Data Analytics at Microsoft (SME roundtable)
Welcome. To, the data analytics at Microsoft Roundtable, hi, my name is Brad Sutton and I'll be your host today I'm. On the IT showcase, team here at Microsoft and, I focus on the data analytics space all throughout, the company, and we like to talk to you our customers around how we do. Data analytics, in, our company so that you can benefit from those, best practices and lessons learned within Microsoft, today, I'm here, with four IT, experts. From the data analytics space and this, is your opportunity to ask direct questions of, all, of our Spees and get candid answers from, all of them so. First I'd like to know a little bit more about your. Space and what you're going through from a data analytics perspective so. You'll see some questions, below, in the, roundtable. And I'd like to get your experience, around what, you're using in your environment things like power, bi sequel. Server Cortana. Intelligence suite, so, if you could just fill us fill that, that form out and let us know what you're using in your space that would be greatly appreciated but, if you're not using those technologies, what, technologies, are you planning on purchasing, in the next 12 to 18 months that will really benefit, us and how we target our answers based upon that information. With. That we'd. Love, to have you start posting those questions, and I'm gonna ask, this means to introduce themselves so, we'll start with Michael, Lucas. Hi. Everyone I'm Michael Lucas I work in Enterprise Data Services and my, team's role is to really help our company, get to a data culture with. Helping, the product team understand the kind of features and capabilities we, need in our products stack as, well as how do we get the best practices, and the best ways to use data seen, and understood by, all of our employees. My. Name is Dana Baxter and I. Work. On our internal, data platform, team and our. Service, helps, internal. Microsoft. Customers, manage, their environments, and migrate. To Azure, services. My. Name is Charles Lascaux I work in sales and marketing IT and we use data to the entire lifecycle of the sales and marketing process. From understanding. Marketing, campaign effectiveness, to understanding. The forecast, of, sales process, and ensuring, that customers have a voice in choosing the partners they work with. Morning. My name is Trent wazoo and the I see. PPI architecture, in your group called Enterprise Application services, so, our primary focus is to get the best value from, ICP. Data then, also drive. The, technology. Roadmap of a. CPT. Peon. Envy I. Thank. You everyone appreciate, that so. We're gonna make every effort to answer all of your questions, in today's 60 minute roundtable, but, if we can't get all those questions feel free to stick around we're gonna try to get to all those questions after. The hour has been completed, if. You'd like to see extended footage online, the video will be like I said earlier available, at Microsoft, comp or slash IT showcase, and, with that let's, get started with our first question. So. And. Feel free to post your questions so one. Of the questions that I see here is how. Do you leverage data, analytics, at Microsoft, what's, some, of the first things that you do and how do you do that within your organization. So. When we think about, data. And the sales and marketing space there's a number of different ways we want to look at it first and foremost is how. Are we doing in our sales process what, kind of pipeline. Do we have look how qualified, is it so we bring this data in and. Look at it to understand, what, is our quarter look like what's our fiscal year look like where do we need to apply more resources. At. The same time when we look at things like, partner. Engagement we, want to make sure that partners, have a fair field to play on when, they're being chosen and selected for different opportunities to work with our customers and, also, that the customer voice is a key part of that so when we look at performance.
Performance. Metrics, and capabilities, and competencies from, our partners and location. So, it's not just a personal, relationship, that drives the selection or recommendation of a partner we're taking those personal, aspects out of it from a salient perspective, and letting the customer have a real voice in how they do that how what partners they engage with. MySpace. We're using data to help manage our infrastructure, and so, that, data is very important, so we can understand, what we call our estate so we know how. Many of every, kind of asset that we have whether it's an on-prem, server, a vm, storage, services. And then all the way up into the Azure space where we're looking directly into, the whatever. We have deployed into our subscriptions. Yeah. Our team is, an enablement team we're trying to drive adoption of a lot of tools power, bi is an example and so, it's, interesting we, use the telemetry of this data to help us better understand, how are we driving adoption in the company where are there areas that option isn't happening, what, kind of patterns are we seeing so even for us as an enablement team trying to get adoption, the, data helps us make decisions day to day about how we need to change our approach and strategy. I. See. Potato which is how, can we derive, the value, of promise a bit data faster. Cheaper and better by. Leveraging. More, in technologies like a part of power bi and a sequel server and, we are able to try. To replicate data from a pea onto Microsoft Data Platform. Perfect. Perfect so, one, of the other questions that I see here is, how. Have you seen data analytics change at, Microsoft, over the last five years, anyone. Want to take that one yeah. I'd be happy to take that one when, we look at data, analytics, five years ago in Microsoft, especially, it was very much a situation, where we have a giant. Spreadsheet hundreds. Of KPIs they're really executive, driven an executive, who might want to see how the business is performing all up that, doesn't translate well to, the. End seller, or the partner, for example and, so, you. Know oftentimes you, know there's little value proposition, for them they didn't understand necessarily how, those metrics that a senior, executive would, see would tie to their performance, and how they could bridge that gap and what, we've seen especially with new tools like power bi which make, individualization.
