2 Speed IT
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Michael Stephenson
About
• Azure and Integration Architect
• Community Activities
• Microsoft MVP for 7+ years
• Pluralsight Author
• Azure Insider/Advisor
• Integration Monday
• Worked on 30+ projects that have
leveraged Azure
Contact
• Personal Blog:
http://microsoftintegration.guru
• Twitter: @michael_Stephen
• Linked In:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelst
ephensonuk1

TheAzureCoach.com

Today
Agenda
• 2 Speed IT
• Example Projects
• Thoughts
Outcomes
• Make you re-think about some
Azure
• Show some cool demo’s
• Take home some ideas to inspire
the kids

IT’s Customer Satisfaction
Perception
• 15% of business users completely satisfied
with IT department
• 33% of business users think IT is important to
business innovation
• 60% of business users think IT department is
integral to the business
Effect
• Stealth IT
• IT perceived to be holding the business in the
past
• Business doesn’t value IT
(Perception) Source: Information Week IT Perception Survey

“By 2017, 75% of organisations will have a 2
speed IT capability”

The 2 Modes of IT
Marathon Runner – Mode 1
• Mission Critical Systems
• Conventional Approaches
• Stability
• Reliability
• Low Risk
• Slow & Safe
Sprinter – Mode 2
• Take Risks / Safe Enough
• Agility & embrace change
• Remove bureaucracy
• Deliver Value Fast
• Fail Fast
• Aggressive customer focus

Types of Systems
Systems of Record
• Mission Critical Systems
• Conventional Approaches
• Stability
• Reliability
• Low Risk
• Slow & Safe
Systems of Engagement
• Take Risks / Safe Enough
• Agility & embrace change
• Remove bureaucracy
• Deliver Value Fast
• Fail Fast
• Aggressive customer focus

Combining System Type & IT Mode
System of Record System of Engagement
Mode 1 – Traditional CRM System
ERP System
HR System
Mode 2 – Agile Customer Portal
Staff Portal
B2B API

Cloud Relationship to 2 Speed IT
Mode 1 – Traditional Mode 2 - Agile
IT Leadership IT Operations Enterprise Architect
Drivers • Cost Reduction
• Risk Mitigation
• Keep the operation running
• Protect the assets
• Protect the customer
• Developer Productivity
• Deliver Business Change
• Keep the customer happy
• Innovate
• Beat competitors
• Take risks
Cloud Opportunities • Move commodity servers off site
• Turn off when not in use
• Off Premise Test environments
• Cloud Disaster Recovery
• Quick & Cheap IT Provisioning
• Delivery Empowerment
• Delete resources if project fails
• Reduce operations requirements

Super Charging Mode 2 IT

Mode 2 Architects
“As an architect, the cloud offers me new ways to solve problems and opportunities
to excite the business and super charge my mode 2 IT teams”

Example 1 - Seasonal Load

The Challenge
Business Context
• Key seasonal business event
• Expected 10k users all want something at
the same time
• Normal load is small
• Key load spike expected to last less than 2
hours
• Increased load for approx. 1 day
• User only needs to do 1 small simple
activity
Traditional Approach
• Scale SharePoint from 2 – 6 servers = $20,000
approx.
• 4 x New On-Prem VM Servers = $4,000
• Extras
• Server build costs
• Testing costs
• Total
• $40,000
• 10 days

Architecture
SharePoint would retrieve PDF’s
from Line of Business App

What we did
If the user load gets beyond a
Threshold, load balancer would
route traffic out to Azure
PDF’s pre-loaded to Azure storage
The night before
User can redirect back to SharePoint,
but during burst 95% of traffic stays
in cloud

Outcome
Azure Features Used
• VS Online Load Testing
• Application Insights Monitoring
• Azure Web App
• 3 instances
• Large
• Scheduled auto-scale
• Azure Blob Storage
• VS Online Automated Build & Deploy
Info
• Key Points
• Challenging the way we typically solve problems
opened a new opportunity
• Duration
• Solution built in 2 days
• Solution performance tested a number of times
over 4 days (up to 12k users)
• Solution deleted after a week
• Costs
• Cloud cost approx. < $100

Example 2 – Staff HR Self Service

The Challenge
Business Context
• Current State
• SAP is the system of record for Staff
• Staff do not use SAP the HR system directly,
only HR
• SAP changes are difficult and expensive
• SAP is complex to train users
• Desired Outcome
• Create a Staff Portal system of engagement
• Portal should be within SharePoint based
intranet
Technical Challenge
• If we host services in the cloud to increase
our agility can we use hybrid integration to
connect to services on premise?

