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Realising Digital Transformation with Microsoft Technology Event

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So it has been a while since I have presented at an event but next Tuesday (13th), I have the pleasure to be be attending an event arranged by a group of companies called the Cloud Consortium entitled Realising Digital Transformation with Microsoft Technology which focuses around a number of different tracks during the day.

These tracks are themed around the Microsoft cloud stack focusing on Skype for Business, SharePoint Online, Project Online and Azure.  My slot is part of the Azure track and embedded in a session where we will discuss the real world challenges and thoughts on a cloud strategy and moving from the high level vision to a low level technical reality.

Having had experience in two use cases for the cloud I will be discussing moving a 1,000 user company from pilot to production in Office 365, some test and development workloads in Azure with the vision of moving DR and the second use case which is what I am currently working on the cross roads of a cloud strategy and which Infrastructure-As-A-Service Provider should we go with.

It has been a pleasure to be asked and as you all know presenting is something I am trying to improve on session by session, I will follow this up with a post review and any slides that come out of this.

The Cloud Consortium is made up of these superb Microsoft Partners:

To register for the event please following this link – https://consortium.cloud/consortium-event/realising-digital-transformation-with-microsoft-technology/

Why you cannot backup Azure VMs created in the V2 Portal with Azure backup

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Microsoft Azure

Hi, just a brief post for those of you that are wondering why Azure backup (at time of publishing this post, Feb 2016!) cannot discovery your IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) virtual machines you may have created within the same region but on the V2 portal – https://portal.azure.com/

Over the last few months I have been spending a bit of time setting up some labs in Azure both in the “classic” portal and the “v2” portal as Microsoft calls it.  The difference being the classic portal is the old fashion (and in my opinion easy to use) portal, while the v2 portal is where all the new development and features are.  Microsoft’s best practise is to try and ensure you are using the new v2 portal for all you IaaS build outs but the issue here is backwards compatibility.

So the use case – I have created a new IaaS environment within the v2 portal using Resource Manager and would like to use Azure’s VM Backup service, i.e. adding a new Recovery service and backup fault (which of course has to be in the same region) and discovery the virtual machines to carry out the backup – NOTE: this is different to the file level backup where you download the Azure Backup agent and carry our file level backups and restores.

Well……..

It turns out that you will be presented with the below error, the reason for this (and confirmed with Microsoft support) is this functionality is not currently supported!!!

Azure Backup Service Error

Yes I know, no notifications or advisory notes when you create these virtual machines nothing it simply does not work.  THE ONLY way to backup virtual machines in Azure with the Azure backup / recovery services is to carry on building your IaaS environment in the classic portal, end of – check this for more details – https://feedback.azure.com/forums/258995-azure-backup-and-scdpm/suggestions/8369907-azure-backup-to-support-iaas-vm-v2 

The future of Insurance, Technology and the Workplace in 2020

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Thanks to fashions-cloud.com
Thanks to http://fashions-cloud.com/

A few weeks I have had the pleasure of not only meeting some fellow industry (Insurance and Financial Services) colleagues but attended two round table discussions on “Future proofing: Building a 21st Century Insurer” and “Workplace 2020: What Colleagues Need“.  The formal was conducted by The Post Magazine with the latter conducted by The Financial Services Technology Magazine – FSTech.

I found both discussions very interesting and thought provoking with the stark reality that 2020 is only 5, yes FIVE years away (in fact four and half years away!!).  When C-Levels plan business strategy, this is generally over a 3 or 5 year period, which means forward thinking and innovative organisations need to start planning now!  WOW…..  So I thought I would share a summary of these events and key points to start you all thinking about this, please feel free to leave any comments below.

Future Proofing: Building a 21st Century Insurer:

Before we get into the detail I have spent this year thinking and conceptualising that in the era of the cloud (I am not going to debate what this means to you, businesses or the differences in cloud services) if a financial services start up was formed (in this context an Insurer) how would it be architected?  What technology would be used?  What would the business processes and automation look like?  If you are a solution provider or in the insurance space then get in touch as I believe this has some real benefits.

This round table was hosted by Post and had a number of insurers from ERS, Aviva, LV= and Insure The Box, the main themes that resinated from this discussion are summarised below.  What surprised me the most was all the insurers agreed that the industry is heading down these themes but none of them had looked at strategies, implementations, data processing and more importantly go to market products.

  • The Internet of Things (IoT) – A number of years ago the global insurance market thought Telematics would not take off and some could not see a revenue stream from this.  Looking at the US, UK or Asia with millions of cars, if insurers offered these devices for £5 a month (and a reduced premium), well you can do the maths and here is the market.  Next we know these devices are evolving into embedded devices just look at the Ford Sync or the BMW i800.  With the evolution of the connected XXXX (be it connected car, home, appliances etc) just think of the possibilities – your alarm system could monitor your house, your habits, your windows / entry points and provide lower costs house and contents insurance; maybe your TV could be connected to the insurers call centre or you could pay for insurance on a pay as you drive model.
  • Data – How can insurers analyse all this data in real time to provide insights into claims, fraud, driving habits, hire car and tracking.  With more devices being connected from apps, telematics and devices this data needs to be transmitted, stored, analysed in a secure and encrypted format – maybe cloud based services will help!
  • Security – Of course if insurers are holding more and more personal information do you think they will be targeted from a Cyber / Data Security threats?
  • Customer Interaction – Will voice be the main channel for customer services, will the use of video (or even wearable tech!) be more main stream.  For example with your touch screen TV just swipe and perform a video conference.  Will it be more avatar based like the Playstation network or just touch a button on your car dashboard for a pop video chat!