Of Personalization, much easier, and so we can ensure that when, an executive looks, at her scorecard, did. The seller underneath that exactly could actually tie their, individual performance back, to that so we're parsing, the data and. Serving it up in a much simpler way and before. We had to do that it was a complete customization everyone would either be in html5 or Java it, would be an Excel. And Excel, report now with power bi we can actually just frame that up in a very specific way in a rule-based manner so that doesn't require a huge development effort it, also seemed, like, the. One, of the things I have noticed that it has changed over the last few years is bi used to really be an afterthought, and bi developers, and teams were. Usually very small there was just one or two and they, really had to go dig through all these data sources to find anything that was meaningful and these days data is a priority. And it's. Inserted. Into the process, you know while systems, are being built so that it's easier to measure. And, do, dashboards, and scorecards, and stuff. At. The time rather than somebody trying to go back later and, you. Know figure out how they can manage that reporting, that's a great point and I when we look at every scenario we look at from a sales or marketing perspective now bi, and, the analytics, and insight needs are actually baked into the scenarios upfront so it's not like you said something we do later you, know and that tends to be that you used to be the poison around companies. Five six years ago is that you, would you wouldn't you would build, a system you would get all this information you'd. Build like a CRM system and then someone would say how do we get the data back out of it now we need to figure out what to do and now we're actually thinking that is our is a is a forefront, to the exercise, all of yeah, there's a boat on that a little bit the other thing that has. Really struck out for me. If. You think back five years ago the. Kind of reporting we were doing was what I considered diagnostic. And descriptive right it was the scorecard, analogy. Is a green yellow red if it's red oh god we got to figure out what to do now, people are using data to understand. How what decisions do I want to make going forward what are the trends I'm seeing what should we be thinking about and so seeing, that change is super, important because that's how you get to real digital transformation. That's how you change your business model it can't be the old report, card of just tell me that I hit my numbers at the end of the month right and so that's been fascinating to watch that transformation. At all levels not just IT, people but in the business yeah. We. Are more on the. For. Technology. So it always took, time to. Design. And develop the BI solutions on, top of our, ACP. Data now. Leveraging, power bi in modern solutions, we, enable, our internal, customers with more sever services scenario, than, they are able to. They. Are empowered. With, the, viewers insider from our dates rather than waiting for more. Quarters, to get a value soap. Opera is really a game changer in our, huge, amount of ACP.
Data People, can mesh, up the data from multiple sources and then really get it. Yeah. Those are all great answers. One. Thing I would add to that is in. The last five, years. I've. Seen a total. Transformation of how, we use. Data. To make every business decision that within the company so in, my views of talking to the business and talking to all of you. Gone, are the days of making, off-the-cuff, decisions, or you, know sitting down in a room and all throwing ideas up, on the board to, create strategy, everyone. With. Sachi on board it, really has been every decision within the company is based upon data and that's been a mantra that I've seen change throughout, the whole company and, that's a that's a huge opportunity for all of us and. A great, lesson learned for the people out there listening to this webinar. So. One of the other questions that I see here is is are. You moving to power bi we talk about power bi a lot here so. How are you moving the power bi solution and. Are you moving it on pram or in the cloud and sort. Of what is that roadmap for all of you. So. From. Our perspective in sales and marketing we are aggressively, moving after power behind the cloud and, the. For us the value, proposition, as I mention a little bit earlier was that we can tailor, those experiences. Based on the role of the the Pearson Mystics you know is usually a senior exec if she's gonna want to see a much, more high-level, view of her business the. The. Seller at an image of level of the sales management wants to look at that kind of team level and I think what you know what I thought what I realized over the years if you think about the idea of like a sales pipeline a seller, has no concept of a pipeline they just have what they're working on that that pipeline notion. Becomes. More crystallized, as you move further up the hierarchy and being, able to use. Power bi to give very specific information, to a seller that they can action and drive action from is very, valuable for them and that's one of the values that we see in power bi is that again with a very limited. Infrastructure. Investment, in a very limited. Development, investment. We can actually reach. A much broader audience much, more quickly and with a much higher level of satisfaction if. You give a seller a spreadsheet with 500, metrics on it because that's what the executive sees, but they're not going to use it they don't, care I always. Equate power bi is the Trojan, horse to our data culture transformation. You. Think back five ten years ago we've had tons of initiatives, at Microsoft, to try and do, what I would consider enterprise. Data management best practices, and create standardization, about how we do reporting and all in the past the approach was start. With the warehouses, and the databases have conformed models you know try and constrain everything, and we. Never would get those initiatives to work power, bi the beauty about that is you're putting the. Presentation. Layer in the hands of an end user who, can actually start, to visualize data the way they understand. Data and when. They see that and they see the power of that and how that works it builds the excitement, to then get, all those other things done that we know in AI team we need to get done in the company such as data standardization, data, quality, right, improving, how data flows in and out of systems but, you can't get to that if you don't show the value to the business people on what's possible and how they can change their lives and that to me the power bi adoption, and the move to the cloud that's been driven because people see value it's, not just because Satya, said we got to move to the cloud yeah right and so that that to me is interesting and a big aha because I was in the camp before of no first we gotta fix the warehouses the databases, will do things in order and it's. Completely, changed my view seeing how a product, like power bi can, really help jumpstart. That transformation. Yeah, and along those same lines you. Know historically the the giant. Data warehouse projects were expensive, and time consuming and, once, you actually landed it you had no interest in you.
