Save to death or enabler for Digitalization PART i

Save to death or enabler for digitalization is the questions every organization should ask them self when constricting IT budget.

Without Business there is no IT but also without IT you cannot do business anymore and some years ago the change happens where the IT is enabler and not only costs as seen so earlier but why did we understood that.

Digitalization and getting the benefits out from the existing or new information cannot be done without investment witch actually restrict the organization to value from information and data. Pragmatic we can reduce our cost, we can optimize our work or we can create new business but why it is so difficult to make decisions witch reduce the cost, influence to our end user performance and might create new value.

Example, what has been the benefit for automating car manufacturing with robots's. I would say huge, and background to realize the benefits has been the decisions to make investment, spent money to build capabilities or reduce cost. Quite simple everyone can agreed - hopefully. To get minerals you need to have tools to dig - invest / spent money to get something.

Are we still in the mindset that business leadership does not understand the benefit of the data (to saved and deleted) and change in the end user behavior - with prioritizing of course.  Data witch has no positive value and not deleted turns to high risk of negative value through the EU GDPR requirements to prove and demonstrate the data usage or not. 

Some smarter has said that success starts from our own employees, when they are happy, your customers are happy and share that on the feedback, it is easier to get more business with good feedback witch means higher turnover with should mean better revenue and profit.

So we came back to basic questions, how we will offer the best tools, communication and collaboration setup witch fits best based on the user role and responsibilities regardless what device they use. 

How we made the accurate information available for the users instead of making available bunch of unvaluable data.

So where the data is stored. Application with data bases, network shares, local PC and cloud both consumer and business version.

Example how the data can be a risks regardless how it will be seen.

1.  End user use dropbox or OneDrive at his home PC saving legal and illegal data to PC
2. Cloud service will syncronize it to cloud witch is the reason to use those services
3. User configure the OneDrive or DropBox to work PC syncing the personal data from cloud to on premise
4. This folder might then be copied with scripts to corporate network share and backup systems OR folder is synced to OneDrive for Business to corporate Office 365 tenant.

So we can clearly see the security risk and risk for saving personal data - both legal and illegal - in corporate storage from where the organization does not have any information. From GDPR point of view and IF something happens, organization must go through these file to confirm that there is no personal data to to data subject who has made the request or who is part of the security breach. All these equals to cost and is a risk witch should be identified and discussed.

Users are smart and they try to find the way how they can work if organization does not allow for example way how to share data with partners and here the risks is that the corporate data will be synchronized via cloud services to their home PC witch should not allowed in any how.

And coming back to basic question, what we have done to protect us from this, what we have done to communicate with the end user what is allowed and what not, how we try to ensure that we don't have data in wrong place and keep unvaluable data in our storage. Normally the hardware upgrade means pragmatically to copy the same unknown data to new storage every 5 years. 

So what can be done to get the data visible and available, reduce the costs and automate the data archive and retention and does it make any value for us. I would say absolutely Yes, the legacy data can be available from one common connection point like SharePoint even if the data is stored to Azure blob storage. This is one example how to use Azure PaaS and Storage in the background. Moving the data to cloud also should have change impact to network connectivity, why to use more expensive MPLS connection while data is available from public cloud. 

What we have seen is the change in the small offices where the local file server and MPLS connection has been changed cloud storage and xDSL connection with Site to Site VPN solution through internet to corporate regional or main data center to allow the access to internal business application -witch actually can also be published through Azure services and fits nicely to web services.

Everything is related to everything

I recommend you to read the Avanade's blog by Wictor Wilen from Sweden, while it really works as a eye opener in many ways.

From Baby Boomers to Generation 2

It explain how different generations works and familiar with, witch actually opens great opportunity to change management for service adoption and penetration.

Second topic it brings is the idea what to use and when BUT here one key is the information not the technology.

As we can see Wictor has wider view and perspective to what tools used and where and linking it to the generational preferences and Priority/time sensity.

