>> Hi.
This is Steve Micheloti from
the Azure Government Engineering Team.
I'm joined today by Scott Gruenmeier,
a Cloud Solution Architect from
our State and Local Government Practice
at Microsoft. Thanks for joining Scott.
>> Thanks Steve. Glad to be here.
>> So today, we're going to talk about
enabling Central IT to become a Cloud Broker.
That's quite an interesting phrase.
What do we mean by that? Give us a little background,
before we start our discussion here.
>> Well, most state local governments are
organized to have a Central IT Department,
providing ubiquitous IT services to them,
so that they can get efficiencies of
scale when providing those IT services.
>> Okay. So what is the opportunity for Central IT,
specifically with like a Government Cloud,
like Azure Government, compared to their own data center?
>> Well, so Central ITs have been providing
data center services for years
to their constituent customers.
But with the advent of
the Cloud and Azure Government today,
were able to provide much more diversity of services.
We have eight government regions announced today so that
the Central IT can
enable true disaster recovery across multiple regions.
There is cost savings that we had with
moving common services to Azure Government,
such as Virtual Machine Hosting or Networks.
And along with that,
we can enhance their security and
compliance with our security
and compliance offerings within Azure Government.
>> So if I'm a Central IT person,
not only can I empower my customers, but I can say,
"Hey, I'm bringing multiple
data center regions to your workflows."
I couldn't do that,
with just my little data center sitting right here.
>> Yeah. We're really enabling
the Central ITs to bring the scale
of Microsoft and Azure Government
tools to their customers and provide them,
which is the level of services that
many state governments haven't been
able to afford till today.
>> All right. That sounds great Scott.
So at this point, I guess my question is,
how could Central IT's best serve
their customers who want to use Azure Government?
>> So Central IT can help set up
the contracting standards for their customers.
And they can do it in either a centralized model
or an autonomous model,
where they can provide a framework for their customers to
buy Azure Cloud Services from Microsoft.
And then, help them understand the bill,
help set standards and
really start their customers down their Cloud journey.
Central ITs can also help
define standards for their customers.
We've provided an enterprise framework
out there for our customers,
where they can set up the contracting.
Help set up naming standards.
Set up audit policy there.
And then, enable customers to do
things like tag their resources,
so they can enable bill
back and show back to their customers,
which has traditionally been a hard thing
to do for Central IT.
They can help automate the deployment.
They can centralize security
with their Azure Security Center,
and help define role based
access controls for their customers
to help provide greater security.
>> Interesting. So, this is
all by way of the Azure Scaffold Framework?
>> Yes. The Azure Enterprise Scaffold Framework
was developed by Microsoft to
provide financial and technical
governance framework for our customers,
so they can get started faster with the Cloud
and have the assurance they
need that they're doing it the right way.
>> There are a lot of things I hear a lot of
times are: " I'm scared
that if I start enabling people
to provision resources in Azure,
I won't have control over it.
I won't know what's happening.
I won't know how much it's costing."
But what you're describing here sounds like
it's really getting control over a lot of those items.
>> Yeah, we're really helping our customers
to understand the difference
between Capital Expenditure Model
and an Operational Expenditure Model,
so that they can work with their
Finance Departments and their
IT Departments to enable processes that work for them.
So they can move forward in the Cloud with
the assurance that they are going to spend what
they want and get
the efficiencies that they were looking for.
>> All right. Sounds great. What else you got here?
So central eyeteeth can also set standards
around networking and network security practices.
And then create templates to give to their customers,
to get them going quickly with
a sound network and security platform,
that they can build on top of,
with the assurance that it meets
the Central IT's standards and they are
going to the Cloud with the best possible practice.
>> So it's like they're building out
the virtual data center itself here.
>> Exactly.
>> Okay. All right, great.
So this makes a lot of sense.
What are the other types of services that a
Central IT can expand their portfolio with?
>> Yeah, this is really exciting.
Central ITs are always
looking for a way to better serve their customers.
To raise the standards within
their municipality, within their organization.
So, one of the pieces that we can help
bring to the table is compliance as a service.
>> It's like the IT is
providing compliance as a service
as part of their portfolio.
>> Yeah.
>> Okay.
>> So the Central IT can ride upon
Microsoft's compliance work that we've
done with Azure and Azure Government.
And then, take that to their customer
with a blueprint on how to best enable that.
So if a customer needs to meet IRS
1075 or CJIS or FedRAMP,
we have our Azure Blueprint Program out there,
where the Central IT can
understand what is provided
from a compliance standpoint from Microsoft,
and what are the customer's responsibilities
along with that as well.
And then, we provide proactive prescriptive guidance
on how to implement solutions
in our Azure Government Cloud,
to meet those compliance standards,
so that the Central IT
and the departments that are utilizing
Azure have the assurance that
their workloads are meeting the compliance requirements.
>> So, it really empower Central IT,
where at the same time minimizing their burden.
>> Absolutely. Compliance is
a task that requires
a lot of thought and effort to go into it.
And by utilizing Microsoft's compliance work
that we've already done with Azure Government and by
centralizing that work creates a lot of efficiencies
and increases security with their departments.
>> Okay. What are some other items for the portfolio?
>> So Cloud Networking as a service,
is another really big opportunity for Central IT.
ExpresseRoute is Microsoft's
dedicated networking connectivity service
to Azure and Azure Government.
