OneAsset is what you might call a very mission-critical app.

“OneAsset is essentially the inventory system for every device that exists within Microsoft. That’s every single piece of hardware from laptops to servers—all the various pieces of network, storage equipment, even virtual devices,” says Pete Apple, principal service engineer in Microsoft Digital, the engineering organization at Microsoft that builds and manages the products, processes, and services that Microsoft runs on.

The data collected within OneAsset is used throughout MS Digital. OneAsset data also interacts with 35 other systems for inventory management, compliance, system management, and other operations.

With the move to Microsoft Azure, the OneAsset team wanted to do more than simply move machines to the cloud. They also wanted to take advantage of a whole host of Microsoft Azure services that could handle increasingly complex workflows, while also scaling to meet growing demand.

The OneAsset team also recognized the complexity of the migration, Apple says. To ensure a smooth transition with minimal disruption, the team broke the migration down into several stages, starting with a lift-and-shift approach to Microsoft Azure infrastructure as a service (IaaS).

Moving all on-premises virtual machines (VMs) to Microsoft Azure IaaS provided better control of the OneAsset infrastructure, enabling the team to spin up environments and resources on demand.

[Learn how Microsoft Azure Front Door makes it easy for two apps to boost availability and security. Read how Microsoft moves its IT infrastructure management to the cloud with Microsoft Azure. Learn how Microsoft is boosting productivity and security with a move to Microsoft Azure.]

More scale, less management

After moving to the cloud, the OneAsset team turned its attention to the benefits of Microsoft Azure platform as a service (PaaS).

First, the OneAsset data tier was moved to Microsoft Azure SQL Database. This instantly freed the team from a long list of maintenance tasks, from patching to backups.

“By moving OneAsset to Azure, we reduced maintenance time by over 30 percent,” says Abhishek Khilnani, senior software engineer with Microsoft Digital.

Less time spent on maintenance also meant more time to focus on developing other OneAsset features.

“We’re delivering more of the features that our users are asking for, which makes for a better overall experience,” says Richa Agarwal, also a software engineer with Microsoft Digital.

Microsoft Azure SQL Database also brought other key benefits, such as active geo-replication and auto-failover groups, Microsoft Azure Traffic Manager for the data integrity between primary and secondary instances, and a minimum 99.99 percent up-and-running guarantee.

As an additional safeguard, the team rolled out each part of the PaaS migration as a preview, with the original IaaS environment made available to users as a backup. This helped support a seamless migration.

“We had almost no incidents raised during the migration,” says Prakash Assudani, senior software engineering manager on the Microsoft Digital team.

Completing the move to PaaS

The next step in the journey was to migrate the OneAsset web and user interface (UI) front end to Microsoft Azure App services. With all parts of the app infrastructure now outside of the corporate network, VPN access was no longer required. This was great news for all OneAsset users.

“A lot of the services using OneAsset were already on Azure. When OneAsset was on premises, this meant that these services had to use VPN to connect,” Apple says. “With Azure, we got rid of that dependency on VPN.”

OneAsset also leveraged multiple security features in Microsoft Azure. For identity and authentication, the team moved to Microsoft Azure Active Directory and implemented Microsoft Azure Key Vaults to store and manage passwords. Microsoft Azure Front Door—a secure entry point for apps—also ensures availability for users around the world.

With Microsoft Azure Application Insights, logs that previously had to be stored directly on the web servers and downloaded for triaging issues can now be maintained in Microsoft Azure. “This enables us to run analytics and query the logs easily, and provides us with automatic alerts, analytics dashboards, and other benefits,” Agarwal says.

Better data reporting and analysis

With data management and UI covered, the team turned to data analysis.

To better meet the needs of its users, the team developed a solution for data analytics using Microsoft Azure Data Explorer, a log analytics cloud platform optimized for ad-hoc big data queries. Additionally, Microsoft Azure Data Explorer, sometimes known as Kusto, provides users with elaborate, built-in analytics and comprehensive indexing and reporting features. It also provides several key improvements over the old system.

Complex queries that took hours with the old system can now be completed within seconds.

“We used to receive numerous tickets for query issues, and those tickets have been practically eliminated,” says Amit Raghuwanshi, a senior software engineer on the CPF team.

Microsoft Azure Data Explorer has also enabled the team to create a more relevant user experience.

Over time, users on the old system had created specific views of data containing specific attributes. The problem was that this exposed lots of similar data in different views, and to access such views, the OneAsset team had to give read-only access to SQL to selective users and teams. With Microsoft Azure Data Explorer, direct SQL connectivity is no longer required, and a better, more compact solution with performance and availability is available with analytics over the internet.

“We were quickly able to go from 190 views down to just 20 views that were more relevant to a larger number of users,” says Disha Chauhan, a program manager at Microsoft.

This same improvement could have also been done with the on-premises system, but Microsoft Azure Data Explorer made it easier. “Moving to Azure PaaS has simply enabled us to do more, faster,” Assudani says.

Looking to the future

Microsoft Azure hasn’t just improved legacy features—it’s made it easier to create new ones.

Moving to Microsoft Azure allows the OneAsset team to go mobile. With the on-premises system running within the Corpnet environment, running internet-based solutions outside of VPN wasn’t possible. With Microsoft Azure, users can now access OneAsset from anywhere, even via mobile. “Starting with capabilities like this made it possible for us to build the app,” Chauhan says.