Know Getting rid of it because you've invested millions of dollars potentially if you're enterprise and in landing, this this ubiquitous, solution. That's it's monolithic. Really, power. Bi allows you to have a level, of disposability. If you need to spin up a piece of information that you know a report. That you need for three months to get you through a quarter a month to get you through the end of the month and, then you throw it away because it doesn't matter cuz it didn't the investment, wasn't so significant. You, can easily you, know iterate on something, you can dispose of any of you don't know you can improve it it doesn't matter and that's, in there's time investment, you know absolutely but, the reality is we're not spending a year to five years, to try, to land, some gigantic, solution. In. Infrastructure. You, know while we do have a centralized. Bie team, who does a lot of ETL, and data processing, and, understanding the, data sources I, think. The the one really, cool thing about power bi is that it lets you, know just the average user build their own reports, and doesn't put such a burden and a backlog, on our centralized, bi teams and I think people really. Like that because then they can build out their own unique, reporting and. We're always talking about you you know your work is really great but a lot of the stuff that we do in infrastructure, you, know isn't. Always the understanding. Of it isn't very portable and if you can get a report, on top of that it really can showcase your work and up level the service, that you're providing, well. And in all of your situations. Going. Into business review, and having power bi behind, you and having that be real-time data because we've all been there where we've, done reports, and and we, spend two two three four weeks. Doing this we, deliver the presentation, and that data is now four weeks old and they. Said okay when was the last time you did this data, crunch oh it was a month ago okay. Wow. How do we get real-time data and power bi is that that answer so that's really, good really, good conversation. So, one, of the other questions that I see here is. How. Do we support the, growing demand, for working with data when. Everything, is moving to Azure, so. Talking, about moving to the cloud how, is that change your business how does that change your, experience, with the data executives. Data and. And personal, data Oh. My organization, has a service. We provide that tries, to help groups, like shun ways so he has a massive si P implementation, that, s AP implementations, data's needed throughout the company you're talking hundreds of teams that need that data for different purposes so, we try and help make it easy for them to consume. That data right, have a central place you can discover know where it is asked, to subscribe to it obviously the permissions and securities check that you should be getting access to the data and then you can get those feeds and in. Terms of the, cloud and ease of use a lot. Of the company all the companies quite honest is moving to the cloud and so for us it's been how do we make that a frictionless, access, in the cloud whether you've gone with pass or is and. Honestly. We. Haven't found it harder than on-prem in, some ways it's actually been easier, mostly. Because our products, are designed to try and share the data in those environments where. That wasn't always the case of non Prem and I'm pretty we had to figure it out so, I think, it's been really good it's made it easier, for us to really try and get to that vision of one unified, data platform, which will never have from a physical, perspective but, for, us it's you, as a consumer trying, to find data it should be frictionless, and it should seem like one single experience and so I I feel and you I'd love to get your guys perspective that us, moving to the cloud and the kinds of offerings were having is making that easier now.
Yeah. Definitely, for us you. I sort of see with. Our internal businesses. That we have sort. Of two groups we have one group of people who are building new applications, so they're able to deploy modern. Applications. Right out of the gate but then we have an older population of, applications, where they don't necessarily have as many resources as, they, once had when they were first built and, so they don't necessarily have, you. Know, developers. And and other. Resources, to migrate. Those into, Azure services, so it's very important, for us to work with the azure product, groups on making. Sure things are. Very. Native, and that the migration, of that is simple and easy but, we also know that that works outside of Microsoft, too because there's, a lot of people in that same situation where, they're taking existing, applications. And trying to move them into Azure without, doing. A complete reinvestment. Of their entire application. We were facing, and it's, customer. Feedback pure in the past a Dodger they, had to spend a lot of time understanding, our CP. Data model which is completed, it's a physical data model. Is, a very, compressed. Model so, that's, really occupying. A huge. Amount of their time understanding. The model then mash, up with their own model by, leveraging, micro. Steams services. We are really, that enables, us to and, our. Customers, really, our, customers to focus more on their business problem, rather than the technology or physical, model problem, they, could adjust to focus on their business. Model, which is just, across the whole enterprise then. We as IT I think, here will do the, work. To, Mashhadi, translate. The physical model to the ultra-modern, exposed, us into, a centralized, the data catalog. To. Our. Data so. By, leveraging all the power of the I didn't. Already. And. You. Know one thing that's a you. Know kind of an unanticipated benefit. That we found is that in the migration to the cloud we gave us a great excuse to inventory, and assess a necessity, of all our data assets and, clean them up and, you know there's a lot of stuff in it you know a couple like Microsoft, which has been around for more than 40 years now that we've collect a lot of data over those years and some of it just sits there for years and years and years and we were able to say we don't 30%, of the data we're bringing into this particular data warehousing scenario, isn't valid anymore no one cares it's.
Not Being used and there's no value to it for us so you know we use it as a kind of a clean house exercise, as, well, it's. Speaking of a clean, house and. Metamorphosis. From from. On-prem, to the cloud Dean, and one of the questions that's targeted, towards you, is. How. Did we go from providing. Services, to our to, our database. Database. Engineers. And DBAs. To. Providing, on-prem, solutions. From, your. Standard, now to the azure, cloud, as. A default standard what, took place how. Did that how did that change how did you change that standard, and what. Did it look like to your. Yeah so, within. You. Know IT we had a you, know we had a standard process where people would submit, a request for, hardware, some kind of infrastructure, bm's, and, we. Had tool sets around that some automation, but a lot of it was very dependent, on teams. You. Know an actual person, doing the work so you submit a request to build out a server it, would go through an approval process the. Hardware, would be ordered the server would be built you. Know this is all very time-consuming and. Lengthy, it takes a lot of people to manage those kinds of requests, so. As asher came on the scene we realized that we could shift this process. Into. More of a self-service, model and so these. Days how. Its set up is you, don't have to go anywhere and submit a request you, manage your own subscription, or you have someone who manages your subscription, for you and you have users, that are specific, to your application or to your business, you. Know doing, doing work inside those subscriptions, so for me to get a vm or an, address equal database or to deploy any one of azor features, just takes me a few minutes I just go in and do it myself I don't need to go to a centralized. Corporate, website where I need to go through days. Weeks months worth of process, in order to get equipment. Or assets, assigned to me so, and and I think that we've been doing this as a standard, for about a year, when we switched over from being. Having we don't even really have the ability anymore, to request on-premise. Equipment. It takes special approvals. And lots of things because we really have this you. Know encouraging, people to use Azure and, and, manage, their own resources, in a self-service, way yeah. And. How does that affect guys. Like Hugh Michael I can tell you being a customer. It's. Amazing. Like I remember, the days where I had, to plan for my systems, and my platforms, months, in advance that. I was going to have a bump up in capacity, need so, we could get the servers, in the labs we could get everything set up I could get access to them and do what I needed to do and then finally get my application stack installed and so now the fact that I can just go to adjourn, I got. It split up dev you need more environment here you go super. Simple and so I love, that. We've changed to that because as a customer, being, a customer, of you it makes it way easier for, me I think the other benefit, is that instead. Of us sort of owning the, you. Know the bill, that. Cost is it's kind of put back in with the businesses and you understand, more you're spending rather than being blind to you, know I think sometimes, Microsoft. Were a little bit blind to some of the costs. That we incur to. Put it lightly but. I think when you have it in this scenario like your group now since you know what your bill is you're a little bit more cognizant, of how much money you're spending and how many resources you're spending up not leaving, things that are unused laying around it's, important, to optimize, for cost yes, well.
