This week saw the launch of Microsoft Viva, the rather comprehensive, and exciting, combination of targeted Collaboration, Wellbeing and Training. This is potential big shift for organisations, many of which are only just getting to grips with Teams, and for lots, that has been forced faster than possibly desired. Is Microsoft’s rate of change too high or do we need to think differently?
Are organisations ready? No. Are Microsoft partners ready? Most won’t be. How can an organisation start dealing with this new product when they are mostly dealing with the last challenge?
The key here is not in the readiness of the organisation, but in the lack of desire, or understanding, to step back and radically address the rapid paced cloud based delivery of new services. This will not be the last product or service from Microsoft to land at great speed and most organisations haven’t given this shift in operational management and continued progression any consideration.
A new approach is required, either organisations need to employ a person or team to specifically watch and react to the new and rapidly developing world, or this service needs to be handed to a Microsoft partner organisation. More specifically, a partner that knows what is coming and about to land, and more importantly, what that means to the organisation and what needs to be actioned or implemented.
The first option requires a committed and ongoing upskilling programme with ample resource, the second option requires someone, or a team of people to assess the continual changes being surfaced and discussed by the partner. Typically, this will need to be a mixture of business and technical resource. The longer you work with a Microsoft partner organisation in this manner, the greater the realisation of the benefits as that partner gets to really know your business and processes. This really is a new approach that needs addressing or organisations will just not be able to keep up.
Take security as an example, the richer the suite of tools and applications released by Microsoft, the more you have to secure. If these services are enabled for use, and you don’t bring all the pieces together in one cohesive story, your security position will effectively be moving backwards, security is not static or passive.
The benefits brought by all these new collaboration, wellbeing and training services are absolutely enormous, but organisations need to rethink just how it is going to be managed on a perpetual basis. Can you really devote the time of your internal It team to keep on top of all the new releases and the organisational impacts. This affects not only security, but also release management and Adoption and Change Management.
That is why you see organisations are now offering M365 Managed Services, including Managed Security and ACMaaS (Adoption and Change Management as a Service)
Being right at the front of the Microsoft story is great, we know what’s going on and what to do about it, but how are you going to address this new world of rapidly changing technologies and applications? Worth a rethink for sure.
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