This is awesome and started to work when deployed BUT what happens to old legacy solution and data witch is the issue. Too often the transition project does not include funding to move the data from legacy to new to help organization to benefit from the investments.  End user experience cannot be seen very great if they have data what they use daily in File Servers, SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint Online witch correlate to save to death but the root cause is deeper. It's the mindset to save all and it has been the way of working from the history together with open policy allowing users to save everything to everything and parallel to bemoan while not find the data or it's not accuracy and cannot find people who knows from the topic she/he is looking for.

Using monthly, subscription based services one key is the user profiling, so to add one additional layer to picture above is to profile users. What they services they use now, what services they will use in the future and then map to right monthly service subscriptions.

Secondly we can also mirror the information value compared from individual to organization and there understanding the usage of information means a lot. Different departments handle different type of information with own requirement to save the data. Finance has it own laws describing how long data must be saved where R&D must save technical data with it's rules. There is mandatory data witch can or cannot be deleted but there is huge amount of draft and temporary data with no need to save but still saved. This is creates the snowball effect and data berg (Veritas) like iceberg - only small part of the data is known and there is more data from where organization does not have understanding.

 

If you noticed, today's workplace also have bot's helping the user daily work witch means increased performance witch equals better productivity witch means better profit - simple or not?

So what to do if saved to death? Start to get together and agreed that now we need to use the saved money from earlier years - there is no free cheese like Rainmakers say..

So make a decisions, get the funding's and start to work, there is no short cut - unfortunately except bankruptcy if administrative fines set while not done anything.

So everything is related to everything but also the greatest benefits come from bigger change in both technical, process and user experience view. Still it is only work and mostly the technology is there, some available from OOB in latest Windows Server version or through commercial applications like Veritas Data Insight and Enterprise Vault for archiving with multiple storage option like SharePoint Online, Microsoft StorSimple with Azure, Azure Blob Storage and local SAN and storage system.

Weekly theme: Less Data is smaller risk

All thoughts and are my own

Following pictures shows what can be achieved with hard work witch also works for this article.

American Car Show Helsinki, Finland 2016 "Make it shine"

Why organization does not take the benefits from Office 365 new features?

Benefit from Microsoft Office 365 evergreeness

How often your organization Office 365 Service Manager has visited on the following page explaining the Office 365 roadmap Office 365 Roadmap ?

Very simple questions what every CIO should ask from the team. "Hi Team, please explain the new features m & functions Microsoft is releasing from Office 365 and included to our current subscriptions with no financial impact?"

Unfortunately the answer can be something what the CIO does not expect to get and this is a huyge problem and slow down the organization's path to digital master or journey to digital workplace, and impacting to the the user daily work and perfomance.

Based on this the CIO might also ask a question why we moved to cloud if our internal behavior in evergreen service is based on working and collaboration with the local outsourcing provider on the history, where nothing came free and it was also project to upgrade the version or add new services.

How we realize the cloud benefits?

How we support our business and how they benefits from new services in their daily work?

So, couple great question for CIO's table and team agenda - but this is not the end - it just the start.

CIO is responsible to offer services witch usually equals to financial costs and here we should change the hat and think this from CFO side.

The CFO might ask from CIO that how the benefits, TCO and ROI are based on the business case and based on his/her knowledge from cloud he/she should be also interested of the cost versus benefits to avoid paying from nothing. If i would be CFO i really like to know that if we are paying the next 3 years fixed price per month per user from the service in contract sign date but the service will have more richer features available with no cost. So you would get more with same money but you don't want and use them. This is like investing money, put one million dollar to shares and in the next three years we are not interested of dividend or the appreciation of the shares- No No, we just want to get our 1 million dollars back after three years.

Sounds scary if CFO will accept this type of spending but again unfortunately through. So some very actully stupid question from financial point like

How much we are paying without using the features and services available for free? (Like owning and retail but not renting that, just keeping it warm and clean and paying from the insurance and
electric - you got the point)

Next questions is a little bit tougher and requires good understanding from the organization's business and employees and how we personalized or profiles those. Below is very very small analysis for three years using user based monthly subscription and what is the impact if done in more detailed way even that it take more time to established.

In our Office365-Expert organization we 34 000 Information worker, 10 000 field worker and 20 000 factory worker.

So we can clearly see the financial benefits from user profiling but of course this does not come for free and requires hard work and have extra cost to do the required changes in the existing legacy solution and IAM systems.