The The thing I think of a similar, michael talked about is you know not only for planning, ahead for a new application, but what happens in an application you have in production is, being. Taxed. Beyond it's the, hardware's capacity, so we don't have that long lead time now anymore if I need more RAM for for, a piece, of hardware I don't need to worry about that then, from a budget perspective I, don't need to you know years, ago we had to hassle with depreciation. Cost and Hardware replacement costs, and that, was always you, know the way our budget process sometimes wasn't always great about that you might not find out until already. After the new year started by the way we need done $150,000, to change, the hardware out on this and we know you didn't plan for it now, we don't have to worry about that anymore it's it's very predictable, from from an azure perspective, for us and it's simple if we do need to extend capabilities, to to, meet new needs, and. We do have to pay for. So. We get three like our customers, now and that's the other change because it's funny when you said that and we always used to never think about the cost of our software yeah. Now. We are, I've, noticed, we're. Taking much more of a customer, centric approach where we are paying for every I do have to worry about my subscription, if my devs have this code just running, and spending money I see that but look, at what you guys doing. That's. Definitely well and even in operations, it's become you, know an exciting, topic for us to talk about whenever we find a place where we can save money and we can actually measure it because we have data, you. Know it, it's. Very rewarding to be able to to. Just, move in and analyze what. Services, we've deployed, so. I mean that there's cost in. And in in, the features, in the assets, that we're consuming but there's also cost, in in people and like I said being able to switch it from a, user. Request based, a process, to a self-service, thing we're taking a lot of the, dependency. On. Operational. Costs out of it and also when people choose. To use path, services rather than I as services, there's other things that you've got out of a sure that. Are a cost benefit, like you don't have to maintain servers, they, do the patching for you, there. There can be a lot of benefit. There it totally changes the system administrator, that you typically had on Prem to, it to a newer higher level when you move to in. The cloud for sure. Speaking. Of that one. Of the questions. That we were getting is is. What. Do you think, the. Percentage of our. Environments, are sequel server 2016, sequel, server 2016, has just recently been announced and made. Available. Dana. Maybe this is a question for you but any any of you seen benefits, to sequel, server 2016, any. Any, sort of benefits productivity, gains so. If you could share your experience as well for us that, we. You know using Azure we. Specifically. With sequel Server 2016. We you. Know we deploy using templates, and azure and the default build for that is, sequel. 2016. So we're seeing we do have a big population, of various versions of sequel just like every other company, but our focus is to always. Try to upgrade, as. Quickly as possible and then all new deployments, are 2016. Also. From our ICP. Team standpoint so we fully commit to that it is a world of a sequel server - so, before, every.
Release, And of, sicko server we as acp, team. We are actually. Running. Our production, on the available of sequel, server so we are fully committing, to through that and our. Currently. Our acp. Systems are mostly. Running on sequels one existing, and, we are able to leverage the pay level. The. Constant. Index. Or the in memory, features. And. There there will always be I see, the need of being able to use, on-prem, and in the cloud experiences. You, know not not every organization within, Microsoft, I don't know if you know the percentages, of on-prem, versus and the cloud, if. You do I would love to know that information, but there's, always going to be instances, where you're gonna have an on-prem solution. And. Like, as Dana said their default, standard is is in, the cloud and the cloud experiences. But, one of the things that when. We talked to Charles and moving. From a sales and marketing space, let me direct this question to you. If I may, how, is data analytics, changed, your business from a sales and marketing perspective, it's kind of a high higher, related, question I've, done some showcase, work around predictive. Analytics, and, how that's, influenced, the sales experience, love. Your thoughts around that absolutely, so if, you think about anyone who has worked with sellers, before or the sales process not, just a Microsoft anywhere in the world you, know that human, derived sales, forecasts, are very, imprecise, probably. On the order of about, forty five percent accuracy, so. It can be like Christmas morning at the end of the quarter for a lot of sales executives, you could do really well you could be way off and you have no real, basis. For that decision it's, kind of a gut feel at that point it kind of your point about you, know data-driven. Decision, making what, we're able to do and what some of the things we're modeling is what's the likelihood did an opportunity, to close the seller may say you know I got this I'm gonna win this we can look at historical, factors they know you probably, don't you, have a very low probability of, winning this and we can do the same thing with leaves as well we can take a look at the different factors that come in a sales lead for our, marketing I'm. On the sales side of the family and in sales marketing our marketing peers they're, doing wonderful work actually in assessing. The quality of leads that are coming out of out, of the marketing feeds. If you will and, in some cases we've increased, the close rate on those a hundred percent over. Lulu done a B testing by, just doing some basically, qualifications, we're continue to iterate on that with every, release. Every sprint to, make sure that when our sellers and our partners, get this, information, it's more actionable and more likely to succeed and. You know like I said when you look at the forecast we can we're, getting the point where you can start looking at forecast say you're wrong, this. Is how you need to start thinking about this and that's what it changes data analytics, because, previously. Everything, scorecards like a report card how did you do in this last quarter how do you do this last year now we're we want to say it what are you going to do next quarter what are you going to look like next year where the areas where we need to invest where. The growth areas where do we need to hire, more people where do we need to get more training and more relevance, for our sellers that's, how it's changing for us to. Build on that it reminds me of a story that I, heard from a team. Member who helps, sales. And marketing, organizations, figure, out how to do some analytics, and find, different ways to change their business and the story that stuck with me was it was in Japan there. Was a sub. In Japan that hadn't. Met their numbers. Consecutively. And it, was a big deal like they were really stressed out they're worried about what's gonna happen and.
