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AzureSUCCESS
AzureSUCCESS
Digital Transformation
Our customer's apps and data are either in the cloud, being moved to the cloud, or an increasingly irrelevant dead-weight. Listen in as Joan Novino makes the case for both Azure and Microsoft being the best bet for Digital Migration.
BIO: Joan Novino is a senior member of the Microsoft Azure team as a Principal Platform Specialist supporting high value customers, focused on helping customers with their Digital Transformation journey on the Microsoft Cloud platform. Recognized by Microsoft top leadership, Joan has earned multiple award such as Platinum Club Outstanding Achiever, Platinum Club Founders Award and Platinum Club Top Attainment. Joan is a co-founder and director of the Thomas Meehan Memorial fund, a nonprofit organization that holds a tuition scholarship fund for high school students in need.
LINKS: Financial considerations for cloud migration; Stay ahead of attacks with Azure Security Center; Azure.com Part 1: Design principles and best practices; Azure.com Part 2: Technology and architecture; Protecting Windows Virtual Desktop with Azure Security Center
CREDITS: Louis Berman (Host); Joan Novino (Guest); Dan Phillipson / PremiumBeat (Music); Anne Lamb (Intro/Outro); East Coast Studio (Editing)
MORE: visit https://azure-success.com for additional episodes, plus transcripts, and more ways to listen to the show. As to your comments and suggestions, please feel free to email your host, Louis Berman, at lberman@microsoft.com
Startups born in the cloud will be more agile. It takes you more time. You need to be more agile. And the way you do that is
Speaker 2:Change your on prem
Speaker 1:Something small to get that footprint out to the cloud, because these startups will take your business. You're listening to Azure success, the podcast by and for Azure professionals. Listen in, and you'll be sure to speak to your customers March into the cloud. And now your host, Lois Berman. Hello,
Speaker 2:Welcome to another episode of Azure success. The podcast buying for Azure professionals today, I'm feeling very professionalized, all sorts of professional sort of stuff, but even better. I am joined today by my colleague who is a platform specialist out here in Philly. And we've worked on a bunch of projects with different customers today. We're going to talk about digital transformation. And if I was allowed to actually say who this particular transformation, when you're talking about, say that it turns out we're going to have to apologize for that. But John, why don't you say hi? Hello everyone. Thank you so much. And we'll talk a little bit today about the digital transformation in industry and in customers. And it crosses a lot of different areas. This particular story does generate around retail, especially the impact of COVID today and how you have to be mindful of supporting your customer's journey. I'm sort of amazed anyone in the retail field in particular can function today under covert. I mean, it's sort of crazy challenges. You know, I saw a commercial over lunch where someone was passing a bag with some food over a string with a pulley. Well, that sounds funny, right? One has to imagine there are places where that, and more difficult things are happening. So why don't you talk about what digital transformation is for storage? I know what it is, but tell me what, you know what I mean? You can convert it to whatever you think it's really modernization of your applications and modernization of your data. And taking it to further digital transformation is, is almost like enabling self service. And in retail, we all want to have reminders. We all want to shop at the convenience of a quick ordering and quick delivery. And this particular customer is, is one of the world's leader. It's global. And they have been leading in retail and personalization, and now they're taking it to the next level. And the next level is in their world, their hybrid. And when you think of digital transformation, it doesn't all have to be cloud native. If you've been around for number of years and your customers are on prem that's okay. Hybrid is good. And the scalability of that transformation will take time, but you have to scale to deliver the flexibility and self service and near real time information that people want today.
Speaker 3:So I have to tell you the word transformation sounds huge, right? It can be undoubtedly scary for people, but I've heard you talk about like sort of the incremental way to do it. Could you talk about that? You know how to approach it, what it is even, you know, I, if I was in charge of digital transformation, let's say for all of Microsoft, I, I just curl up in a ball in a corner, not approach it. Right? I mean, it sounds huge and big. How do you even approach, how do you think about it?
Speaker 2:So when I first meet an organization, I really try to understand their business and technology needs. What is their current state and what is their desired future state. And many times they don't know what their desired future state, but we help coach them and guide them and give them consultive guidance on what would be the approach. One thing I would say, if I was meeting you the first time is let's look at your current infrastructure and your current data estate. And let's find something that is not the largest, most complex project. Let's start small because many times people have to learn by winning that first workload. And that's the basis of the transformation. It's a starting point. It's not the very, very, very complex migration. It's getting that first workload. Maybe it takes you to the bigger migration, but start small to win. And then you learn and then you then identify the next workload. So digital transformation, again, I say it many times it is a journey and it's a journey that includes your business and technical needs for the goals of your future.
Speaker 3:Got it. So do you have any favorites of things that people do? I mean, do they start with databases? Do they start with web apps? I mean, what is something concrete someone might do?
