Global agility Wake up: Business is calling Business stops for no one. Customers now demand faster service and support than ever before. Employees collaborate increasingly across geographies and time zones. Executives check their email within 30 minutes of waking up—because they have to. The very idea of a “workplace” sounds quaint in an era in which the workplace is any place. The factors fueling this trend are so many and so diverse that its continuation seems assured. For example, the fragile global economy puts greater pressure on revenues and profits and, consequently, on ways to find competitive advantage. Meanwhile, the global marketplace implies borderless commerce and customers that can be located anywhere there’s Internet access. To respond to all this, business needs a new generation of tools for more effective collaboration, communications and connections. Windows 8 in the enterprise: Changing the way business does business. Business needs a new generation of tools for more effective collaboration, communication and connection. Secure access Intuitive interface
Transcript
Global agility
Wake up: Business is calling Business stops for no one. Customers now demand faster service and support than ever before. Employees collaborate increasingly across geographies and time zones. Executives check their email within 30 minutes of waking up—because they have to. The very idea of a “workplace” sounds quaint in an era in which the workplace is any place.
The factors fueling this trend are so many and so diverse that its continuation seems assured. For example, the fragile global economy puts greater pressure on revenues and profits and, consequently, on ways to find competitive advantage.
Meanwhile, the global marketplace implies borderless commerce and customers that can be located anywhere there’s Internet access. To respond to all this, business needs a new generation of tools for more effective collaboration, communications and connections.
Windows 8 in the enterprise:Changing the way business does business.
Business needs a new generation of tools for more effective collaboration, communication and connection.
Secure access
Intuitive interface
Microsoft’s new flagship operating system, Windows 8, represents an enormous investment in, among other things, addressing the challenges in mobile computing for the enterprise. It is designed to provide a unified experience and single application environment from the phone (through Windows Phone 8, with which it shares its core code), through tablets (Windows 8 slates), laptops, desktops, and other devices.
User experience A key Microsoft goal with Windows 8 is to provide great user experiences on an array of great devices (more than 30 were announced at launch). The software provides legacy compatibility for traditional applications while also taking advantage of the hugely popular Modern User Interface (previously called “Metro”) introduced for Windows Phone. The operating system includes a version—Windows 8 RT—optimized for the ARM processor that’s standard in lightweight, consumer-style devices with long-life
batteries, likely to be the major client-side computing platform for years to come.
The Modern UI is a touch-first, touch-centric interface created for mobile devices, and integrates seamlessly across devices, the operating system, platforms, and apps. It has a great navigation experience for the user, including a “finger friendly charm bar” with key icons and functions that make many tasks—searching, sharing, and browsing, for example—easier than ever before. Pertinent information and immediate tasks are available even before the user opens an app.
Businesses can use these capabilities, to move from effectiveness to engagement. For example, they can create highly engaging apps for the Windows App Store that their customers can use to configure custom products.
Enterprise readiness Business Productivity. Enterprise access and collaboration also receive makeovers in Windows 8, to help en-sure that Windows 8 solutions are truly enterprise-grade. Windows 8 slates, for example, shift the mobile device from a single-user tool to a multi-user, collaborative one. Employees can easily share the screens of their slates during meetings, and participate in video conferences. Beyond consuming content, they can create it by, for example, shooting video, embedding it in a slide presentation, and sharing it with colleagues.
Compared to other tablets, Windows 8 slates also boost employee productivity through better, native support for the communication and collaboration tools—Microsoft Office, SharePoint Server,
Major mobile market momentum Companies and their customers are responding to these trends and realizing new opportunities with a large and growing push toward mobile devices. Juniper Research estimates that more than 150 million smartphones and tablets are already used by enterprises, with the number set to more than double, to 350 million, by 2014.
A separate Avanade study of tablet adoption in the enterprise shows 33 percent of employees use tablets for basic work tasks, while another 33 percent use tablets for advanced business purposes, such as customer relationship management, data analysis and project management.
The challenges Mobile technologies aren’t new, and neither are the business goals of those who adopt them: to drive business growth and higher value, to speed responsiveness to new trends and new opportunities, to boost both collaboration and customer satisfaction.
Several key challenges stand in the way, however, between enterprises and their successful adoption of mobile technologies.
Integration Smartphones and tablets designed for the consumer market don’t necessarily meet the requirements of the enterprise. For example, consumers want to use their personal tablets and smartphones at
work, but companies need to make sure those devices integrate well with legacy enterprise applications.
Collaboration Consumers want to communicate with friends via social media, but businesses require even deeper and more complex collaboration support. That collaboration has to work not only across the WAN but also include mobile workers unable to establish VPNs from remote locations. It must support not just social apps, but also collaboration through both commercial and custom-built apps.
Security Consumers want to keep their data secure, but businesses face multi-million dollar fines, and worse, if they violate the security requirements of laws such as Sarbanes-Oxley in the U.S. or European Union regulations. Security must exist at the levels of the device, the data, and the employees who use them.
Management Consumers want their devices to be easy to use and update, but businesses face potentially crippling increases in the IT workload if forced to manage new classes of devices for which they and their infrastructures are unprepared.
Windows 8: Addressing enterprise needs
Microsoft Lync—that are already business staples. And enterprises know that this compatibility will con-tinue with Office 2013 and future Microsoft products.
Employees can use new and en-hanced Windows 8 features such as Live Tiles to see current data with a mere glance at the start screen, without having to open their apps.
DirectAccess enables remote users to access the corporate network without having to launch a VPN or other separate connection. And peer-based BranchCache enables a Windows 8 device in a branch office to serve as a cache for other computing devices there, reducing both bandwidth demands and latency.