They. Looked, at the data and did some white space analysis, and it was amazing, they blew, through the numbers, that. Quarter and actually. Doubled. Their numbers for the year and so just to think of that like the fact that they use data to, instead of it to your point the forecasts were always off they'd never close the deals they thought they'd closed -. Then look at that and be able to look forward and go here's where we need to focus here's, the opportunities, that we're not seeing that, was. Shocking, to me like to hear that story because that's a personal impact right that's people who are stressed out about their jobs we're now performing. Super well so yeah. It gives us the opportunity to do with white space cross-sell. Upsell analysis, things, that we haven't done exceptionally. Well in the past and you know we are identifying, those other opportunities what's the next logical product, you're gonna buy if you bought this you're, likely to buy this as well if you're gonna that's, best of things we're trying to tease out for our sellers in our sales organization and, it. Starts with the marketing and in the the awareness of the need there and then drives all the way through and connecting. Those data those data elements as they move through our sales and marketing processes, is critical, for us well, and one of the things that in, talking to you before Charles, was you, know you, talked about having that rear, you mirror of how we did in the past having. That futuristic, predictive, analytics, approach of, what's. Gonna have in the future but then you also have this prescriptive. View as well that I'm seeing that you guys are integrating, into your your products internally, to Dynamics, CRM, and. MSX, is is one. Of the things that you need to do to close that business and I think that's a game changer for our salespeople can you talk a little bit about that absolutely is. Anyone, knows who's probably watching this right now is that, the landscape. Is changing from, a technology perspective and you know years. Ago we could sell office and, windows and that would be enough, nowadays. Things. Are changing, the type of consumption, people, want the self-service, people want the, ability to make choices on their own and have more of a customer, driven. Impact. And into what you're buying you know you know we're not we don't want to throw everything this to wall and see what sticks see more we want to understand what, products we need to be how we're engaging customers so now we can tell us now we can tell sellers you, need to have a partner, engaged this, is you're not gonna land this deal without it you know with the expertise, for implementation, from our partner perspective, and if you think about I can't just sell say Dynamics CRM to a 20 seat customer, and hope, that things go well they probably don't have the expertise to implement, it successful estar going to need assistance so. We can look at it we can look at opportunity say you don't have a partner in Gatien this how are you how are you gonna land this and how is the customer, gonna be successful, because it's not about that first sale that matters it's about continuing that relationship in that lifetime customer, value and if, you just leave, a customer to dangle with a huge implementation, failure they're, probably not going to trust us again to come back on these things so that's, you know from from our perspective, being able to tell sellers, you know in sales managers what they should be focusing on as you, go through the sales process and and the lifetime, support, process, is really. Important for us and data gives us that lens that we can apply well, in consumption, based reporting yes as we move forward will be a big deal absolutely. It's it's not you know any any business, that's involved in cloud sales you.
Know You know even, if you're a consumer cut sells you want to understand how I'm consuming, a product that I've licensed are I purchased. And as, a seller I want to understand how my customers, are using that and ideally, they should see the same information that's that's just a big piece of it you know we can't you, wish to get away with having different pieces of information for different different. Constituencies, now it's got to be the ubiquitous, data and you. Know as we try to plan out how a customer, lifecycle is, going to run we, need to understand what they're consuming how they're consuming why aren't they using Azure, if they have a subscription, why aren't they using why you know they bought a thousand, office 365. Licenses, why, are they only deployed 200, of them so, you know either we've oversold, and we need to help adjust that are we needing to figure out what's the barriers to adoption because. It's from our customers you know a customer looks at the bottom line of that contract, and they've purchased a thousand licenses, and they're using only 20% of that they're, not going to be satisfied under not going to want to continue to do business in that in that modality, so we, need you know having, that information and having the you know our sellers, and our service engineers, be able to talk to customers about how they're using things and where their challenges might be are important, yeah. And I'm gonna build on that at that, example on how you describe that that's. Not just for the tools for. Our field and sales to use it's even how we an IT need, to think about how we measure ourselves and, so, consumption. Right now and customer. Value are the two key measures if we're score carding anything around the services we provide to Microsoft, and that. Is a big shift and and, I think that thinking like every. Company if you're an IT person in a company that's how you need to think about your job it's, about how are you helping your employees, use. And consume the things you're building for them and making, sure that you can measure the value that it's providing, them and. How do you measure that value is it through surveys, is it through usage, reports, it's a combination I'm some of it we get from telemetry because we can see how they're using features, and capabilities and if they're landing it right but some of it is you need to talk to them you need to understand, what they're doing how they're using it if they're able to to his point were, they able to close deals with able to figure out a better way to do, a marketing campaign were, they able to figure out a better way to utilize the power in the building right and so we reduce building, costs you have to know the value that your customers, are getting so IT.
