TechEd LIVE Keynote: “Time horizon for technology is changing”

Kickstarting TechEd NZ 2014 in front of a jam-packed Vector Arena, one of Microsoft’s leading Azure experts addressed the Kiwi market with a simple message…

“The time horizon for technology is changing.”

Citing the 2012 London Olympics as an example, Steven Martin, General Manager for Cloud and Enterprise, Microsoft says as the cloud matures, customer ability to scale on demand increases, creating a new type of business venture within enterprise.

“In the past if you wanted to create a new business venture you’d presume the IT investment would be huge and as a result, the project would be a multi-year thing,” he says.

“But we’re now finding that customers are going after particular business opportunities which may only be a few weeks long - rather than lengthy projects.”

Alluding to Microsoft Azure and its levels of scalability, Martin says the tech giant can now simply “flick a switch”, thus catering to varied demand and spikes in traffic or needs.

For the Olympics, Redmond partnered with Akamai, deltaTre, and Southworks to create a cloud-based delivery model, the first of its kind, offering an entirely end-to-end digital media workflow.

“We broadcast the entire Olympic Games through Azure,” adds Martin. “This included transcoding, caching, distribution etc and the broadcast company didn’t buy a single server - there was no investment in this area.

“But if you think of the technology landscape 10 years ago, you’d have to buy lots of equipment, services, network pipes etc but once the project is finished, what happens to the equipment?

“Now, through the cloud and through Azure, customers can flick a switch and turn it on or off - leading to different conversations around business ventures.”

Martin says Microsoft wants to encourage customers to think about their investments, suggesting they entertain tackling business opportunities in weeks, not years, which he believes will open many doors across the market.

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