Complete Security Platform. Windows 8 addresses enterprise security needs at multiple levels. Trusted boot and measured boot processes validate the integrity of the boot process and support independent confirmation of that integrity, reducing threats of viruses and malware. BitLocker drive encryption now operates faster, with less CPU use and power consumption—ideal for mobile devices. Dynamic Access Control
enables highly specific security policies for files, folders, and shared resources.
Device Management. None of this is of much help, however, if deployment and maintenance is too costly—in time and in personnel—for the typical enterprise. With that in mind, Microsoft designed Windows 8 to be easily integrated into the enterprise infrastructure. Enterprises can develop Win-dows 8 apps with the same Microsoft Visual Studio tools they already use, and manage them with the same Microsoft System Center technologies. IT departments can therefore leverage—and increase the ROI on—the training and assets they already have.
Flexible App Distribution. Each employee group or worker role in an enterprise can be most productive when it has all the apps it needs—and only the apps it needs. Windows 8, together with Windows Server 2012 and System Center, put the enterprise firmly in control of flexible app distribution.
Microsoft and Avanade: Realizing Windows 8 in the enterpriseWindows 8 will be a key component for enterprises seeking to optimize their use of mobile technologies and to redesign the way they and their employees work and interact with customers, in order to meet new business challenges and opportunities.
As a close partner with Microsoft, Avanade has been working with Microsoft to help enterprises use Windows 8 months before the general availability of the software, and it continues to do so.
For example, one of the largest US retail pharmacy chains wanted to improve the quality and cost-effectiveness of its bedside prescription service. Its pharmacists were in-creasingly called in to hospital bedside patient consultations. The process was slow and tedious, driving pharmacist productivity down and costs up.
Avanade helped the pharmacy chain with a highly intuitive Windows
8 app that gives the pharmacist secure mobile access to patient
data. The bedside consultation is now faster, more accurate and more effective; transac-tions, including payments, are expedited, improving cash flow; and the delivery process is streamlined as well, getting prescriptions to patients at their bedsides, rather than requiring them to visit the pharmacy. Patient satisfaction and pharmacist productivity both increase.
For a major, international automotive manufacturer, Avanade created a smart configuration tool on Windows 8 that lets mobile customers create the exact vehicle and options they want with a rich virtual interior and exterior experience, customizing their desired model with features like paint, wheels and trim.
Looking ahead, Avanade envisions customers using Windows 8 to help reduce inventory costs in the warehouse, enable remote process management, expand the breadth and depth of supplier networks and deliver better business intelligence and an improved executive tablet experience to the boardroom.
About AvanadeAvanade provides business technology solutions and managed services that connect insight, innovation and expertise in Microsoft® technologies to help customers realize results. Our people have helped thousands of organizations in all industries improve business agility, employee productivity and customer loyalty. Additional information can be found at www.avanade.com.
Windows 8 can almost certainly provide an enterprise with a mobile advantage—but where should the enterprise begin?
Avanade recommends that these en-terprises start evaluating Windows 8 by identifying the specific business-critical processes, user segments, and use-cases which can benefit the most from touch or stylus input. A sales force or field force might be an appropriate user segment; top-level executives, particularly those who need agile access to data and content during meetings, might be another. Any category of employee who works primarily away from his or her desk could be suitable for Windows 8, too.
To use Windows 8 to best advantage, and to generate maximum interest for broader adoption of the technology, Avanade suggests
that enterprises focus on the delivery of custom line-of-business apps for these groups, rather than “merely” touch-enabling their email and other general productivity software.
Another key audience for Windows 8 isn’t located in the enterprise at all: it’s the enterprise’s customers, who are a target audience for new Windows 8 devices.
Avanade and some of its leading customers are taking advantage of this to bring to market, for example, Windows Store apps that enable a major grocery chain to better serve its customers from their mobile devices.
Actions enterprises should take
Avanade envisions customers using Windows 8 to reduce inventory costs, enable remote process management, and deliver better business intelligence to the boardroom.
Avanade is joint venture between Accenture and Microsoft, and has unparalleled access to Microsoft’s Windows 8 development teams. It already has hundreds of engineers throughout Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Americas helping to deploy Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8, and to develop applications for them.
Accenture and Avanade both bring extensive experience in back office and cross-platform integration, which speeds integration across mobile platforms and into the enterprise, and simplifies ongoing maintenance and reduces cost over time.
Far more than a “mere” systems integrator or solution provider, Avanade is a trusted advisor to its clients, with skills in mobile strategy development, systems strategy, business case development, change management and governance.
Some of Avanade’s distinctive mobility and Windows 8 resources include the following:
• Windows 8 Enterprise Studio. Microsoft, Accenture and Avanade sponsor the Windows 8 Enterprise Studio. It helps enterprises develop compelling, industry-specific proofs of concept for custom Windows 8 applications; generate business-changing ideas about how Windows 8; and inte-grate Windows 8 seamlessly with their existing apps and infrastructures.
• Avanade Mobility Delivery Network. This resource helps customers to migrate their legacy and custom apps from other tablets or Windows XP to Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8, with a user interface renewal to the Modern UI. It also develops apps for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8.
•eXperience Design Studio. Avanade’s in-depth understanding of the Windows 8 Modern UI, combined with its industry-specific and B2C expertise, comes to-gether in the eXperience Design Studio. Avanade eXperience de-signers create intuitive and com-pelling user experiences for our customers and their customers, with apps that are useful, usable, and beautiful.
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