Hybrid Integration Proof of Concept
Microservices Router
Service Bus Relay
API
Microservices

Relay powered Hybrid SAP Integration
SharePoint Provider Hosted App
In Azure Web App
Microservices Router
Service Bus Relay
API
SAP Microservices
Other Microservices
Linq To SAP

Outcome
Azure Features Used
• Application Insights Monitoring
• Azure Web App
• Azure Service Bus Relay
• VS Online Automated Build & Deploy
Info
• Key Points
• Light weight API based integration
• Duration
• End to end features developed in hours/days
• Project focusing on features not plumbing
• Architecture from POC suitable for production and
used by real project
• Costs
• Cloud cost approx. $20 per month (dev, test & prod)

Example 3 - Organisational
Telemetry

The Challenge
Business Context
• Find a free PC
• We have 3 locations and 20+ buildings
• In these buildings are 5000+ computers
• How can a student know where is best to
go to get a PC to use
• Drivers
• Positive Student Experience
Business Context 2
• How utilised are our Rooms
• We have hundreds of rooms
• How do we know how utilised they are
• How do we track how energy efficient
they are
• Drivers
• Reduce Costs

Proof of Concept
The building has a sensor which detects
When you enter the building
Stream Analytics processes
Event Hub Data into Power BI
User views dashboards of useful
Information via Power BI
Power BI
Stream Analytics
Event Hub

Proof of Concept
Agent on PC pushes PC usage
And application telemetry to cloud
Sensor/Reader telemetry
sent to cloud
Stream Analytics processes
Event Hub Data into Power BI
User views dashboards of useful
Information via Power BI
Power BI
Stream Analytics
Event Hub

Demo

Outcome
Azure Features Used
• Azure Service Bus Event Hubs
• Azure Stream Analytics
• Power BI
Info
• Key Points
• Cloud back end would support high scale
production usage “as is”
• POC is something the sprinters could easily take
forwards
• Duration
• Demo created in < 3 hours
• Costs
• Cloud Approx. < $40 per month

Example 4 – Simulating Business
Processes

The Challenge
Business Context
• We have an existing business process
which is reliable and has been around for
ages
• We need to feedback status to customers
quicker or risk losing them to competitors
• We are not 100% sure the business idea
will work but we want to try it
Desired Outcome
• Minimize risk to existing process
• Avoid extensive re-testing or existing
processes (potentially expensive)
• Win or fail fast
• Use Reference Architecture to evaluate the
impact of the project

Enrolment Process
BizTalk orchestrates across line of business
Systems to process enrolment
Line of Business
Systems
Student can enrol for a course via multiple
channels
API in Azure
Service Bus Messaging
API solution has exposed existing process
To new channels

Demo

Notifications
BizTalk Server
Line of Business
Systems
Student gets an alert in near-realtime when their
Enrolment is approved
API in Azure
Service Bus
Messaging
SQL
Twilio Connector
SQL Connector
Logic App

Demo

Outcome
Azure Features Used
• New Channels
• Azure Service Bus Messaging
• Azure Web Apps
• Application Insights
• Notifications
• Azure Logic Apps
• Azure API App Connectors
• SQL
• Twilio
Info
• Key Points
• Notification feature had no impact to existing
process
• Notification feature very low cost
• Alert drives student to re-engage with us
• Reference Architecture
• Used to evaluate solution options
• Used to simulate and demo to business
• Costs
• Reference Architecture Approx. < $100 per month
• Notification Feature = $0
• No additional cost uses existing App Service

Thoughts

Hold on you cant
start the next
race yet…..
Challenges of 2 Speed IT
• At some point the Marathon Runners need to look after the thing the sprinters built
• Sprinters become too externally customer focused and lose sight of IT Strategy or IT Operations
• Sprinters make significant stealth architecture changes
• Can the organisation really afford 2 IT departments? We need to be able to do sprint projects
within an organisational journey

Disconnected 2 Speed IT
?????
Its ok we will use
DevOps and it
will all be fine

Embracing the Cloud
I have a platform
with loads of
features to help me
build awesome
Apps
I’m comfortable
we can govern
solutions because
Azure is core to
our architecture
Many of our
solutions use Azure
so I have lots of
reusable
troubleshooting
skills
Managing
Azure is
Business as
Usual
We get great
visibility of our
actual costs and
have enterprise
agreements

Questions