The IT industry is growing at an unprecedented rate. Research from ISG indicates that global spending on IT and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) in the first quarter of 2021 has grown by 11% since last year – $17bn of spending globally in a quarter.
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Microsoft published some interesting ideas on their Azure cloud adoption framework strategy guidance.
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Large businesses need a management solution that can support all of the moving parts of the enterprise, not some of them. Using disparate, specialty software can be risky as data easily gets lost or altered when it’s transcribed from one software system into another. Cloud based ERP solutions (Enterprise Resource Planning) are more affordable than you think and can save you money in the long run.
Businesses often default to specialty software because they serve a specific purpose – accounting software for financials, inventory software to keep track of incoming and outgoing inventory, and the like. However, with data in separate software systems, it’s difficult to reach and, in many cases, difficult to trust. Redundant data entry between systems opens the door to typos, errors, lost data or other mistakes.
Replacing inefficient software with modern cloud based ERP solutions doesn’t have to be costly, take years to plan, or require a team of IT experts. A cloud-based deployment, like Microsoft Dynamics AX, greatly reduces capital expenses and time. You don’t need to replace aging infrastructure or equipment, which can be one of the most significant costs with a system upgrade. You can scale user licenses to fit your headcount; paying a per user, per month price. Your team also gains greater mobility by accessing Microsoft Dynamics AX anywhere, anytime through a web browser on laptops, tablets or smartphones.
Microsoft Dynamics AX is a comprehensive, integrated business management solution supporting financial transactions, inventory and supplier management, manufacturing and distribution activities, human resources and payroll, as well as other core operations. This centralized solution streamlines data entry, access, and analytics. Workflows save time and improve the consistency of common tasks. Business intelligence and reporting features provide leaders with the data needed to make smart decisions and strengthen regulatory compliance.
With cloud-based Microsoft Dynamics AX, you can monitor all of the moving parts of your business with greater efficiency, improving productivity and profitability. Replacing inefficient, specialty software with a stronger ERP solution is not only good for business, it doesn’t have to come with a hefty price tag. Contact WatServ for more information and guidance when replacing outdated systems with cloud-based Microsoft Dynamics AX.
WatServ is an IT solutions provider that helps organizations digitally transform through cloud technologies and managed services.
Serving clients as a trusted advisor since 2006, WatServ provides experience-tested, strategic solutions across all stages of the digital transformation journey. Clients choose WatServ to migrate infrastructure and applications to the cloud, secure critical data, implement disaster recovery, deploy virtual desktop, enable data-readiness for productivity solutions and manage IT environments.
Our clients span a broad range of industries, and we’re a global supplier of IT services for many Brookfield Portfolio Companies. To help our mid-size clients, we provide scalable offerings that simplify cloud adoption and drive business optimization. For enterprise clients, we co-create cloud solutions that enable stability and efficiency for complex IT tools and processes.
With more than 15 years of experience, WatServ has a track record of delivering quantifiable business results and a superior client experience. Ranked as one of Canada’s Top 100 Solution Providers for the last three years in a row, WatServ is always on.
Microsoft has rolled out new capabilities for Windows Virtual Desktop and the Azure portal integration, which enables easier deployment and management. It has also announced changes to Teams that facilitate better meetings and collaboration.
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Normally hosted in Seattle, the conference for developers and independent software vendors (ISVs) took place online this year. Bringing together about 5,000 participants, the 48-hour
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This article was written by Abe Kifle, a WatServ Cloud Solutions Architect.
For over 10 years, I’ve been attending Microsoft Ignite, and its predecessor TechEd, and every year I come back inspired by the plethora of announcements and advancements made by Microsoft.
This year was no different, with more than 150 announcements made at Microsoft Ignite 2019 over the course of 5 days.
Looking back at the announcements, here are my top 5 picks:
Out of the many announcements Satya Nadella made during his Vision keynote speech, the one that drew the loudest applause by far was Azure Arc – and for good reason.
Imagine deploying Azure services and management anywhere – on-prem, Edge, or other Cloud – just as you would do inside Azure to Azure resources. That’s what Azure Arc does. Not only can you deploy services anywhere, but you can also manage, apply policies, and leverage services like Azure Security Center, Azure Sentinel, etc. With Azure Arc, enterprises will have a single glass pane to simplify the management of their complex and distributed environments.
Microsoft’s Hybrid strategy (Azure Stack, ExpressRoute, AADConnect) was already well ahead of its competitors. With the addition of Azure Arc, as well as the new Azure Stack Hub, Azure Stack HCI and Azure Stack Edge, Microsoft is solidifying its leadership in the hybrid space. In fact, in several sessions I attended, I kept hearing from Microsoft: “Unlike others, we believe hybrid is a permanent, not temporary, state.”
WatServ will be testing Azure Arc in our environment and then helping our customers implement and take advantage of it.
Another crowd-pleaser was the announcement of Azure Synapse.
Azure Synapse is the next evolution of Azure SQL Data Warehouse. Azure Synapse brings together enterprise data warehousing and Big Data analytics. It gives customers the freedom to query data on their terms, using serverless on-demand or provisioned resources by combining data warehouses, data lakes and pipelines.
Adding to the buzz, Microsoft showed a demo of Azure Synapse and it was able to query Petabyte scale dataset in less than 10 seconds.
Microsoft also showcased a new media-storage medium that can survive for hundreds of years with its data intact.
In an announcement that caught everyone by surprise, Microsoft revealed that it had collaborated with Warner Brothers to store and retrieve the entire 1978 Superman movie on a piece of glass.
This is a proof of concept for “Project Silica,” a project at Microsoft that aims to use laser optics and AI to store data in quartz glass.