And the journey continues.

“Our goal is to ultimately bring every connected device at Microsoft into OneAsset,” Assudani says.

A quick check of the latest metrics indicates that the team is on track to achieve that goal. The number of records in OneAsset has doubled in just the last six months.

Thanks to Microsoft Azure, the OneAsset team has been able to keep pace every step of the way.

“The scalability of Azure has enabled us to manage tremendous growth while also giving us the flexibility to plan and adapt for future growth,” Assudani says.

• Learn how Microsoft Azure Front Door makes it easy for two apps to boost availability and security.
• Read how Microsoft moves its IT infrastructure management to the cloud with Microsoft Azure.
• Learn how Microsoft is boosting productivity and security with a move to Microsoft Azure.

The post Move to Microsoft Azure boosts Microsoft’s inventory management system appeared first on Inside Track Blog.

Originally designed over 20 years ago, the call center had grown into a complex patchwork of different systems handling over 73 million calls a year.

The result was a global network made up of over 20 separate phone systems, over 1,600 different customer-facing phone numbers, over 30,000 support agents, and a dedicated team per region to manage all this. In addition to the technical complexities, multiple platforms also resulted in inconsistent calling experiences for customers.

“Each time we came up with a new product, we’d spin up a new phone number and a new phone system,” says Matt Hayes, a program manager with Microsoft Digital, Microsoft’s IT and Operations division.

As some of the infrastructure started reaching the end of its life and required increasing complexity to support it, the Microsoft Digital team had a decision to make: update and replace the existing infrastructure, or overhaul the entire network?

It was then that employees in Microsoft Digital began exploring a more centralized model using cloud-related technologies. The new system promised to streamline operations and deliver a better customer experience for Microsoft customers around the world.

In 2015, Microsoft embarked on a journey to replace their legacy contact center infrastructure with a next-generation, digital cloud-based offering.

[Read about the transformation of Microsoft.]

A new system takes shape

Microsoft’s move to the new cloud system allowed it to retire most traditional isolated platforms, simplify its carrier networks, and provide huge cost savings.

“We have streamlined down to just a few carriers,” Hayes says. “It’s significantly more efficient.”

That kind of efficiency has also made it easier to monitor and troubleshoot network issues, resulting in dramatically higher and more consistent call quality.

What’s equally exciting are other innovations that Microsoft Digital has added on top of their routing cloud-based platform.

By integrating tools like Microsoft Power BI, Microsoft Azure AI, and Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services, Microsoft is driving efficiencies and unlocking insights across its call center network.

“Moving to a common platform in the cloud—and being able to innovate on that platform—has given us greater visibility into just about everything, which has led to some amazing improvements,” Hayes says.

Resource management moves into high gear

Microsoft’s customer call volume is constantly changing across different products and regions. This often overloaded one call center while another went underutilized. With the older system, it was difficult, if not impossible, to reroute calls from an overloaded center to one with more capacity.

Now, Microsoft customers go into global queues, making it easy to distribute volumes between suppliers and regions. Leveraging agents across regions during high call volumes reduces wait times and removes the burden on specific carriers and regions.

“If one supplier is overloaded, call volume simply shifts to another qualified supplier,” Hayes says.  “There’s no need to reach out to an IT service provider or supplier—it’s just part of the system.”

Call center managers can now also better forecast call volumes and provide these forecasts to outsourced suppliers, which they use for staffing plans. And of course, a more agile resource plan enables a smoother customer experience.

Just as calls and customers can be routed anywhere, so too can sales agents and supervisors be located anywhere, which includes remote sites outside a call center. This has proved particularly valuable during this period of remote working.

“We had to move all of our agents from call centers to physically working from their home, which the cloud let us do,” Hayes says.

More effective monitoring

Managers also have access to more holistic data. From the outside looking in, they can see exactly how customers move around the system. They can track how their customers are doing as they navigate through the support process, how long it takes to resolve an issue, and how agents are performing.

“We can provide a summary of every phone call that’s made, how a customer actually got to the agent, which agent they talked to, and all in one view, including both a recording and real-time transcription of the call,” Hayes says. “Better yet, we can bring up that call record in just a few hours, versus several days with the old system.”

Along with monitoring agent performance better, managers can use this data to customize coaching for great customer interactions. The system also helps ensure solid contract performance from suppliers via documented historical data.

Centralized reporting

One common cloud platform has produced one source of call center truth—which, in turn, provides a cohesive view of actuals and forecasts, as well as real-time access to key performance indicators like hold and handle times, disconnects, and even call sentiment.

This view also allows Microsoft to fine-tune the system more effectively over time.

For example, the team was able to drill into data detailing exactly why some callers were being transferred incorrectly. This led to changes in the system, which decreased transfer rates by over 48 percent.

Both invoicing and forecasting are more accurate with a single source of telephony data. And by automating many of the system’s auditing and compliance requirements, Microsoft has eliminated more costly and time-consuming manual processes.

With a move to the cloud, Microsoft’s call center operations are ready for the future.

“Ultimately for Microsoft, the shift of call center routing to the cloud has improved performance while creating exciting new opportunities for growth,” Hayes says.

• Read about the transformation of Microsoft.

The post Transforming 70 million calls at Microsoft with Microsoft Azure appeared first on Inside Track Blog.