Can't, Just sit behind the curtain and say well I gave you the service here it is and I'm measuring the servers running and you, know people are processing, it you need to know that you're impacting the business and, I think I'd like to ask the question to you guys over on how you measure your levels, of satisfaction or your servus so, if you Deena if you could. Have. A little bit about that because. As. You're talking to the customer all the time and how do you measure satisfaction. From. Their perspective, I. Would. Say. It's. That, in and of itself that's a difficult question and it's not necessarily. A data point that that, that I collect, and report on but what we do look for things like, you. Know how easy is it for people to deploy a solution, how. Is, the report so the three of our focus areas are cost, optimization, performance. And security and so we always look for opportunities in, those areas, to give the, user, as much information as possible so that they can make decisions and. You know if we're hearing a lot of frustration, in the system then we know that that's an area that we need to improve on but we, do try to proactively. You know provide that kind of information, so, that people feel a little bit ahead of the game and they're not being surprised with Oh a patch came, out that I didn't know about or. Their. Their spending, is out of control in, a particular, area and it. Actually wasn't necessary, or maybe, they, could improve their performance somehow. And they could you know go resize, a resource, that they're using and, so, those are always that's always good feedback, because when people feel like they're secure, they're, optimized, and they're saving money well and that's a speaking, of saving money I know you're being humbled but I know your organization saves. Millions of dollars every, year, by, being able to reprioritize, and reutilize. Unused. Hardware and based, upon that consumption, they're able to give that hardware, back or repurpose, that in different ways that that can be repurposed. And saved hundreds. And hundreds of, man-hours. And, millions, of dollars so that's. Awesome if, you could talk a little bit about how. Si P is is utilizing. This and and keeping, our customers happy based. Upon the data that would be fantastic if, you did Oh. We. Basically, so from from my my, preservative six I'm more, focusing on the technology, okay, so, we would, just communicate. With customers from, from time I'm just trying to hear, from, customers right from our project. Quality, from the architecture. It. Really satified. Cuz, I need then. There. Is also. Point. Like, we, we. Through. The, survey. With customers. We are able to find out we, in. A possibly. Replicated. Data in too many places so, that led to the. Slowness. Of our project. That's. The. Driving factor for us to start during the pinnace cases to. Leverage, your features, from from, the cloud the BI prospect, you come from the sacrifice, or repair Lake possible, to. Consolidate, our patterns, and solutions, then. That. The. When, we start building business cases like that that's a very natural, conversation. With our stakeholders. Then, thou really, can, also in turn drive our technology. Roadmap to very. Good good, speaking, of is your data Lake and. Those types of technologies anyone. One. Of the questions this is what what's. The panel's experience of using Azure.
Data, Lake or you. Know we've talked a little bit about as your as, your ml we talked a little bit about predictive, analytics, any. Comments, around Azure data Lake and and some of our Cortana, intelligence suite, technologies. We talked a little bit about how si pees you using, it any experience. On the panel with. Those technologies I guess I'll start actually. My team is heavily, in talks with them because one. Of the platforms we have is that data sharing platform and, we're, trying to solve the problem that traditionally, is saw if you have app, a and at B and B, needs age data usually, a talks, to me the developers get together decide. On an API and a data contract, code, it and then share you. Can't do that a company, this size with the amount of systems we have it, will be millions. And millions of dollars so we created this whole custom solution an IT that. Allows a central, way to have a distribution environment. That shares that data and trenway's. Team actually with s AP utilizes, that as a publisher, of data and, so, one of the things we're trying to talk with the product group about is specifically, with ADL, around data storage and data distribution is, can we take that scenario, and make, that an enterprise deployable. Scenario. Through our Microsoft, stack without this ité custom, code and, so we've been working very closely, with the product group to, help them understand, because it's a little bit different scenario, than say a big team, building, something on ADL this, is five. To six hundred concurrent, connections a second trying to get data out right so, yeah we're betting on getting. These capabilities, native, in the product so a company outside, of Microsoft, could build the same kind of thing with the Microsoft stack we. Have exactly the same scenario we have a program. We called first and best where. We work directly with the product groups on, you. Know we'd be dog food pilot. POC, all the all the all the ways that we can participate and help improve the products, and. And, a lot of those right now because, the past solutions, for data so data, products. Are sort of progressing. Right now they're new and upcoming so, we have you know, SSIS. And Azure data. Integration, services, is what they're calling it you. Know data Lake data factory how can we exhaust data from different as your resources, and partner. With OEMs, to do, more reporting, over there so we're. Trying to be as cutting edge as possible and, how could we have the same, trust. Me we have the same issues, inside Microsoft as other, companies have, out and I think that MSI. T specifically. You know we're a really good resource for the product group to be able to test and try out things, and get a good set of requirements. Yeah. I totally, agree and and and not, always will our solutions, always provide, end-to-end capabilities. And we'll always have that need to build and extend on all of our our technologies, and. That and that's a beauty of our technologies, because, they are open and we can extend the cross, capabilities. Within the organization, and. Speaking. Of that one of the questions, that we, are seeing here is is how. Do you ensure and I think this may be from, a power bi perspective. Michael. Targeted, towards you and then that the panel wants to discuss it how. Do you ensure, the. Success, of power bi takes, off inside, the company how do you communicate that. To the rest of the world oh yeah so this is this is probably one of the biggest things I'm most passionate about, this.