Microsoft sees this solution as a way to drive down storage costs in the future. “One big thing we wanted to eliminate is this expensive cycle of moving and rewriting data to the next generation,” said a Microsoft lab director. “We really want something you can put on the shelf for 50 or 100 or 1,000 years and forget about until you need it.”
My next pick is Project Cortex. Project Cortex utilizes the Microsoft graph and various MS machine learning/AI models to help users understand organizational content. The content can be structured or unstructured, and Cortex tries to understand it and put it into context. This enables users to click deeper into the content type and ecosystem – whether it’s conversations, tables or documents – and benefit from deeper context applied to the content.
The intent is to allow employees to quickly find information that’s spread across documents in Microsoft’s various services and make it available both through searches and algorithms in the form of hover-links inside Microsoft products like Office apps, Outlook and Teams.
Project Cortex not only aims to make connections within MS systems, but also offers connectors using “Microsoft search” to use third-party repositories.
Three high-level areas of focus include:
Azure Stack, which was announced three years ago, is a product that extends Azure services and capabilities on-premise. Microsoft has since evolved it, and Azure Stack has become a portfolio of services and capabilities of choice—from the datacenter to edge locations and remote offices.
a) Azure Stack Edge:
This is a cloud-managed appliance for edge compute, ML at the edge, IoT and network bursting to the cloud. At Ignite 2019, Microsoft announced and showcased a small, backpack-sized, battery–operated edge device that could be used to process data and drone video.
b) Azure Stack HCI:
Here we see Microsoft getting into Hyper Converged Infrastructure (HCI), scalable virtualization and storage, which is useful in modernizing branch office computing.
c) Azure Stack Hub:
This is the classic Azure Stack – fully-integrated, cloud-native applications using consistent Azure Services on-premise to meet regulatory or technical requirements.
Conclusion:
While Microsoft Ignite may be over for another year, the excitement that began on November 3-8, 2019 will continue for months to come. At WatServ, we’re looking forward to implementing many of these great Microsoft technologies in our environment first, and then in many of our enterprise customers’ environments.
Have a question or want to chat about my top picks? Get in touch!
WatServ is an IT solutions provider that helps organizations digitally transform through cloud technologies and managed services.
Serving clients as a trusted advisor since 2006, WatServ provides experience-tested, strategic solutions across all stages of the digital transformation journey. Clients choose WatServ to migrate infrastructure and applications to the cloud, secure critical data, implement disaster recovery, deploy virtual desktop, enable data-readiness for productivity solutions and manage IT environments.
Our clients span a broad range of industries, and we’re a global supplier of IT services for many Brookfield Portfolio Companies. To help our mid-size clients, we provide scalable offerings that simplify cloud adoption and drive business optimization. For enterprise clients, we co-create cloud solutions that enable stability and efficiency for complex IT tools and processes.
With more than 15 years of experience, WatServ has a track record of delivering quantifiable business results and a superior client experience. Ranked as one of Canada’s Top 100 Solution Providers for the last three years in a row, WatServ is always on.
Toronto, ON, January 7, 2019 — WatServ is proud to announce that the company has achieved the Microsoft Gold Partner status for Cloud Platform Competency for its use and expertise of Microsoft Azure. This certification allows WatServ to continue growing alongside our customers while leveraging Microsoft’s product stack and partner resources. The designation is awarded to Microsoft partners who have proven their expertise by successfully completing rigorous Microsoft Technical Assessments as well as maintaining core Microsoft Certified Professionals on staff.
Achieving gold partner status for Cloud competency is an important recognition in today’s cloud market. Not only is this certification representative of WatServ’s significant customer volume within the Azure environment, but it also demonstrates the company’s deep engineering skills and technical knowledge in advising clients with increasingly complex cloud environments.
WatServ’s mandate is to begin each client engagement with purpose. The company invests the time to ask the right questions to the right stakeholders, resulting in the implementation of the right cloud solutions. Dave Lacey, Chief Executive Officer of WatServ states, “WatServ works with a global network of enterprise clients who rely on the company’s knowledge of Azure and expertise to deliver creative cloud solutions and cloud strategy programs. The WatServ team has proven to be a reliable and skilled partner evidenced through the company’s industry experience, successful cloud implementations, and customer support programs. We are honoured to achieve the Gold Cloud Platform Competency for Microsoft Azure and look forward to working with our partners through their digital transformations.”
“By achieving a Gold competency, partners have demonstrated the highest, most consistent capability and commitment to the latest Microsoft technology,” said Gavriella Schuster, corporate vice president, One Commercial Partner (OCP) at Microsoft Corp. “These partners have a deep expertise that puts them in the top of our partner ecosystem, and their proficiency will help customers drive innovative solutions.”
WatServ is an IT solutions provider that helps organizations digitally transform through cloud technologies and managed services.
Serving clients as a trusted advisor since 2006, WatServ provides experience-tested, strategic solutions across all stages of the digital transformation journey. Clients choose WatServ to migrate infrastructure and applications to the cloud, secure critical data, implement disaster recovery, deploy virtual desktop, enable data-readiness for productivity solutions and manage IT environments.
Our clients span a broad range of industries, and we’re a global supplier of IT services for many Brookfield Portfolio Companies. To help our mid-size clients, we provide scalable offerings that simplify cloud adoption and drive business optimization. For enterprise clients, we co-create cloud solutions that enable stability and efficiency for complex IT tools and processes.
With more than 15 years of experience, WatServ has a track record of delivering quantifiable business results and a superior client experience. Ranked as one of Canada’s Top 100 Solution Providers for the last three years in a row, WatServ is always on.
