4000006538Organization Profile With a 300-year heritage, Aviva is the world’s fifth-largest insurance group and the largest in the U.K. It has a leading position in Europe and is expanding its business in Asia Pacific and the U.S.Business Situation As part of its strategic vision, Aviva needed to optimize global internal communication and promote collaboration, creating a new knowledge-sharing environment for its 54,000 employees.Solution Aviva worked with Microsoft Services to deploy a collaboration system with global access to information and create a foundation for future applications.Benefits • Reduced risk• Improved collaboration • Fast implementation • Future integration with MicrosoftSoftware and ServicesMicrosoft Online Services Microsoft Office SharePoint OnlineVertical IndustriesInsurance IndustryCountry/RegionUnited KingdomPartner(s)AccentureAvanadeMicrosoft Consulting ServicesOxford Consulting Associates