JAN-FEB 2016CIOAPPLICATIONS.COM 19Variablizing the Cost of TechnologyDennis Haltinner, VP-IT, Partylites I suppose with most con-quests, it began unexpectedly in the early 1980's when we purchased our first personal computers and with them came Microsoft DOS. Before long there was Windows, Excel, Word, Access and PowerPoint everywhere followed by, NT, SQL server. We had reached the point of no return and become a "Microsoft Shop". In 2006 there was a great battle for control of our back office (ERP) but with the alluring promise of seamless integra-tion, Microsoft Dynamics easily won. The transformation of our data center was al-most complete yet, there was still one ma-jor holdout, E-Mail.E-mail is the most personal of all busi-ness applications. We use it every day (and night and weekends) on almost every device. Familiarity becomes more impor-tant than functionality. But, eventually a migration from GroupWise to Microsoft Exchange was inevitable. We had looked at other providers, but the prevalence and integration opportunities with the rest of our environment were just too compelling. E-mail would become the last piece of our Microsoft "Eco-system" puzzle.One of our key strategies is to `vari-ablize' the cost of technology. As with most companies we made regular, large capital investments to upgrade our tech-nology and provide sufficient capacity for peak demand periods. With every piece of equipment in our datacenter we also invested significant amount of staff time for routine monitoring, maintenance and troubleshooting. This never seemed the best use of talented internal resources. The focus should be on the things that require unique knowledge of the company and its business environment, things that truly differentiate things that matter. We lacked economy of scale and so, rather than investing in a new E-mail infrastructure and developing internal expertise to support our worldwide us-ers, we decided to implement Microsoft's Office 365. Although we had significant experience with Microsoft, it had always been in the comfort of our own datacent-er, back-ups, administration, and our security blanket. Today we were moving into the "Cloud".We were apprehensive at first as we know that Microsoft's pricing models are difficult. But we were pleasantly sur-prised by the simplicity and flexibility as, small upfront and variable costs were ex-actly what we were looking for.The transition was not totally seam-less and although we worked with a great VAR, we still struggled with the initial setup and administration of the users. Giving up control was hard for the team as upgrades would now be done by Micro-soft, which was forced upon us. In retro-spect the migration experience caused the team to become more disciplined in their approach.The experiences gained through migration to Office 365 would serve them well in our subsequent migrations to the "Cloud".After more than a decade with our old E-mail system we were also concerned with how well the new service would be accepted. The acceptance was instantane-ous; complaints almost nonexistent. The instant messaging and desktop commu-nication functions of Microsoft Lync were soon embraced. Outlook was intuitive and the integration with the Office tools and the rest of our Microsoft "Eco-sys-tem" quickly made it indispensable. And when Microsoft announced the availabili-ty of Office 365 on the iPad our migration decision was affirmed.Overall we have been delighted with Office 365. It was one of the easiest tran-sitions I have experienced. The service has been reliable and for the most part, problem free. The user experience, the accessibility, the variable cost model, the seamless integration and automatic up-dates all have made this a big win for the business and technology teams. CXOINSIGHTSWith the cloud hybrid storage model, the team realized they no longer had to spend time and effort sizing storage required, evaluating/purchasing storage devices, and networking/communications Jim DiMarzioA
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