It provides a ninety nine point ninety five up time
SLA and that's what our customers are really looking for,
that assurance that there is
an up time guarantee
on their network connectivity to the Cloud,
so they can feel confident in
putting mission critical workloads up into the Cloud.
>> Okay. Great.
>> Central IT can help out that process by providing
a single set of physical circuits to
reduce the overall cost of ExpressRoute,
while providing individual logical circuits
for their customers who want to consume them.
It creates a lot of efficiency and helps
Central IT control
the networking and bandwidth utilization,
across all other services.
>> So Central IT can still sort of
be the hero of the day so to speak,
whereas, not having to
build all this infrastructure themselves.
>> Exactly.
So, networking is often an area the Customer Department
struggle with and Central IT can really
come in and assist with this and be the hero.
>> Okay.
>> Along with that,
Central IT can play a role in providing
Centralized Cloud and On-premises Security Monitoring.
So with our Azure Security Center product,
Central IT can monitor servers across On-premises and in
Azure or Third Party Cloud
Services and roll that up into single dashboard,
still look at things like Patch Status across servers,
across their entire municipality.
>> All right, but hold on a second.
You've just said something about Central IT can
monitor resources that are
not only in Azure but also on Prem?
>> Yes, exactly.
So we can create a single vision of
the truth with Patch Status, Anti-mouse Wear Status,
Attack Vectors coming from known bad entities,
so that when issues arise like
Nimda or other Malware that got out there,
there's a patch that could stop that.
We can look at the patch data across
the entire state of servers in
their municipality and report back whether it's an Azure,
a third party Cloud, or On-premises.
>> That's awesome.
>> And it also works across Windows and Linux,
so we're supporting
open source and Windows environments as well.
>> Okay, great.
>> We also have additional monitoring tools
that can help monitor the health
of services across On-premises
in the Cloud, beyond security.
So we can look at things like utilization,
we can look at compliance,
we can look at audit standards with that as well.
So we can really help give Central IT
and their Customer Departments the comfort,
knowing that what's happening in
their Cloud and On-premises through a single dashboard.
>> Awesome. Okay, so they're starting to build out
their portfolio pretty well here. Keep going.
>> Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery.
Most state and local
Governments have trouble with true disaster recovery.
As we've seen with the disasters
that have hit in Florida,
in Texas, and California over the recent months.
Really having a good Cloud Disaster Recovery Plan
is essential to maintaining
continuity of operations across Government.
So with Azure Government and Azure Site Recovery,
we have the ability to provide
true disaster recovery across VMware,
Hyper-V, Physical Servers, Windows,
Linux, you name it, we cover it.
We can get their mission critical data
to the Cloud and up and running very quickly.
In addition, we have Azure Backup Services out there,
to help get their normal backup data
off to the Cloud at a very low storage rate.
Or we can connect up third party backup services as well.
The important message here is that,
we can get the state and
local governments' mission critical data
that they need to operate,
off premises greater than 500 miles away,
so that if that disaster hits,
they have the assuredness that it's
going to have the ability to keep working, going forward.
>> You mentioned hurricanes,
but there's also wildfires
and everything else we're seeing these days.
>> Yeah. Not to mention broken water pipes.
>> Yeah.
>> Right? Most of the disasters that happen don't
naturally have to come from natural disasters.
It could be simple human error that causes these things.
>> Yeah, Definitely. Okay.
>> Another service that
Central IT can help with is Enabling Cloud Migrations.
A lot of their Customer Departments
are looking at the value of the Cloud and say,
"Hey, I want to go, but how do I do that?"
Central IT can come in and do Cloud assessments and
help them understand the value of moving to the Cloud.
How much money they can save and whether
an IaaS model or a PaaS model,
is right for that particular workload.
In addition to that, they can help them determine
which migration option is
right for them, to which service.
Moving to the Cloud is not always hard,
but there's a lot of information involved.
And so, having Central IT enable
those Cloud Migrations is a real value-add service.
>> Yeah. So Central IT
becomes- we mentioned the hero of the day,
but also really the enabler of the agencies,
of the organization and
providing all this value to their customers.
So it sounds like Central IT is
acting a lot like a system integrator,
along with providing Cloud Services.
>> Absolutely. At Microsoft,
we've developed a lot of materials to
help system integrators and
Central IT develop a Cloud consulting practice.
We have a Cloud consulting framework out there,
that helps them define strategy,
look for skills, when they're hiring and training,
operationalize that Cloud consulting
and go to market in this case,
go to their constituent departments
and help them optimize their Cloud Services.
We have a site out there aka.ms/practiceplaybooks.
At the practice playbook site,
the Central IT Departments can come out and look at
the different playbooks we have for
developing Cloud application development, data platform,
Cloud infrastructure and management, enterprise mobility,
security, AI practice and
there's prescriptive guidance out there,
to really help them develop programs to go to
their Customer Departments and do
successful consulting with them,
to help themselves and
the Customer Departments better adopt the Cloud.
>> All right. Well this sounds like
a win-win, If I ever heard one.
So how can Central ITs get started?
>> So Central IT Departments should reach out to
their account rep and ask how they can get
started with becoming a Cloud Broker.
In addition, here's a list of
links around Azure Government,
that they can look at to
become more familiar with the service.
>> Okay. Well, thanks for joining us Scott.
This has definitely been very educational for me.
So, lots of great information,
I think we've shared in this session.
So this has been Steve Micheloti,
along with Scott Gruenmeier,
talking about how to enable Central IT
to become a Cloud Broker. Thanks everyone for watching.