Traditional IT technologies, processes, and teams<\/strong><\/h3>\nServer technologies included discrete servers and densely built computing racks with blade servers. Storage technologies used direct-attached storage (DAS) and storage area networks (SANs). Networks used a variety of technologies, from simple switches to more advanced load balancers, encryption, and firewall devices. Platform technologies ranged from Windows, SQL Server, BizTalk, and SharePoint farms to third-party solutions such as SAP and other information security\u2013related tool sets. Server virtualization evolved from Hyper-V to System Center Virtual Machine Manager and System Center Orchestrator.<\/p>\n
To provide a stable infrastructure, we needed a structured framework, such as IT Infrastructure Library\/Managed Object Format (ITIL\/MOF). Policies, processes, and procedures in the framework helped to enforce, control, and prevent failures. Engineering groups that used hosting services had a similar adoption process for their application and service needs, based on ITIL\/MOF and combined with a synchronous data link control (SDLC)\/waterfall framework.<\/p>\n
Teams formed naturally around people with similar core strengths in the ITIL areas of service strategy, service design, service operations, and service transition, as shown in the graphic below.<\/p>\nTraditional IT teams formed around the core of ITIL service areas.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nTraditional hosted environments relied on external sources of space, power, connectivity, hardware, and software. And the technologies behind these sources evolved slowly. A common framework of policies and procedures helped bring teams together to refine and unify procedures. Tools were developed to formalize, track, audit, and measure procedures. The culture of the organization helped build a process-oriented, structured way of getting things done.<\/p>\n
Challenges of traditional IT<\/strong><\/h3>\nAlthough ITIL\/MOF helped streamline some processes, the complexities, constraints, and dependencies of traditional hosting prevented agile engineering. For example, it usually took six to nine months to build a new development environment for an application or service team. This time included planning, coordinating resources, tracking issues, and mitigating risk. Although the structure added clarity in delivery, it removed business agility.<\/p>\n
Long-term managed services offered opportunities to build cost efficiency. But, because of the way processes were implemented, functional roles were often duplicated. This created an overall negative impact on time and cost.<\/p>\n
When our engineering teams used SDLC waterfall methods and operations teams used ITIL\/MOF, adhering to process took priority over delivering iterative, agile solutions to meet targeted business needs. These processes slowed business throughput significantly. Solutions were developed and deployed over years instead of months.<\/p>\n
Phase 1: Improving operational efficiency<\/strong><\/h2>\nOur MDEE team plays a pivotal role in the company\u2019s new strategy, as most business processes in the company depend on us. To help Microsoft transform, we identified key focus areas to improve in the first phase of our transformation: improving business agility, reducing costs, learning new skills, and inventing new ways to work.<\/p>\n
The graphic below shows the steps we took to get to Microsoft Azure.<\/p>\nWe moved toward our IT mission by transforming technology and customer service.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nInfrastructure Platform.<\/strong> An agile business demands agile infrastructure, fewer physical servers, and moving to\/innovating in Microsoft Azure.<\/p>\nStrategy.<\/strong> Migrating to the cloud highlighted the need for build, change, and policy management processes as self-service capabilities. Our approach is to use software to automate provisioning, management, and coordination of services, so our Microsoft business partners can develop and deploy services faster with less work and lower cost.<\/p>\nStructure.<\/strong> We had to rethink the way that our teams and roles delivered this strategy by integrating different teams that did similar tasks. This allowed us to effectively design and deliver end-to-end service offerings at lower cost. Our organization was restructured to form teams that optimize service and infrastructure. These teams learn new skills, work harmoniously with engineering, and reduce waste.<\/p>\nCulture.<\/strong> We embraced a growth mindset, learned new skills, built new capabilities, and found new ways to work.<\/p>\nMission.<\/strong> It became our mission to define, deliver, and transform how we work by helping engineers build solutions tailored to the hybrid cloud world.<\/p>\nRealigning our organization<\/strong><\/h3>\nServices optimization. <\/strong>This team helps our business partners to provision and manage their own IT services. We have improved operational agility and reliability, which has resulted in specific benefits:<\/p>\n\nLess manual effort per release\/update<\/li>\n Shorter lead time<\/li>\n More frequent builds and deployment<\/li>\n Increased service quality<\/li>\n Reduced security exposure<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nWe elevated our teams by training people and hiring others with the engineering skills we need. Our goal is to gradually transition people from operational skills to service engineering skills.<\/p>\n
A deeper analysis of our operational model also revealed redundant processes in service design, service transition, and service operations. After careful consideration, we reduced process overhead by eliminating or automating some processes. This restructuring presents a business opportunity to consolidate vendor teams. Many of our sustained workloads will decrease year over year, as on-premises infrastructure shrinks.<\/p>\n
Infrastructure Optimization.<\/strong> This team eliminates duplicate infrastructure, reduces our footprint, and modernizes infrastructure for our business partners by reducing hosting costs. Key outcomes of this work include:<\/p>\n\nConsolidated datacenters<\/li>\n Fewer physical and traditional virtual machines<\/li>\n Smaller storage consumption<\/li>\n Increased cloud adoption<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nWhen teams started working together to optimize infrastructure, they found duplicate projects with similar goals. After we cut redundant projects, people were freed up to learn project management skills and to engage with our business partners.<\/p>\n
This team took a program-based delivery approach with start and end dates. After provisioning was automated, we worked with our business partners so they could use new self-service tools to take ownership of their infrastructure. The new self-service features helped our business partners identify and decommission unused servers. Self-service planning eliminates manual handoffs, and enables our business partners to manage risks, issues, and blockers. Our business partners also found that they no longer needed vendors to manage hand-offs.<\/p>\n
Reinventing our culture<\/strong><\/h2>\nTo reinvent ourselves, we needed to change. We stopped managing processes and began trusting our business partners and empowering engineers. We defined our new mindset and goals to:<\/p>\n
\nFocus on the customer by designing and building new services from their perspective.<\/li>\n Challenge and question the status quo, and rethink old processes and behaviors.<\/li>\n Experiment and learn so we can produce innovative cloud technologies using agile methods.<\/li>\n Collaborate beyond our organizational boundaries to identify and deliver the right solution for our business partners.<\/li>\n Deliver faster and fix issues faster.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n