Whatever 2020 will hold it will be interesting to see the visionary players, how they will use technology to deliver and meet the next generation of insurers products.

Workplace 2020:What Colleagues Need:

This event was sponsored by Fujitsu and hosted by The Financial Services Technology magazine to discuss how the workplace of 2020 will look like, have businesses included these themes within their strategy and if not when.  This article will be published in the June edition of FSTech.

Looking forward to 2016 businesses need to start considering and contemplating how their workplace will look, how they will attract the right calibre of people:

  • Millennials – Most businesses provider succession planning strategies but is this just a paper exercise or are they thinking seriously about attracting the younger generation.  What drives them?  What type of work environment / working pattens are they looking for?  Of course with our tech hat on we can see this as BYOD, flexible working, dress, access to social media, less meeting etc…
  • Applications – In order to be competitive, provide solutions and implement in days or weeks rather than months, businesses need to remove their legacy applications – these stop the businesses from being innovative and flexibility.
  • Workplace – Is the workplace dying?  Does it need to change?  Do virtual offices play a bigger role?  Of course businesses always need a head office, a central location but when you look at start-ups and how they operate is this becoming more of a common theme.  The cost of property is only go one way – up and therefore operational costs are increasing.
  • Technology – Is technology helping or hindering this?  Will technology give a helping hand!

To wrap up 2020 is only 4.5yrs away and being a technologist I am always interested in what is emerging, what trends are coming up and what the future holds…

Of course with a technology perspective….

Microsoft’s top priorities for 2014

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Recently I have been researching some of Microsoft’s trends and some of Satya Nadella’s strategy and came over this article a few months old from cnet (for the full article click here) which explains where the company’s focus is and the reason for the great Cloud first, Mobile first vision.  Below is a small graphics that illustrates this – where do you think your strategy and your company’s vision fits into this?  Are you looking at any of this technologies:

Microsoft Trends and Priorities for 2014
Microsoft Trends and Priorities for 2014

For me my interested, skills and focus are around the following:

  • Windows 8 Tablets – for me here the focus is around how the hardware market are going to utilise Windows 8 (bring on 8.2 BTW as a menu is back) to remove the laptop & tablet (or fablet!) 2015 will be the focus on looking at Windows 10 and seeing if the Windows 7 Enterprises will make a 7 – 10 jump or Windows 7 ate (“8) 9 to give 10!!  get it..!!
  • Office 365 – The SaSS offering from Microsoft that originated many years ago it BPOS and now O365.  This is a very strong platform for all businesses, large or small (and individuals) and a platform I have very keen this.  I can see this sitting and running on Microsoft Azure at some point in 2015.
  • Enterprise Social – I am starting to run a small pilot at an enterprise to see how the users will adopt this and what the take would be from senior executive members.  For me this is about SharePoint, Yammer and Lync working in harmony together and using it from team collaboration (both business and social) but also about making static intranets more interactive and dynamic.
  • Consumer IT – Well I see BYOD turning into Desktop-As-A-Service and then really it does not matter what technology end users bring in as you have centrally secured your desktop estate, close to your applications.
  • Hyper-V – Hypver V is catching VMware quickly and when you carry out a cost benefit analysis you may be surprised on the VMware support costs alone, let alone the up front license costs.

 

 

So if the desktop is no more what about your data and drives?

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Venture Beat is a great source of information and has some great articles focused around Cloud providers and watching the Cloud space to see what is up and coming.  What is fascinating is the fact that I came across an article talking about how the desktop will be the thing of the past soon, in that I mean the desktop computer, which within my 2013 Predications post I had stated and will still stick to this fact – this is of course my opinion and not based on any widely scientific facts expect for the point of what is happening within Enterprises – BYOD, Ultrabooks, Tablets, VDI, Desktop-As-A-Service need I go on..!

Now I have been a great fan of Oxygen Cloud for some time now having (designed and) deployed (a number of times) and used their products, in fact these guys offer something truly unique within the Public / Private Cloud Storage space – they offer a truly secure Enterprise Private Cloud Storage Gateway for Enterprises (and a freeium version for domestic Public Cloud use) – thats right no more worrying about the insecurities that have been in Dropbox in 2012 or  here in 2011.  They offer a number of appliances that are stored within your Enterprise, behind YOUR firewalls (so no more worrying about BYOD or Data Leakage, let alone Sovereignty of data) which can integrate with Active Directory, RSA 2 form factor authentication and auditing appliances.

It is as simple as One-Two-Three and plug in some of your storage into these appliances and within minutes you have built yourself a Private Cloud Drive available on any device, anywhere and any time – I could go on but will write another article on how Oxygen works.

Why not try it for yourself and get 5GB free and compare it to the others – sign up here.

But do ask yourself if the desktop computer is a thing of the past how will your offer your internal users the same access, same data and know it is secured within your enterprise or corporate network….um……..!

So some interesting facts I have pulled from the post (click below for the detailed post) but some I found very interesting – let me know your comments and email me here:

  1. Gartner predicts that 821 million smart devices will be sold worldwide in 2012.
  2. In her latest Internet trends report, Mary Meeker shows how the Wintel empire will only represent 1/3 of personal computing devices by the end of the year.
  3. Forrester Research says that 74% of workers already use at least two computing devices, and they want access to their content across all of them.
  4. Enter the consumer personal cloud. Your desktop takes a back seat to a massive hosted file server called iCloud or SkyDrive or Google Drive that together could store as many as 5 trillion files by 2016.

 

Post back and information from this post can be found in the Venture Beat Article “The Death of the Desktop Means a Rebirth in IT”.