Speaker 2:Well, I'll relate back to retail. If you're a retail customer and your users are having trouble finding what they want to buy because of inefficiencies in the search criteria, you're going to lose that person. You have about 10, 15 minutes. And if they can't search it and get the item that they're looking for, they're going to go elsewhere. So that's one, I really think it starts with the modern infrastructure in today's world. Security is, and this is just new since COVID, but security is always critical, but we all know there's two factors in this world today, health and security and security is top of mind for me in every customer conversation is what is your current security standards? All your workers are remote. Are you making sure their data and their access is secure? And we do work quite a bit on zero trust. Zero trust means there's no open ports. So in today's world, I would absolutely say I'm talking to every one of my clients that we need to reevaluate their security standards to make sure everything is locked down.
Speaker 3:Got it. So let's take a little bit of an orchard for the, how did you even end up here? Right? I mean, I, I think things like I know about you, like you'd love to be a gardener, for instance, how would a Gardner end up in your position? What the hell was the platform from specialist anyway?
Speaker 2:Well, I blown that platform specialist because at Microsoft, we have office three 65. We have Azure and we have multiple cloud based solutions. And really it's not just Azure, it's a platform. And you can implement a cloud, a hybrid cloud platform using multiple clouds. So yes, there is multiple clouds out there. One differentiator. No, no, but one thing that differentiates Microsoft is we do have a platform and we do integrate with other cloud providers. So that's a differentiator that really gives us the comfort level that we can scale. A large global enterprise may want to use multiple clouds. That's okay with us. We know we're the best, but you have choices. That's the benefit.
Speaker 3:Got it. And so, so you help people along that journey basically as a platform special.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And one thing I would learn or coach, I guess, or tip, I would give if you're just starting your journey to the cloud and you're on prem a hundred percent do not take the challenge of multiple clouds, start with one and then grow from there as needed because you cannot, re-skill your folks on multiple clouds. It's just, you're never going to get there. So start with one. Azure is the most open. Azure has the capabilities of scaling to multiple clouds. So as you would be your foundation platform, and then you can spin off to other clouds.
Speaker 3:So you did this journey with customer XXX, or I don't know why we use those letters. It's like on a pint of rum or something before we had pioneers in America. So you were on this journey and tell us some results. What has happened? What is the value of it? What have they achieved?
Speaker 2:So it goes back to, they initially started to think multicloud and we had initial conversations and I said, you know, you're going to have to skill all your folks and all your folks still are their culture. And their skillsets are 35 years old. So they were struggling to get one cloud up. And they were working on one of our competitive clouds for over a year. In two weeks, we had a proof of concept running and delivered the results that they were working on over a year. So that then recognize that yes, they didn't have the skills. And yes, they will go with a primary platform, which is Microsoft. And then as they grow in maturity, they will choose other cloud platforms as needed, but they are being very successful and mindful of their future state so that they can accelerate that deployment to digital transformation.
Speaker 3:I have a sense why it happens so much faster on Azure. I, you know, you'll never find a bigger booster than Microsoft and Azure and then me, but I mean, why, how were we able to do so much better?
Speaker 2:One thing about Azure is yes, you can go to IaaS infrastructure as a service. We call it I as, but that's more of a lift and shift. Honestly, that's going to cost you more. You want to go to platform as a service. So platform as a service is where it's, it's self hosted. We manage it. You can change it, you have full control, but you don't have to patch. And that's where I recommend our customers. You can take the first phase as a lift and shift, but your ultimate goal is to go to platform as a service because that will reduce your costs and improve your management and operational efficiencies.
Speaker 3:So I sort of understand the reason why digital transformation is as important I eat could say I, I bought into an entirely, but pretend I am someone who doesn't feel that way. And you're going to try to convince me why I need to transform my business and to put my assets in the cloud. Why is it important? Why should I do it now?
Speaker 2:So it's funny, you asked that I've been doing this awhile and years back a few years back, I met with the executive officers of an insurance company and they said, you know, we're not ready. We have good data. And I said, well, you need to think about modernizing your data. So it's more readily available and self service. And has the startups been taking some of your clients and agencies away from you? And they looked at me and they said, yes. I said, that's exactly why the startups born in the cloud will be more agile. It takes you more time to bring your agencies and bring your insurance policies to the customer. You need to be more agile. And the way you do that is don't change your on prem. Just scale it out to that hybrid model. And immediately they got it. So if you're don't want to take the digital transformation and you don't have to do big, just do something small to get that footprint out to the cloud because these startups will take your business away.
Speaker 3:We don't want them to take our business away, bad business taking away.
Speaker 2:Oh, I love startups. I think startups are great. But what if your culture is still structured on prem, then you're at risk. That's all I'm saying.