The user profiling partially brings on the table the third part - the business and it's VP's, Executives and so on, from where everything starts.
Without business there is no demand for any IT services - none, njet, no, Ei.... but also thinking other side how IT can be business enabler and enrich the users daily work and work performance or generate totally new business opportunities.

So pragmatically we have three CxO level persons who don't know or have the visibility how the increase the user performance witch is the key, how to be more innovative and collaborate more, not the technology.

couple questions the board of executives can think might be like

How we collaborate globally?
How we found right resource to support the business using our tools?
How we share information at the right time and way?
How we simplify our technical architecture and utilize more cloud services?
How we build the model to share the business requires and Office 365 new services aligned with financials?
How we can utilize Office 365 in our journey to EU GDPR compliance
Do we use other cloud based applications like SalesForce and ServiceNow witch can be configured to use Azure AD for user authentication?
Do we have services witch can be replaced with Office 365 and out of the box features included in our monthly prices?


To be able to realize the evergreen cloud services benefits you need drive and have the ownership for the change, You can call it Center of Excellence, Cloud Excellence, Digital Excellence  and they key is the team with talents from different technologies like Office 365 is based on, it starts from identity and security and goes through communication and collaboration to analytics and software development skilled people from your own organization or from selected partner.

For the change you need the boost and right attitude like the blower below above the V8. You cannot get speed and horsepower for free and same works in organization, instead you need to make investment and in digital work learn how to fail and learn from it and do it faster and faster parallel to create business value or more speed :-)

Car show Helsinki Finland

All pictures and thoughts are my own

Remember and learned something from year 2000 change --> Be smarter with EU GDPR

From year 2000 IT change to next big change - EU GDPR

How many of us remember the IT workload when we came from history 1900 to new and magnificent 2000 century and Windows 2000 Active Directory and changes in the application and so worth - was great time for trainers. Running from customer to customer and keeping Microsoft MOC 1560 NT 4 to Windows 2000 Upgrade and our own Windows Server 2000 courses.

That was the history part and lets keep it there - but this brings at least to my mind how we have prepared to May 25th 2018 when the EU GDRP comes in to effect.

The answers varies, some organization does not even know from this and others have started to prepare and others are between and or does not do anything.

Other questions is the possibility to use the law wrong way where criminal organization start to recruit people or asks people to go from one organization to another ask's them to show what they have from them and please forgot me.

Sound's like DDOS Denial-of-Service-Attack's and all based on law.

How many requests one organization can carry and use resource for this? How many resource and FTE's time they can spend to go through the request and understand if there is any risks that yes there might be some personal data from that user user who made the request.

What if I will pay 5$ per user to make the query to any global services offering organization like eBay, Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix - you know what I mean. Let's assume that someone invest 10 000$ and get 2000 users to make the request to three company Amazon, eBay and Netflix and find data from them. Based on the law they need to analyze what they have from those user's and it might be nothing - those users has not even create account to any of those services but the labour cost to do the analysis is somewhere. Then investing another 10 000$ for the same user to register and create account to those services and make the request to be forgotten after registration. Can they say that we dont have any data from your while we did the check earlier and based on law -- wrong answer. They need to do the analysis again witch equal to labour cost, time away from more productive and so on.  Then after being attacked this way too many times they answer to next user that no way, go away - we are not going to analyze you and forgot you - but this time the request like forgot dead relative

This is only an illustrative example where organizations needs to prepare and the question stays still - are they ready 25th of May 2018 unless the law.... who know's


Nevertheless, this brings to quite major topics on the table:
1. Do we know data we have and where?
2. Is our applications supporting this, application done and published earlier and/or applications in development phase?

Let's take other illustrative example using Facebook as an example. Your husband or wife has been active in Facebook and suddenly he or she died and husband or wife has to fight to get the account and profile deleted (witch opens other question of groups he/she has created and is the owner for it - what happens to those groups and data insight them witch mostly might be personal data - but that is another story and let's go back to org example) and finally got confirmation from it. Then, suddenly something happens to at the Facebook service and they are forced to restore the data - what happens then?

I don't know - sorry.

But I can bet that for relative's, it's not fun at all to see the wife or husband back and active.