Company, Had has, always been a technology company and we tended to try and solve these problems with technology and, the thing we learned with power bi when we first tried to drive adoption the company was very quickly this, is about people, and process. More. If not the same as technology, and so. We've put a lot of focus and helping people understand, why would I want to use power bi why do I want to change from what I've traditionally, been doing whether I'm an IT person, who's always been the person who wrote the SSRS, reports right give me the requirements, above the report for you here's your report or your the end customer who's been waiting for this report and then gets frustrated, that it isn't what you thought you were gonna get and, so most, of our energy has, been, driving. Awareness and understanding of, what the, product is about how you need to think differently about using, data what your role is in that data lifecycle whether, you're an IT person or a consumer and once. We get those transformational. Changes and how people think the, technology, becomes, an easy thing I mean. Power bi is not hard to use what. Makes it hard is not understanding, the context, and not having the right support where the IT guy is providing, the data in a way that the business guy can use it and so, that's been our journey and that's that's the thing I talk with other companies the most about because that's the blindside that you don't really think about and it's forced me as an IT person to, change my skills and capabilities, it's not about can I code, and talk about how to build a warehouse it's, about how can I do a change program and how does just. A spin off of that, there's. My question, is is how you see, that. Data. Analyst, or. That. Bi guy, that you know that's in the dark room with the really thick glasses that. That. Traditionally. Is focused on data. To. Now your product managers, your HR, professional. Maybe.
Your Executives, are getting, you. Know pretty pretty, affluent in bi how. Does that change the roles within the company how does that change your relationship, with with the businesses here at Microsoft well an IT we become an enablement function, like my team used to be the doers five years ago we built the warehouses, we built the reports, now, we enable, we help the business understand, how to do it and it's all better that way I mean I'm never gonna know what a marketer, does day in and day out to the point where I can build, the rapport in a way that I get a breakthrough insight, only the marketer can do that so, I need to enable the marketer to be able to understand, how to use the data so they can have those breakthroughs if, you rely on the IT guy to do it it's never gonna happen you're gonna get operational. Efficiency, and that's it and. So that that's that's how our roles have changed when we talk about what we do I talk about high enable yeah, any, any breakthroughs. Bi. Power, bi breakthrough, experiences. From from your world that that, you you. Went from I've got the data and hundred thousands. Of rows of Excel spreadsheets and now moving to power bi and and to that to that white space analogy, boom, there's the answer any, ending experiences, with that across the panel well. You know when we look I've, talked about this is up a little bit when we look at like things like pipeline and forecasting, in pipeline, coverage it's been very, easy for us to quickly turn around a view for the top executive, for her dashboard, down to the individual seller to say this is one this is what I'm committed to this is where I'm standing it's my quota so, if I have to sell a million dollars this quarter and I've got a million and a quarter in my forecast, I've, got good coverage there and so you know at the individual, level I can look at that and then at the macro level the exactly would say hey look we're, looking to be a hundred million over this quarter that's fantastic. And it's, you know be able to spin that around in, a matter of weeks at the most, you know we pull some data in from different sources we munge it and then we can easily you. Know apply different, power bi views on top of that that are contextual to personnel how they want to see it so the if I'm in the top level I might want to see it in a completely different way than they individually just want to see my little you know we like to use the speedometer, metaphor, I can, see my little speedometer I'm looking good so, they're you know makes it so much easier there's, no custom development that's and we take a hard line in sales in the marketing IT especially. On the sales side we do not want to customize we were trying to be a first invest user and give that feedback to the to, the to the product groups so we don't customize you know we don't we don't create custom visualizations. We. Will ask for them if we really desperately need them and work through that but you know we're able to use the product out of the box to do this and so it drives our development cost. And timelines way, down, to. Our. Customers, a wolf, actually is really on the surface of incisor so. Harvey. I keep them up here to, ready to run the PA by themselves, and, they are able to mash. Up data from different, sources and. I think, it was our conversations, with business more, focusing on the business problem, and much less on a technology, or a connector, problem so. That's really Harvey, I is it. Is also my session yeah yeah absolutely, one, of the questions that we, have here is, talking. About the percentages. Of on-prem, versus in, the cloud, power. Bi experiences. Michael. Can you can you talk about our power bi on-premise. Solution. And, and. How, are we moving what, do you know what the percentage is or the, experiences, are you, know two, years ago is probably 80/20. On-prem. Connection. Versus in the cloud now, I'm guessing it's around 70/30. Cloud, to on-prem and that's a guess I don't know the exact number but we're really basically flip if I look at my org my work is almost all now in the cloud we have very few things on Prem now I, do still like having things on from because again there's. Not very many, companies. In the world that are all a hundred percent in the cloud at least I don't think there are, so. It's good for us to know how, it works and it shouldn't matter I mean that's the big thing I always talk about when I talk about a capability, I want from the product group it, shouldn't matter where, I have the data whether, I have it in the cloud on Prem on my laptop who cares yeah it should just work is there any reason why a customer. And. I'm just spinning off of this question so just tell, me if this is a stupid, question but I think is. There any guidance for, somebody, who is saying, oh I'm.
