Get the Speed You Need with Cloud. Utilize the New Economics of IT to Quickly Become a Digital Business

Get the speed you need with cloud. Utilize the New Economics of IT to quickly become a digital business.

Storm Clouds Two Distinct Approaches to IT The exploratory approach innovates IT leaders are currently experiencing a once There is a way for IT to increase its value the business and emphasizes agility, in a career perfect storm. This is being to the business and become more efficient, revenue, brand, customer and a business created by the convergence of two storm agile and innovative in today’s digital world. centric culture. systems: unprecedented levels of technology Avanade refers to these approaches as disruption and increasing expectation from Predictable and Exploratory IT. Central to both approaches is cloud. digitally savvy stakeholders. The cloud enables predictable IT through The predictable approach optimizes the more efficient & dynamic use of core IT A few years ago, the disruption came from core IT systems and emphasizes reliability, systems as well as exploratory IT through cloud, big data, mobile and then social. cost efficiency and IT-centric culture. faster innovation and time to market. Today, they continue, but have morphed to generate new disruptive technologies like smart devices, Internet of Things, cognitive agents & bots, plus many more. The pace at which these technologies are evolving, and the frequency at which these storms hit, continues to accelerate. And each time a new storm hits IT is expected to make the newest technology work smoothly and Cloud accelerates securely with everything that’s come before. the two distinct approaches to IT At the same time, expectations from digitally savvy stakeholders is only growing. Predictability “Optimize the Core” Exploratory The C-suite is losing confidence in the IT “Innovate the Business” team to handle these challenges, with 79%1 of C-Level execs believing they can make better & faster decisions than IT.

1 Source: Avanade Research Get the speed you need with cloud.

Cloud: The foundation for the Digital World Avanade helps you put it all together Avanade helps you put together the right How does the enterprise implement a For a large and still-growing number of pieces to grow your business at cloud speed. cloud strategy to achieve all this? Many companies transforming their businesses enterprises are looking to move applications in the cloud, the partner they’re choosing Maximizing Efficiency and workloads to the cloud by adopting is Avanade, and they have helped to make Maximizing efficiency means creating Microsoft Azure and Office 365. Some Avanade the most experienced Microsoft predicable IT services that manage, enterprises try to make this move via a cloud services partner in the world. maintain and secure core IT systems “forklift” approach to the cloud. But without in ways that reduce the cost of IT to a holistic perspective, this approach can fail. That’s a big claim, and we can back it up. the business. Cloud computing can enable • Most seats. We’ve implemented more this by providing new ways to communicate, The cloud is a robust environment that, than 4 million seats of Office 365, across collaborate and analyze data that are only when utilized in the right way, can enable Exchange, Skype for Business/Lync possible with the scale of the cloud. the digital workplace. Many applications and and SharePoint—more than any other The result boosts productivity and data- workloads are interrelated and dependent Microsoft partner. driven decision making. on one another, but their integration isn’t • Most certified professionals. We automatic when moved to the cloud, have the largest number of certified Maximizing Efficiency especially not with an enterprise’s existing professionals for Office 365 and backend systems. Companies that address for Microsoft Azure. A consumer packaged the integration challenge incorrectly or • Most Azure use. We have driven goods company used incompletely risk business disruptions. the most use of Microsoft Azure of any A cloud transformation strategy should systems integrator. Avanade and Office 365 take legacy applications into account. to give its employees access And it should continue with a strategy for As a result, Microsoft has named us as an to business services from continuing maintenance and management. Azure Preferred Partner, High Touch Partner for Office 365, and member of the Microsoft anywhere, at any time. This is a lot for most IT departments to Partner Advisory Council for Infrastructure manage, especially as they face their first and Cloud Services. We use our resources IT providers need to support these goals. cloud projects and juggle all of their other in cloud services not merely to move Avanade’s deep expertise, broad range responsibilities at the same time. And customers to the cloud, but to help them of services, and close relationship with they know it. That’s why enterprises are use the cloud to: Microsoft mean that we are always aware increasingly turning to partners with cloud • Maximize Efficiency of the newest features and capabilities being experience to help them. • Increase Agility added to Office 365 and Microsoft Azure, • Innovate the Business and how best to put them to work for you. Companies that engage partners for their cloud transformations and managed services are doing so to gain the benefits of the cloud more quickly, mitigate risk and support critical operations. Forward-thinking companies are relying on partners to help them deliver enablers like liquid applications, intelligent platforms & connected ecosystems. They are reshaping the value of IT by evolving to an IT services broker model. With this approach, they shift from being the provider of IT services to being a services broker or enabler of cloud and managed services. That is, they’re engaging partners to implement the two distinct approaches to IT.