This is just and example based on no knowledge how Facebook works to avoid this kind of situations but again bring the same questions to my mind - Are they ready?

So if go back to the key questions and start to think those two and start from knowledge. Structured data is easier (or not) to understand and know what we have while it is usually in database and we know where the application and database is used - correct?. The opposite - unstructured data is or should be big head ache to organizations business, risk management, security and IT.  While this is not related only to data, it's not enough that you analyze what you have in your collaboration tools and file shares but it goes also to identity and now talking privileged accounts running applications witch might user file shares as part of the small, legacy applications, do you know those, when the password has changed last time, do you have any detect and control process in place.........
The world legacy and history have huge weight here where the data has been migrated from upgraded storage during years without deleting - usually - anything.

It's payback time -unfortunately. Same way that organization using legacy Notes mail and application has explain that they saved them to bankruptcy while staying in the same license and hardware too long - it was good idea and the cheapest in short term but there is no free cheese.
It cannot be expected that if we stay in the same version, others will also do, and that there is no influence in today's social world to the brand where people to share the they are using old tools and techics in their daily work. To days digi native will vote with their feet and we can bet that their social friends will now the reason per yesterday.

Let's get back again to the unknown unstructured data and what it is. So data migrated between years from old to one without deleting together with growing data trends and user behavior. Traditional file shares does not have - usually - data classification, index and search capabilities, versioning, available from mobile - you know and can name those - there is not unless you have purchased 3rd party like Veritas Enterprise Vault archiving tools, tool you have tried to get way during email migration to the Exchange Online as good example.

So you find anykind of, age, usage and amount of data, from where you might use and know about 10-20% and other data is just storage cost - and now we are back in business - Euros, Dollars, Pesetas, Ruplas  you name it  - Money talks and in here with small example.

Assumptions:

• 24000 users
• 50 GB average disk quota per user
• 20% active and valuable data
• 3,5$ / GigaByte the managed storage cost (can be from 2-5$ per gigabyte)

Calculation (24 000*50GB*3,5$)=4 200 000,00 dollars per year - not bad.

But lets calculate what is the Dark Data size and price - so the data without any values (note here that even if old data it can be valuable like old product drawnings, contracts and so) 24 000*50*0,8=960 000 GB = 3 360 000,00 dollars for nothing. For me it sounds quite good business case.

As said, theoretically it is easy show the business case but this really requires more analysis while the 80% of total storage usually includes installation medias, backups, virtual machines disks, .ISO images, zip files and so on and today and even more in the future movies and audios files and of course including unknown amount of duplicates.


So if look back to title and year 2000 there are some common like

• Yes, it impacts to whole organization
• Yes, it requires change
• Yes, it requires finance or you take the risk of penalties. Recommend to read with your risk organization together with business, legal, security and IT.
• Yes, it include your directory services
• Yes you need end user training and communication

If done correctly with right partner you might achieve benefits like

• Yes, you can sleep your nights
• Yes, this is the time and place to upgrade and adopt governance and start to monitor
• Yes, you increase your security
• Yes, you make your or increase your data's value
• Yes, the data in static file server should be available from any device and any time and any where (who remember this from Microsoft and who and when?)
• Yes, might reduce your storage cost
• Yes, this time to create and adopt workflows and retention polices to start know the data and let automation to take care unvaluable data
• Yes, your outsourcing contracts will safe you
• Yes and No - you might need to run project to change the partner or hosting provider to sleep your nights
• Your data is available
• Better user experience and work performance while data can be found.
• Yes, you stop the snowball effect where the situation creates exeption witch creates exeption witch makes everything more complex, increase the security risk and time consuming equals to money, frankly.
• and much much more.

But this was today's story.

Todays picture brings the summer, sun and hot roads.. Feel it.

Shortly - I would

"All comments, thoughts and pictures are my own and I don't have legal background"

Benefits of social networks and sharing blogs and articles in twitter for example.

Social and Share

I have never understood people - expect me - who think that only the work I have done, is the best or the coolest in the world.

What this actually mean is that everyone try to invent the wheel again witch is not so smart and valuable. Of course the wheel can have different angle, behavior, features and blah blah but the wheel is the wheel and to reinvent the wheel I think more valuable is to enrich the wheel with something others has not created yet but still link the new to the old one.

