All of Microsoft runs in the cloud

“We are the ‘first and best’ customer of Microsoft products and services”

In an interview, Microsoft CIO Jim Dubois informs that Microsoft IT is the “first and best” customer of Microsoft products and services — supporting the IT infrastructure and applications that run the business of Microsoft.

Microsoft IT consumes Microsoft’s own products and services which are developed, and managed by other Microsoft entities. Microsoft IT deploys, and tests these products and services internally, before they are released to the customers.

“Our vision is that all of Microsoft runs in the cloud”

Aligning itself with the organization’s vision of “All of Microsoft runs in the cloud”, in year 2011, Microsoft IT defined its cloud adoption strategy so that it can benefit from cloud’s efficiency, agility, and rapid deployment capabilities.

How did they do it?

Documenting one such instance in a business case study published in September 2015, Microsoft IT highlights as how did they set-out to migrate approximately 2,100 internal applications from on-premises servers running in their 8 different data-centres worldwide on over 40,000 separate operating system instances, to the public cloud [NB: Microsoft IT had begun to do away with its own data-centres and was moving its stuff to the public cloud (pay as you go)].

Key points of this business case study -

1. Change from within — forming the Stratus* team — Realizing that supporting a cultural change would be the biggest challenge to the cloud adoption endeavour, Microsoft IT formed a core team called the Stratus team to analyse the available cloud capabilities, the applications (to be migrated to the cloud) and their platform requirements. This Stratus team would drive the cloud adoption activities across business units.
2. Setting up the Cloud Adoption Factory — Considering application’s technical complexity, business impact, cloud service delivery models (XaaS), and appropriate migration strategies, the Stratus team devised a sophisticated decision framework to guide through the cloud migration efforts — the Cloud Adoption Factory. This Cloud Adoption Factory guided Microsoft IT through the identified journey.
3. Moving to the cloud using Cloud Adoption Factory

The Stratus team, using the Cloud Adoption Factory framework, planned for and executed the applications’ cloud migration. Some of the highlights of the exercise are given below:

• 30% applications retired, right-sized, or eliminated because of consolidation into single app or service line that helped in eliminating thousands of physical servers and virtual machines.
• 15% applications were replaced by a SaaS offering e.g. Office 365, SharePoint Online, etc.
• <5% applications to remain on-premises.
• 50% percent of the applications are identified as either “first to move”, “next to move”, and “hard or costly to move.”
• For complex applications, the Stratus team used the following criteria to decide whether to deploy it in (Lift and Shift) IaaS or to re-architect / redevelop it for PaaS or as a SaaS.

The beginning — skills for the new era

There is little doubt that cloud migration would disrupt the classic models of computing and while people still debate the validity of Moore’s law, this transformation in computing is shifting the IT professionals from their usual silos to becoming business process enablers.

Pictures shown here are taken from Microsoft IT Business Case Study#4073

Terms & Definitions:

1. Stratus — A low-altitude cloud formation consisting of a horizontal layer of grey clouds.
2. Essential characteristics of cloud computing: 1.) On-demand self-service, 2.) Broad network access, 3.) Resource pooling, 4.) Rapid elasticity, 5.) Measured service
3. Cloud computing service models: 1.) Software as a Service (SaaS), 2.) Platform as a Service (PaaS), 3.) Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).
4. Cloud computing deployment models: 1.) Private Cloud, 2.) Community Cloud3.) Public Cloud, 4.) Hybrid Cloud

Sources:

1. Definition of Cloud Computing — National Institute of Standards and Technology
2. An Interview with Jim Dubois, Microsoft CIO
3. Microsoft IT Showcase
4. Business Case Study (#3953) — Driving cloud adoption in an enterprise IT organization
5. Business Case Study (#4073) — Microsoft IT cloud computing strategies continue to evolve
6. Cloud Decision Framework, Microsoft
7. Cloud Accelerator Program, Microsoft
8. Hybrid Cloud Blog, Microsoft
9. State of the Hybrid Cloud 2017 — A Report, Microsoft
10. Agile Cloud Adoption, Microsoft
11. Azure On-boarding Guide for IT Organizations, Microsoft
12. Enterprise Cloud Strategy, Microsoft
13. The Future of Computing — Moore’s Law, but Not as We Know it
14. Moore’s law
15. 50 Years of Moore’s Law