We can help you use Microsoft cloud Increasing Agility cut development time and cost because, services to deliver IT as a service. For To benefit the most from the cloud’s for example, Avanade knew when example, you can benefit from connected economics, while also lowering risk forthcoming enhancements to Microsoft ecosystems, extending collaboration to and maximizing results, enterprises need to Azure would eliminate the need for the offsite employees and even to partners, increase speed and optimize their application developers to build functionality on their suppliers and customers—all without the and infrastructure transformations. For many own. And use of the Azure global content complex, cumbersome and expensive VPNs, larger, multinational enterprises, achieving delivery network eliminated the need to firewalls and other technologies that used this goal requires IT partners with proven maintain those underused assets in regional to be necessary to help ensure security and innovative tools and methodologies, datacenters. The customer saves between in pre-cloud environments. combined with a global delivery network 20% and 90% of previous datacenter of experts. costs (depending on datacenter location), We can show you when and how to use and reinvests that money in solutions to Office 365 and Microsoft Azure—and when Increasing Agility help save more lives. And it’s far more and how to use them together, for example agile, deploying solutions in hours—as it in federating directory services for presence Avanade helped a disaster did during the Japanese tsunami—that and instant messaging--for application relief agency migrate to previously took days or weeks. services that create unprecedented levels of productivity and collaboration within Azure to more quickly scale Innovate the Business your enterprise. and deliver critical solutions. Companies today want to innovative the business, improve the speed to market and encourage “fail-fast” cultures. They can Of course, information workers aren’t Avanade has these assets. It’s not enough to the only ones who need to be more do this with liquid applications, designed think about the cloud migration. A successful with a modular architecture to fully exploit productive in the digital business. IT pros approach must extend to continuing cloud do, too. For them, Avanade’s Management the speed, scale and efficiency of the cloud. operations. We build your cloud solutions Avanade helps them do this in several ways. Platform (AMP) is a cost-effective way and provide ongoing managed services to offload management of cloud services in order to help or assist with increasing to an innovative intelligent platform, operational agility, while reducing your initial Innovate the Business enabling IT to focus on delivering the CAPEX costs and your ongoing OPEX costs. greatest added value to the enterprise. A global mining company A supplier of technology for international is achieving their vision of the For example, a consumer packaged relief operations sought a faster, more “IT of the Future” on Azure goods company wanted to move its scalable and cost-effective solution to deliver with the help of Avanade global workforce from an aging Lotus its supply-chain technology, which is used Notes platform to one that would support by humanitarian organizations worldwide the latest collaboration technologies. when disasters strike. It was a classic line- For example, we know that not all workloads And it wanted a change-enablement plan of-business case for the cloud. During a are equally appropriate for the cloud, and to ease the employees’ transition. Avanade crisis, demand for the solution could spike we help you identify and prioritize the most helped with both, with a UCC environment by a factor of 1,000, so the enterprise had promising candidates. We know that not all delivered on Office 365 supported by to maintain underused assets at three cloud services are equally appropriate for Avanade’s UCC extended managed services. datacenters to be ready. And when it had your workloads, and we help you identify The result increases end-user productivity, no infrastructure within reach of a disaster, the best choices for you, taking into account decreases time to deliver core infrastructure it could spend precious weeks to build it. factors such as backend security and services, and delivers multi-device access compliance, and the characteristics of public to those services from anywhere, at any time. Avanade, together with its parent company versus private clouds. We know that a hybrid Accenture, migrated key customer applications on-premises/cloud approach is often the to Microsoft Azure. The close relationships optimal solution, and we show you how among Avanade, Accenture and Microsoft to adopt it when appropriate.

Avanade Application Roadmap to Cloud

IT leaders are looking for a partner with your cloud-first apps to take advantage and migration offerings, and brought to the expertise to build cloud-first apps that of continual enhancements to the cloud bear our expertise in Internet of Things truly maximize the potential of the cloud. platform itself. (IoT), cognitive computing, cloud strategy, For example, we understand the differences DevOps and Agile to help meet the between scaling capacity in the datacenter For example, for a global communications objective to innovate faster. versus the cloud, and we build native cloud software provider, we used our comprehensive apps designed to scale fully, quickly and services for Microsoft Azure and Office What to do now reliably. We also understand how you can 365, along with the innovative business Whether you’re starting to think about use the cloud to run your legacy apps, intelligence capabilities of Power BI the cloud or struggling to implement without wholesale rewrites, to gain greater for Office 365. By combining cloud, big data a cloud strategy, Avanade has the efficiencies and savings than you can in your and analytics, the company unlocked new expertise and experience to help put own datacenter. insight and innovation. together the right pieces for your cloud faster and with less risk. Take the first step IT leaders turn to Avanade because we We also helped a global mining company towards having cloud deliver the speed understand when to propose hybrid achieve their vision of an “IT of the Future” you need to become a digital business: applications that span the datacenter platform, with which they can innovate faster, Learn more about how Avanade can help and the cloud, and how to build them increase mine production, and drive revenue. by visiting https://www.avanade.com/en/ for maximum benefit. And we have honed Avanade responded with a combination solutions/cloud a managed services model that enables of application optimization, modernization,

About Avanade North America Asia-Pacific Avanade is the leading provider of innovative digital Seattle Singapore Phone +1 206 239 5600 Phone +65 6592 2133 and cloud-enabling services, business solutions [email protected] [email protected] and design-led experiences, delivered through the power of people and the Microsoft ecosystem. South America Europe Sao Paulo London Majority owned by Accenture, Avanade was founded [email protected] Phone +44 0 20 7025 1000 in 2000 by Accenture LLP and Microsoft Corporation [email protected] and has 29,000 professionals in 23 countries. Africa Visit us at www.avanade.com Pretoria Phone +27 12 622 4400 [email protected]