Example, I could start to write document and blog from (maybe will later on) from Azure AD and it's new capabilities as Jesper Ståhle from Sweden has explained in his blog. Jesper Ståhle O365 MVP blog
Who is very talent and valuable resource to follow based on his technical articles with valuable project experience.

Going back to the first sentence - there are people with same mindset respect only those who has build their house or car or summer cottage with their own hand and those who has purchased are nothing.
It is like someone liking Chevrolet Camaro '69  and another person from Dodge Charger 426 Hemi '69 and who cars if they have build those by own hands. Both cool car and funny to drive compared to Kia i30.

I give my all respect to people who has the talent to build those cars, summer cottage, write SAP article and blog from it or anything but also understanding that not everyone have those skills.

We are unique and have different skills and talents - actually enriching our life by allowing us to accept different people with special skills.

So back to topic where Jesper's blogs and articles works brilliantly in the Digital Workplace communication and what features Microsoft cloud services support now.

Notice the world now while one benefits of selecting MS ecosystem is that they are expanding their cloud service all the time with cool new features.

"All thoughts and opinions are my own like pictures too"

With daily picture - not Camaro or Charger but still from US!

Finnish Hot Rod Association Car Show - Helsinki Finland 2016

EU GDPR will be there but how to start the journey - Chapter 2

How to understand what data our employees are sending and where those are used.

Last time we looked the life from understanding what is happening inside our network, let's extend our mindset also to understand how to protect the information moved inside and outside our network and how to understand and make visible, where the file is opened. Cool - is in't?

One additional thing bringing more complexity is of course the hybrid setup. Our planet is not so black and white instead it have some shade of other colors between black and white :-).

So the identity is not black white, the data location is not black and white but the IT still lives in black and white to manage same resources with less money - you got it.

So if we start from basic we need to understand the data and classify it, witch makes this big change management and communication issue from the end user view. They have been familiar to save data where ever they feel comfortable or has been used to - even that there might been some guides and policies to store the data here and there without able to reuse what colleagues has created - mine is always the best and that's why I started from scratch or use only copies what I have created.

Back to classification  - in very pragmatic view the data classification can be defined to couple class:

• Secret
• Confidental
• Internal
• Not restricted / Public
• and Personal witch makes this even funnier based on EU GDPR - nice word again.

 Sounds clear and should be easy after we have configured the new classification to our organization and when people are starting to create new document those will be classified but what about the 345 Billions old, legacy file we have like Summerparty2001 pictures and invitation and food list. In this time youngster usually says OMG - still saving so old data - you are so old school. True unfortunately - organization has migrated data transition after transition after transition from NT 3,51 or maybe from OS/2 or WARP to Windows NT 4 to Windows 2000 to Windows 2003 to Windows 2008 to Windows 2012 R2 file servers and now thinking to migrate the data to Windows Server 2016 R2 and so on. And every transition we purchase more storage, build and configure more sophisticated storage solution with maybe dedublication to save the storage but still not touching the root cause.  Let's avoid opening the backup discussion here - sorry we can't. We backup the local branch office serves offering local network share to the users for data parallel to be the first place for user desktop backups - ups, same file in X:\data\path\salespresentation.pptx Drive as file and in in X:\Backups\GasMonkey\backup22022002.something and so on. While we don't have back up solution and tape's in branch office we some how copy the data to central data center where the both files and backup files are copied to tape and archive it. Simple, nice and easy - well no.

Let's take one variable here and call it human, you know the person who talk and walk do all kind of funny things. So it saves the file created in it's PC to local drive and copy it to the local network drive parallel to send it in email to 20 best friends who might need that file or maybe not and each of these best friends save the file to their local PC and maybe even in the local network drive in their office witch is then backed up to the central data center in that region not forgetting the automated backup scripts copying the file to local network share, from where other scripts copy the file to data center were it will be backed up to tape witch maybe never ever has been really tested from bottom up.

And suddently the file is 2, 3 5, 10 or 45 times stored and using the storage capacity with value of 0 when we looked the name of the file - salesguide_2005draft.doc - frankly for this does not sound fun instead.....

