Creates More Secure Remote Access with Lower Latency

Customer Solution Case Study

Microsoft Co- Venture Uses Server Solution

Overview “We can run our DCS environment with a lean staff because Country or Region: United States Windows Server 2012 and System Center 2012 give us Industry: IT services consistent management tools that automate most processes Customer Profile Avanade, based in Seattle, Washington, and vastly simplify the rest.” offers business technology solutions and Weston Fraser, Manager, Dynamic Computing Services, Avanade managed services. It has 16,000 employees. For Avanade, the Accenture/Microsoft joint venture that provides business technology solutions and managed services, it Business Situation Avanade wanted to use Microsoft is not enough to use the latest Microsoft technologies to run its technologies to continue to enhance its business. It also has to demonstrate compelling expertise in operations and to demonstrate its expertise to its external customers. those technologies to win new business. The company saw the chance to do both with the release of Windows Server 2012, Solution Avanade used Windows Server 2012, Microsoft System Center 2012, and Windows 8. Avanade created Microsoft System Center 2012, Windows 8, an innovative way to deploy Windows 8 worldwide, using and Windows Azure to give remote consultants better and faster network Windows Azure, and then used the new software to give remote access and to enhance the operations of workers faster, easier, and more secure corporate access. its private cloud environment. Additionally, the company’s mission-critical Dynamic Computing Benefits Services—which runs a private cloud environment for Creates more secure remote access with lower latency development and testing solutions for internal and external Reduces time to deploy Windows 8 by 50 customers—uses the technologies to gain the cost-effective percent Improves management processes scalability necessary to support a large and growing business. Reduces deployment cost by 67 percent Situation eventually poses a challenge to the IT Microsoft customers are not the only ones department’s help desk, too. who use the company’s products. Microsoft runs its own business on that same Avanade addressed these limitations when software, which means it has two sets of it adopted Windows Server 2008 R2—the customers—internal and external—to second release of the Windows Server 2008 satisfy with its solutions. operating system—with Service Pack 1 (SP1). The DirectAccess technology in That also holds true for Avanade, the joint Windows Server provides a connectivity venture of Accenture and Microsoft that option that is easier for Avanade delivers business technology solutions and consultants to use and the IT staff to managed services. Avanade promotes its manage. The technology’s “always-on” core competency and expertise in capability means that consultants have Microsoft technologies to customers, and it their connections to the company demonstrates that expertise with the way whenever they turn on their laptops, that it uses Microsoft technologies to without going through a manual access manage its own global operations, process. It makes accessing intranet including 16,000 professionals located resources much like it is for users working across 20 countries. within the company’s offices.

Many of those professionals see the inside But at least one key difference remained: of an Avanade office infrequently. Consider Because the technology was limited to a Avanade consultants, who spend about 80 single point of access—which Avanade put percent of their time outside their offices. in its Seattle, Washington, data center— They may not enter an Avanade office for latency was high, especially for consultants weeks at a time, but they need always-on accessing the network from one or more connectivity to Avanade whether they are continents away. This limitation resulted in making presentations to prospective a hybrid model, with VPNs continuing to be customers, reviewing project status with used to access particularly interactive current customers, or working on their own resources, such as data connections and —or in virtual collaboration with colleagues intranet sites. —to deliver solutions for their customers. Avanade also adopted Windows Server The traditional solution for that need has 2008 R2 SP1 for the company’s mission- been the use of virtual private networks critical Dynamic Computing Services (DCS). (VPNs). It provides security—a must for the The DCS division provides an in-house, exchange of customer-specific and other private-cloud development and test sensitive data—but it is also clumsy and environment for Avanade developers time-consuming for business people to set working on projects for both the company up, requiring user names, passwords, and and its customers, and has supported configuration choices. And anything that thousands of projects over its decade-long presents a difficulty for business users existence. It manages about 400 projects at any one time, using an environment of

26 about 1,500 virtual machines running on technology, Avanade established a the Hyper-V virtualization technology in DirectAccess server in both North America Windows Server. and Europe. Now, when a consultant turns on his or her Windows 8 laptop, the For DCS, the challenge is to continue to software automatically seeks the nearest scale to support more customers—internal DirectAccess entry point and establishes a and external—without a parallel increase in connection through it, rather than costs. The last time DCS acquired an exclusively through the Seattle-based additional storage array, the purchase price server. was US$1 million, and “migrating data from the older equipment and moving it to the Of course, this solution calls for the new system was a major event, was very company’s consultants to run Windows 8 expensive, and called for our users to on their mobile devices. Avanade created a accept significant downtime,” says Patrick quick, cost-effective global deployment Cimprich, Vice President and Global Chief process for Windows 8, which it expects will Architect of the Technology Infrastructure also appeal to external customers planning Service Line at Avanade. their own deployments. That process is based on a hybrid on-premises/cloud Solution solution using Avanade’s network of The company addressed these challenges— localized Windows file services for office including high-latency for remote workers workers and Windows Azure for the vast and the need for cost-effective scalability— remote workforce. by adopting a trio of Microsoft products: the Windows Server 2012 operating The consultants and others receive email system, Microsoft System Center 2012 for messages with a link to a cloud-based data center management, and the Windows click-once application hosted on Windows 8 operating system. Azure. The employees type their network credentials, and the application determines Avanade upgraded to these latest which download location is nearest to Microsoft technologies for many reasons, them. The download begins and employees but one was to eliminate the latency that are using the new operating system international consultants experienced when software in about 45 minutes. they used DirectAccess. The result is that Avanade can expose more of its interactive Avanade is also deploying Windows Server resources through DirectAccess, which 2012 to the approximately 100 physical reduces the company’s reliance on VPNs servers, plus the virtual machines, that while maintaining security. support Dynamic Computing Services. Its motivation is to exploit a range of new and The DirectAccess technology in Windows enhanced technologies that will help DCS Server 2012, together with Windows 8, continue to scale its services and creates a multisite solution that replaces capabilities in a highly cost-effective way. the single point of access of the previous- Those technologies include the following: generation technology. Using the newer