Speaker 3:We've certainly seen an incredible journey over the last couple of years, too. It'd be fair to say, from my perspective, virtually all companies are in the cloud, moving to the cloud, or they're going to be moving to the cloud or quite frankly be out of business. Right. But it's just generally where, where you are in that journey. So I'm serious. I want to talk about gardening. So let's talk about that a little bit more. And then I'm going to ask you how to convince people, because I think that goes to the heart of this thing. You know, I think the value proposition is strong. I think the basic idea of it makes sense. And I think culturally, most businesses now, somewhere along that journey, but how do we convince them? So, anyway, tell me about your garden.
Speaker 2:Let me give you a scenario. This year, I did a combination of seats and I purchased a couple already prepared vegetables and fruits. You can take that same thing and let's transform that thought you can do cloud native. And what I did that seeds,
Speaker 3:Dear listener, we have a consummate seller here skilled,
Speaker 2:Or you could take a pre planted plant that could be a SAS solution, right. Software as a service. So that's an independent software vendor that could be a plugin to modernize your current applications in the cloud. Right? So gardening, all I'm saying is start small, get your journey started. If it hasn't already. And probably everybody that's listening to this in one way or another. If you're a startup, I love you guys. You're changing the world. And if you're a legacy and you have legacy apps that are 35 years old, you really need to modernize those. And that is that's going to take, it's not a six month project. You all know that. So do it any way you see fit to get started. If you're already in the cloud, then you reevaluate, especially in the world today, our world is changing. Our businesses are changing. Our industries are changing. So build self service, build smart alerts and intelligent data so that you can be more agile and support the customers that you're supporting today and grow that customer base.
Speaker 3:Got it. So everything comes around to Azure. That's great. So I'm going to tell you a gardening story only because I am not a gardener, but when I bought my house 10 years ago, Monica PEDA, the woman who owned the house previously was award-winning gardener. And I don't mean that in the generic sort of, it sounded good, says set, actual award. She showed me. And so for years, our garden was amazing, you know, less so over time. And of course we, we did nothing. They're just all sorts of perennials and good bones sort of stuff. But you know, it's been 10 years and it's slid downhill. And I, thankfully Monica has been over the house in a while, so I'm sure she'd be crying, but my wife today was prowling around and apparently in one corner in the garden, some hydrangeas came up and she was sort of amazing. So to use your metaphor before, if you plant good seeds, yields, great flowers or crepe benefits in the future.
Speaker 2:But if, if you're already in the cloud and in your businesses running in the cloud, whatever cloud take a reassessment of your security, just do it because Microsoft has zero trust. We are one of the leaders in security. We have tools to help advance threat protection. We have tools that are built into, to monitor and alerts globally global platforms. So I just cautious that don't think if it's not broken, you don't have to fix it because we're in this changing world and the bad people are hacking more and more and you want to be proactive there. That's all I'm saying.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. I'm totally on board with that. So do you have people who are biting or are they accepting the story or
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Every time I meet a customer at the first and generally I work with the cybersecurity leads that you call them CSOs, but they're all worried about it. And I don't care how small or how big globally you are. You just need to look at that. And the conversation is, are you secure? How can we help you if you want to, we do assessments, cloud secure cloud insights so we can do assessments. But again, have that conversation is helping people think about the options that they have because it is top of mind for me. And I want our customers to have a top of mind for them, if they're great and they're a good security score, that's fine. But Azure is, um, is evolving every day. So there's new services and new features and new enhancements. So maybe, you know, you put an application out there before, and maybe you may want to enhance it in some way to add some new features to enhance the security or enhance the scalability of it. So, absolutely it's a constant evolution. Digital transformation doesn't happen once it's contained.
Speaker 3:Got it. So if you had any favorite services, things that you see have been getting any great uptake, obviously you're talking about security products like security center and just the whole security estate of Azure in general. But I mean, are there services that you like or are particularly seeing a lot of uptake from people? Yeah.
Speaker 2:So when I talk to my clients, I basically say there's two things. And I talked about it's an end to end cyber security, whether you're hybrid, born in the cloud, whatever. So there's two pieces that I stress to them. We need to build an end to end cyber security hybrid cloud or all in the other piece. That's fundamental is an end to end dev ops, secure development operations. We call dev ops. If we can get those two foundations of the house of the, of the organization, then each of those layer over within those two, you'll get advanced security alerts. You put alerts on, you put monitoring, you build out log analytics. So the two foundational structures that I would want if I'm running a global company is end to end security and end to end DevOps. So any new application I bring in new project debris and they bolt on, they integrate with that security model and the dev ops model. Got it. Well, this is great. I really appreciate your taking the time to meet with me. So I'm talking with platform specialist, colleague of mine, friend of mine. And thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 1:Thank you all very much. I hope you enjoyed it. Glad to talk again. Be safe. Be well, be secure. You've been listening to Azure success, the podcast by and for Azure professionals, you can visit our website, asher-success.com for show notes, helpful links and other episodes, but also to leave your questions, comments, and suggestions. Thank you for listening.