And short conclusion is that technology is not limiting and root cause for this - it is the human and lack of policies and governance with data classification with retention/archiving period, detect and control and proactive communication and owned by business, lead by example with commitment.

Sounds familiar - be honest.

You got the point, we need to classify the data and we must have meta data witch triggers and is used in retention. Like start workflow to get approval to delete or save other 6 months to all files classified Internal/security and have Draft Meta Data attribute. This actually come back to the terms workflow - automate - process witch are not technical IT terminology only and we might ask from our self that are these features normal disk systems and file share give to us if your answer is yes - are those in use, if answer is no - only questions is why?

So classification is needed and it must be able to configure it automatically during document creation based on the data content like social security, bank account, credit card and so on but also allowing users to overdrive the automatic rule.

Check more data from Wikipedia using following link - if it just work.
meta data
or using following link to digital guardian  digital guardian data classification


Will continue next more from Meta Data in next article and as usually

"All ideas and thoughts are my own like pictures unless told the source"

To be Continued ..

Biker's meeting Haltiala / Finland August 2016 - approx 200 bikers ( mostly age over 40)

EU GDPR will be there but how to start the journey - Chapter I

How to understand what is happening in our network

Understanding and monitoring the network traffic as such might be enough but it is not. You can use Solarwind, IBM, HP and others network monitoring tool but how much they support and utilize machine learning to understood the user behavior instead of protocols and packet size, source and target address at the Ethernet and IP level not forgotting the OSI model 4 liker TCP or UDP and application layers.

So having and saving logs is not enough in the future, instead those are important part of the process but there should be more proactive and real time actions alerting based on abnormal user behavior.

@Microsoft Advanced Thread Analytics video

To understand what is abnormal behavior, machine learning is one key word to find and identity changes and this works multiple ways. Most of the security breach still and unfortunately starts from poor user credentials and user behavior where attacker has got the user name and password somehow - and quessing the user name is not hard work. Does user have email - Yes, does user have SIP address -Yes - conclusion might then be that SMTP address = SIP Address = User Principal Name - not hard or what?

When attacker has the user name and password and can remotely login to user PC the world is open to him or her. This hacked account is the key to start to browse the corporate network and find workstations and servers/services with know vulnerabilities without installed fix. This way the attacker start to know more more from your network and unfortunately your own IT knowing nothing.

Microsoft Advanced Thread Analytics is one tool for this while it start to learn how users behave and alerts then from abnormal behavior. Example Jack is working in London Office from 8-17 and suddenly some day there is normal logging in that time but also different time from different PC and locations. So with Machine Learning you can start to find this patterns and hopefully when having alert have also control actions and governance how to proceed.


Next article will discuss from Azure AD premium and how it support the GDPR journey.


Use the following links to check the video from ATA by Microsoft

Microsoft ATA video

"All comments, thoughts and picture's are my own"

Fast and Rusty Beetle - Extreme CarShow Helsinki 2010

GDPR - The Law Part 0

General Data Protection and Regulation in nutshell from wikipedia

1. Applies registrar and processors based on EU but also global organization if they process personal data from EU residents witch.
2. Each member country must have organization and authority to work with the organization, EU and residents
3. Data Protection Officer DPO, new role required for companies over 250 employees. Under the GDPR, the independent Data Protection Officer (DPO) will be under a legal obligation to notify the Supervisory Authority without undue delay and this is also still subject to negotiations at present.
4. Data Breach and notifications
1. 72 hours or if high risk then as soon as possible
5. Sanctions 
1. 2% or 10 000 000,00 Euros from global turnover witch ever is greater
2. 4% or 20 000 000,00 Euros from global turnover witch ever is greater
6. Law explain the mindset of personal data but as described in earlier or later chapter it can be quite blurry with extension based on age, religion, color and so on.
7. rights
1. rights to be forgotten
2. Data portability - should these mean that my data in Instgram should be movable using drag and drop to Twitter or Facebook or vice versa. Maybe not :-)
3. My Data - right to see what personal data is stored from me

To Be Continued...

"All thoughts and pictures are my own and I don't have any legal background"

Extreme Car Show 2010