(dramatic music)
- Hello, everyone, and thanks
for spending your time with us today.
I'm Kathleen Mitford, Corporate Vice President
of Azure Marketing.
My team and I are dedicated to powering digital innovation
for everyone in every industry.
No matter where you are on your digital journey,
we want to be your innovation partner of choice
and offer flexibility
as you think through the right migration
and modernization approach for your business.
This is why we're dedicated
to extending our cloud capabilities to meet you at the edge
or in hybrid or multi-cloud environments.
Today, I'm excited to have Dave McCarthy here in the studio
for a discussion on industry trends.
Dave is a vice president
within IDC's worldwide infrastructure practice.
He has so much experience and expertise
in how cloud platforms can provide the foundation
for next generation workloads,
ultimately enabling organizations to innovate faster,
automate operations and achieve digital resiliency.
Thank you for being with us today, Dave, and welcome.
- Thanks, Kathleen, it is so great to be part of this event,
and even better to be here in person with you.
- Let's begin with a discussion
on how customers are approaching modernization
and how it's evolved the last few years.
What are you hearing that's top of mind for them
as they consider cloud strategies?
- Well, I have to say, Kathleen,
this has been an amazing industry to follow
because there's been an evolution
from cloud opportunistic to cloud first approaches
when people think about it.
And then if you look at what's happened even more recently,
now it's a move from cloud first to cloud everywhere.
And certainly the pandemic was a wake up call for many.
Organizations that had invested in cloud infrastructure
and modern applications were able to quickly adapt
to new ways of doing business.
Those that weren't were caught flat footed.
It renewed interest in a term
that has been discussed a lot, digital transformation.
And when we ask companies about how strategic modernization
is with that topic, 89% say
that it is highly strategic to their business.
So it's something that everybody is trying to solve for.
And there's no question that businesses need
to move away from manual disconnected processes,
but the term implies that it's a one-time event.
I like to think of it more in the context
of continuous innovation.
Digital transformation plus continuous innovation
equals digital resiliency.
A digitally resilient organization
is not just prepared for today's challenges,
but equipped to handle what might come next.
There's also been an increasing maturity
in how organizations think
about how to approach a modernization strategy
and it spans several areas, infrastructure,
data management, applications,
and all the processes that go around it.
And it's important to also remember
that there's a people aspect to change
in addition to technology.
A common inhibitor to modernization
is existing culture and skill sets.
You need to think holistically
about all these aspects to be successful.
- Dave, those were some really great points
that you put in there,
especially about the digital resiliency.
And it's also really interesting to think
about when customers first started
on their migration and modernization journeys,
it was just about operational efficiency
and let me move my workloads to the cloud.
But now with the importance of digital transformation,
it's not just operational efficiency
of moving workloads to the cloud
but how can I use the cloud
to create new product and new service offerings
to really differentiate my company?
- Yeah, you're certainly right.
I think people are looking at cloud
and modern app design really as the power for innovation.
- Yes, power for innovation.
And you also mentioned about different skills,
and I imagine it's different skills that are needed
for driving operation efficiency versus driving innovation.
- Yeah, you're certainly right.
I think when people have made that shift
into more of the cloud mindset, it really took them
through all aspects of their business, right?
So it's not just the IT department figuring out how cloud
is important to them, but it's these operational roles
and it's product development roles
and it's the business as a whole.
So as things sort of moved
into just sort of dipping your toe in the water
to true I'm-all-in adoption of these types of technologies,
it's had a huge impact on companies.
- Dave, we know most of our customers
will continue to operate in distributed, hybrid
and multi-cloud environments, it's the new normal.
What are some of the top challenges and opportunities
for businesses in this new paradigm?
- This speaks to the cloud everywhere concept,
and it is certainly a change in perception.
At one point in time,
there were those in the industry that predicted
that anything and everything would move
to a hyperscale public cloud data center.
And for some organizations, that's absolutely true.
But for most, in fact, 70% or so,
they find themselves in a hybrid environment
and it will most likely be that way
for the foreseeable future.
And there are many reasons for this
and some of them fall into the realm of edge computing.