Looking To you to help me make that decision is it, is it is there any specific, scenarios, that are better for on Prem or. I. I. Am not steeped so I might have but I'm not steeped into the only thing I could think of a wide want to stay on Prem I can't. Think of one because it's just such a pain to procure on for him hardly, maybe. There's some tenting that needs to be done but I don't know whether you're how the tenting, would work and what I mean by tenting is if you had like a very private, project, where you needed to be very secure. About where that physical, server sits, and access. To it not just from a internet perspective, but from a physical perspective maybe. That's where I would say kind. Of like what he, said a year you know a year ago you, know it that would have been an. Easier question to answer but these days you know the the, speed, at which new. Features are being enabled and Azure almost. By the time you say I can't, move to the cloud because, of X then, somebody comes along and says well that's that's, already just got deployed last week and. You just didn't know about it yet because so many new things are coming out all this is that was one of the main, our customers, and and we. Went through that it was like okay is the cloud secure enough and I think we've proven to our our, customers our, internal, employees, that say oh it's, just it's just not secure, enough we we've sort of you, know provided. An insight into that and saying that yeah if we are running our business where our information. Security team is running in. The cloud then. I think you should be able to run in the cloud as well yeah go. Ahead drops I met I met at a customer, about two years ago and I was just he was a CIO and I wanted, to enforce the customer, because. They didn't give me explicit permission to do so but we talked to I was talking with them about cloud and I said you work, in a sensitive industry with a lot of personal. Information and. You, know personal, for your clientele, how, did you convince your, your executives. That of the cloud was the right move for you and his. Answer was interesting he said you, know I took. A tour of your data center and then. When you know they walked us through different safety security protocols, that, you have in place and there is no way I could ever hope to match that hmm, in my own data center and, so, for, me it was no brainer once I understood, this. You know the security, and the scale of which you offered it was an easy decision. Yes. It. Is also a very natural, thinking so we are uncrowded. I am. From. The separability, standpoint. From calcium. Standpoint, we have been seeing a lot of values and. Then now, our focus, is more chores. Centralizing. Our technology. Solutions. Lately, from the data warehousing and API standpoint, onto a retinal database API so. That could really serve. As a further of the, storage, cost and there are data warehousing on project costs so that's the pin point at this moment and we, still, have for good.
Or Bad we still have data. In. A, different. Sequence. Or piece of databases. But, now. We. Want to really consolidate. All those feet onto original, acre basis central I. Don't. Know about you guys but this has been fascinating for me because. For. A data analytics base every. Customer has different needs and, whether, it's their investigating. Power bi or whether and they're investigating sequel, server or enterprise. Data warehouse or, moving to the cloud with their data. Every. Customer is different and. I'm and I'm so glad that you guys were here to provide that experience, that. How you know you guys work together collectively. To, provide data analytics, environment to all of us Microsoft, employees so you know want. To say hats off to you guys and working together it, sounds like it's a very unique experience and, that you're all leveraging, each, other's experiences to making it real, easy for us as the, business to. Be able to utilize data analytics, I think, we've got just, a few minutes left in our. Roundtable. And so, what I wanted to do is make sure that if you had any specific questions, to get those to us now if you can, before. We were and the today's, conversation, but. I wanted to just leave. With. Asking you one specific question if. You could give a customer, one, specific. Tip in. Your space what. Would that be and and, if, you could go Michael, and start that, would be fantastic, sure, the. One tip I would give is kind of a two piece one one, you. Gotta enable. In your company the, ease of being able to share data it's the number one thing the. Way the market is going if you don't do that as a company in 10 years you're gonna be irrelevant, in order to do that though don't make it a technology solution. Issue, look. At it from a people and process perspective get, by and help people understand, the value that's the only, way you, will realize it and get to a data culture. I. Think mine would be. Kind. Of what. We talked about earlier which is don't make data an afterthought. Always, when, you're when, you're developing your. Infrastructure, planning your environment, make, sure that you're, taking, into consideration what, you might care about next. Week or next year. And. I would say that, mhe. And the throw out to here the first one is and. Almost what Michael has said is that data, and how we look, at data is changing and your organization, needs to start that journey if you haven't already it's, less about the report card mentality, it's going to be about how, can data, improve. How you're serving your customers and how you're serving serving, your enterprise how, you can use predictive analytics, how you can predict what's going to happen how, you can you, know you know change, how. You're approaching the business, problems that you're trying to solve and the other one actually is and this is kind of personal no. Matter what your skill level is technology wise you know try some of the power bi tools out there I actually used the power bi just to get more familiar with the help somebody was moving to the Seattle area to. Look, at the school districts and I actually built him a nice little power bi you, know map view of the different school districts where they were relation, to our offices, and links, out to the test scores and all that information it was a good exercise for me and it was very helpful to them but it just gets you a nerd - the technology, understanding that it's there's, a little bit of a difference but it's actually very simple once you get the concepts, in the processes, down. So. For. Over. 20 years Microsoft. And I think we are working together. Developing. A. Full, suite of BI and there are problems solutions surrounding, ASAP and as, a customer, and user we have been renovating, a lot from, our. Own product. And we are extremely confident, in the. Agri. Base they're a platform solution to and I would highly highly recommend, our external. Customers to, take a look at Microsoft. Bi. And data platform solutions for. Your ICP, problem to get a better value from, your data. It's. Perfect you guys thank you and, we like to thank you for taking the time out of your day to, come. Listen to this roundtable, and we. Appreciate, all of your questions that you've given and the dialogue that is created between all of us here. At Microsoft this. Video will be posted on Microsoft. Com4 slash IT showcase, along. With the wealth of other information, and resources. On how we do IT here at Microsoft we.
Hold These events every. Week so if you have any more specific, needs around IT showcase, come on back and take, a look at and bring, your colleagues and take a look at what we're doing here an IT from, an IT showcase, perspective, so. With that I want to thank you and have a great day.
2018-02-22 08:05