36 Hyper-V Replica. One of the new features under a broader range of network that Avanade adopted “immediately,” conditions, and support the new according to Weston Fraser, DCS multitouch and gesture-enabled Manager at Avanade, is Hyper-V Replica, Windows 8 devices being adopted by which provides asynchronous replication Avanade consultants and developers. of virtual machines between storage systems, clusters, and data centers. Avanade has also adopted Microsoft “We’re opening a new data center in System Center 2012 and is using it to London and will use Hyper-V Replica for manage infrastructure in DCS and comprehensive disaster recovery elsewhere. For example, it uses System between it and our Seattle data center,” Center 2012 to monitor and manage the says Fraser. “Previously, disaster recovery, physical and virtual infrastructure of DCS, an expensive capability, was on a the Windows 8 devices, and even Windows selective or nonexistent basis.” Phone 8 phones. Avanade also uses System “Shared nothing” live migration. Center to implement virtual machine and Avanade uses the enhanced live other virtualization migrations, automate migration capability to migrate virtual standardized processes, and serve as the machines among servers within their foundation for custom management data centers, reducing the impact to end solutions, such as the company’s Cloud users when changes to the underlying Services Manager. infrastructure are required. Hyper-V storage migration. Avanade Benefits takes advantage of Hyper-V storage Avanade is using the latest generation of migration to transfer virtual hard disks, Microsoft products to make both its without downtime, to new locations for consultants and the IT staff that supports upgrading or migrating storage, them more productive and cost-effective. performing storage maintenance, or redistributing the storage load. The Creates More Secure Remote Access with technology supports the Server Message Lower Latency Block 3 (SMB3) protocol, which Avanade Avanade has improved remote access with is adopting enterprisewide, and its adoption of Windows 8 and the particularly in its London data center to DirectAccess feature in Windows Server host storage on standard, low-cost 2012, according to Simon Windell, hardware, helping contain the company’s Workstation Service Owner at Avanade. capital investment there. Remote Desktop Services. DCS already “We used Windows 8 and Windows Server uses Remote Desktop Services to give 2012 to solve the latency problem for our developers, consultants, and others global network of consultants who have to access to their projects and other connect with corporate resources from just resources. In adopting the enhanced about anywhere,” he says. “Remote version in Windows Server 2012, the consultants now have access that’s very organization can provide a consistently similar to the access of Avanade employees rich experience on various devices and working within our offices. That’s a morale

46 boost for the consultants, and it has practical implications, too. Now they can “We can run our DCS environment with a use their remote access productively to do lean staff because Windows Server 2012 more than check email. They can directly and System Center 2012 give us consistent consume network resources, line-of- management tools that automate most business applications, and databases. processes and vastly simplify the rest. The Because DirectAccess gives us high security tool set provides a single window into the without degrading the user experience, we environment that we use to maintain a can give remote consultants access to highly managed system,” says Fraser. sensitive information—such as human resources data—that we didn’t allow over For example, the same hybrid deployment remote access before.” process that saves time for remote users also saves time and money for IT. The Reduces Time to Deploy Windows 8 by company no longer has to dedicate as 50 Percent much time to assisting remote users during The hybrid deployment process for their upgrades, and the process is up to 67 Windows 8 boosts the productivity of percent less expensive than it was before, Avanade users. For example, remote users according to Windell. used to bring their computers to an Avanade office to upgrade their operating system software, or they received and deployed the upgrade from DVDs. The hybrid process eliminates those time- consuming, complex processes, shaving up to 50 percent off the time needed to deploy the software. That’s contributed to Avanade’s decision to roll out Windows 8 to all employees, according to Windell.

“Faster, easier deployment gets people using Windows 8 sooner,” says Windell. “And virtually everyone who uses this technology finds they can do what they do better.”

Improves Management Processes, Reduces Deployment Cost by 67 Percent Avanade IT professionals benefit from the faster, more streamlined management processes that they gain with Windows Server 2012 and System Center 2012. That is particularly important given the lean nature of the company’s IT staff.

56 Avanade also can use the faster, less Windows Server 2012 expensive management processes to Windows Server drives many of the world’s improve service-level agreements and largest data centers, empowers small reduce prices for internal and external businesses around the world, and delivers customers. “We gain tremendous flexibility value to organizations of all sizes in and agility by using Windows Server 2012 between. Building on this legacy, Windows and System Center 2012,” says Cimprich. Server 2012 redefines the category, Another big savings comes from Avanade’s delivering hundreds of new features and use of SMB3 storage, replacing the need enhancements that span virtualization, for $1 million storage arrays with a low-cost networking, storage, user experience, cloud hardware option. computing, automation, and more. Simply put, Windows Server 2012 helps you transform your IT operations to reduce costs and deliver a whole new level of business value.

For more information, visit: www.microsoft.com/en-us/server- cloud/windows-server/2012-default.aspx