It's not about edge replacing cloud,
it's about edge complementing cloud to handle situations
that require low latency access to resources
or where regulations or corporate governance dictates
where data can be transmitted or stored.
And even more recently,
you see organizations looking to edge as a way
of improving business continuity.
In situations where the cloud
or network becomes unavailable,
the ability to distribute applications helps
to keep the business running.
And multi-cloud certainly plays a role.
Some are using a multi-cloud energy intentionally.
In other cases, it's unintentional,
whether due to M and A activity
or the underlying infrastructure of a SaaS provider,
but regardless of how you ended up in a hybrid
or a multi-cloud environment, the challenges are universal.
It creates complexity and challenges
for how to manage the operations of distributed resources
and also maintaining consistency
in data management and security policies.
Now, I know this is something Microsoft
is helping customers address with Azure Arc.
A single control plane
that can automate management and security
of these ever expanding environments
is just critical for scalability.
- Yeah, that is true, Dave.
And obviously here at Microsoft,
we spend a lot of time talking about edge, hybrid,
and multi-cloud, and Azure Arc is our strategy
for managing your digital estate, no matter where it is.
Dave, what should cloud providers do
to best support customers
in their innovation transformation journeys?
Speaking for Microsoft, we feel strongly
about providing choice and flexibility to customers,
but there's always room to do more, do better.
What do you hear from customers?
- I think the simplest answer to that
is meeting the customer where they're at,
because everyone is at a different part
of this modernization journey.
And enterprises tell me that documentation,
code samples and reference architectures,
these are all essential,
but cloud providers that can truly act
as a technology partner, helping them guide them
through the process with tools that help with migration,
training and certification programs,
and even best practice advice from solutions architects
really can make a big difference.
And speaking of partners, a robust partner ecosystem
along with an associated marketplace
for solutions is a huge benefit,
whether making it easier to acquire
and deploy new technology
or just to provide a helping hand along the way.
- And we want to be here to be that helping hand
with our customers
because one of the things that's critically important
to us is customer success and customer value
and making sure that customers can get
to that value quickly.
So we have a number of programs and tools that we use
to help customers get to that value.
So we have things like the Cloud Adoption Framework,
where should you start on the journey,
we have things like Well-Architected,
how should you architect
based upon where you're trying to go,
and then other programs like AMMP,
Azure Migration and Modernization,
to help customers on, again, what are the right steps.
And key to all of that is partners,
and what partners can help customers,
what partners have the right skills, again,
to help our customers get to value quickly.
Dave, what would you advise
on key next steps organizations can take?
What do you want the audience to understand
about modernization and migration?
- Well, one thing to consider is that investments made now
for modernization will reap benefits in the future.
And these benefits can help streamline operations
and improve the bottom line.
But more importantly, it serves
as that accelerator for innovation.
Shifting to a cloud mindset increases business agility.
And that's one of the reasons why
in the beginning I was talking
about the importance of getting this
to be a C-level kind of conversation.
If it's buried too deep in the technical organizations,
it may not get the attention that it deserves
and the budget and support that it requires.
And because this is really a transformative kind
of moment for companies, I think
that it needs to really be baked into corporate strategy.
The next thing I would say
is I recommend taking an inventory
of your critical applications
and determine the appropriate path forward for each.
For some applications, a simple move
for rehosting to the cloud makes perfect sense.
But for others, rearchitecting
with that cloud native mindset creates a foundation
for the future, even if the location
where you deploy those applications
is on premises or maybe even in edge locations.
And then finally, I'd say realize
that modernization is both a technology
and a people initiative, that adopting a culture
of continuous innovation requires both new technology
and a change in culture.
Together, it forms the recipe for business success.
- So I heard a couple of important things
that you said there.
The first thing that I heard was make sure
that you have executive support,
make sure that the C-level
is bought in to this journey
that the customers are going to be on.
The second thing I heard was take inventory
of where you are today.
And then the third thing,
which is probably the most important, is the people
and to make sure you understand
how this is going to impact the people and the culture.
Well, Dave, thank you so much for your time today.
You had so many valuable insights.
I really enjoyed our conversation,
and thank you again for being here with us.
(dramatic music)