New economics of computing

Barry McLean talks to Owen McQuade about Microsoft’s work in Northern Ireland, 10 years since its arrival, and cloud computing’s potential for the public sector.

Microsoft started its operations in Northern Ireland 10 years ago with just one employee working out of serviced offices. The company is now based at the Science Park in Belfast’s Titanic Quarter, where it became one of its first residents, to service a wide range of clients across the province. The core Microsoft team in Belfast is focused primarily on the public sector but also working with enterprise and SME sectors. There are also a number of consultants working out of the office who service clients across the whole island.

Microsoft has made its presence felt in Northern Ireland, making a significant contribution to the local economy, either directly or indirectly. Its Microsoft Partner Network consists of 436 organisations which employ in excess of 6,000 people, double what it was 10 years ago. Of these partner organisations, 20 are ‘gold’ certified partners who are certified to the highest levels in Microsoft technologies. The Microsoft Partner Network makes a significant contribution to the Northern Ireland economy, which McLean details: “These partners contribute $20 million in revenue to Microsoft, and industry analysts IDC estimate that typically that every one dollar for Microsoft represents nine dollars to the partnership community and that’s the contribution to the local economy.”

A key part of the success of Microsoft’s partner network in Northern Ireland is the close relationship between the company and its partners. This point is reinforced by partner company Nitec’s Nigel Mulholland who has said that “our relationship with Microsoft is head and shoulder above that with other providers. The partnership with Microsoft in Northern Ireland has enabled us to grow and expand in tandem with them. Being part of the broader partner network that has grown up around Microsoft in Northern Ireland has facilitated us to do our business better.”

The company makes a contribution to the wider economy by working in partnership with a range of organisations. An example of working with the community sector is the Fast-track to IT (FIT) programme which helps to get people in marginalised areas into employment by supporting them with IT training. The company also works in partnership with the PSNI to provide internet safety training in schools and over the last four years has trained 12,000 students in safer internet use.

In addition, Microsoft has contributed £1 million worth of software to local charities over the past four years and has supported NGOs through the umbrella charity body, NICVA, by providing advice on better use of IT for non-profit groups.

Microsoft’s business in Northern Ireland very much reflects the structure of the local economy. Its main focus is the public sector: “We cover central government, criminal justice, health, education and local government. As for the private sector, it is very much an SME-based economy. However, we also have a number of large private companies such as Viridian and Bombardier and FG Wilson, that we work with.”

Innovation

When McLean thinks of innovation, it is “either an improvement in efficiency or an improvement in the quality of delivery.”

“From a Microsoft perspective innovation is at the core of everything we do – not only in the development of our products but also in how we run our own operations. For example, with a couple of very recent innovations Windows Phone 7 and Kinect for Xbox 360, we have changed the gaming market by removing the need for a controller and with Windows Phone 7, we are bringing an innovative mobile phone experience to all consumers.”

“We also constantly review how we work ourselves as a company to drive innovations in everything we do. This goes from R&D to how we run our supply chain and mega data centres. A core tenet of the Microsoft culture is to constantly look at how we can do things better and smarter,” he adds.

Microsoft invests $9 billion each year in R&D across all product areas, with innovation in new and existing products. This innovation is extended when the products get out to the partner community who innovate further, in demand-led innovations through working closely with end users across all sectors from health to education. McLean highlights the point that many of the innovations come from the partner community who work closely with clients to deliver specific solutions and sometimes to meet niche demands. Examples include software for students with special needs delivered remotely or in the school setting, as well as telemedicine solutions in the healthcare area.

Cloud computing

Moving onto cloud computing, he describes this as “delivering almost limitless computing power on demand, the cloud enables new types of applications and business models.”

“The key thing is to understand what is meant by cloud computing,” McLean remarks. “At its simplest, an organisation’s ICT resources are managed and delivered by a secure third party in a dynamic and scalable way. Or put another way, IT resources are delivered like a utility, with computing power available when you need it and you only pay for what you use.”

Leading IT analyst Gartner views Microsoft as the market leader in cloud computing with “the most visionary and complete view of the cloud.”

A view echoed by Nitec’s Nigel Mulholland who believes that Microsoft has “the most compelling cloud offering right now. The Microsoft cloud offering is well priced and, importantly, is from a trusted provider with a great security model.”

“Because cloud computing makes it possible to lower costs, increase efficiencies, and enter new types of business and technical opportunities, many organisations in the private and public sector are excited about “the cloud.” Cloud services can be broadly classified as: completely moving work or applications up to the cloud into someone else’s data centre, use the cloud to add to your existing computing power, or host applications in your own private cloud within your own organisation.

This creates new possibilities: vastly increasing the computing power available, making it possible to pay for services only when you need them, or building your own cloud infrastructure to host data and services for others, as well as experiment with new service offerings easily, and scale rapidly into new markets.

McLean says that these types of cloud computing service can simply be used as a new and innovative way of organising traditional IT services, and Microsoft has a “comprehensive solution” across all elements of the Cloud.

“We see cloud computing as a new way to do new things, or to do existing things better, or more cost effectively,” he adds, pointing out that it can help public sector organisations meet the challenges thrown up by the recent spending review.

  “Microsoft works with public sector organisations to deliver the most cost- effective solutions, and enables organisations to focus on delivering services to citizens or customers rather than on purely managing IT.”

When asked if moving organisations into the cloud is such a big deal, McLean says that for public sector customers Microsoft sees itself as an enabler. We understand the challenges such as data security, data sovereignty etc., facing each individual organisation. Our job is to work with each organisation to develop solutions whether in the private cloud, public cloud, or a combination of both to achieve the best business efficiency and cost savings.

He gives the example of working towards moving IT Assist into a private cloud environment: “By working with existing product sets and leveraging the investment in R&D in third and fourth generation data centres, which enable IT Assist to implement a private cloud, while meeting the various business requirements.”

“In relation to the public cloud, Microsoft have been running services in this area for over 15 years in areas such as Hotmail, and more recently, XBOX live services. These are delivered through large scale data centres such as the centres recently built in Dublin and Amsterdam. Microsoft has invested significant resources and infrastructure which adhere to the highest security standards.

Microsoft has been an integral part of a significant number of large ICT projects in Northern Ireland’s public sector in recent years, including IT Assist, Causeway and a number of schools initiatives with C2k.

IT Assist Program

McLean singles out IT Assist, a shared service for desktops, as an area where Microsoft has become a key supplier to ICT across the Northern Ireland Civil Service.

He explains: “The project wanted to achieve more efficient procurement decisions in ICT. This resulted in the establishment of a centralised IT shared service, to provide IT support with a common desktop which would be centrally managed with automated IT processes where possible. This also resulted in significant cost reductions across the Northern Ireland Civil Service.”

He adds that the next couple of steps for IT Assist will be to “extend its reach and bring in additional customers and to provide value savings by becoming a private cloud provider.”

Education

Over the last decade, Microsoft has invested significantly in the education sector across Northern Ireland. Today they work across primary, second and third level institutions, to increase access to and share best practice from teachers and educational institutions within Northern Ireland around the world. This is done through Microsoft’s world-wide Innovative Schools and Teachers program.

Local schools have fared well in these global programmes which Microsoft runs. The Innovative Teachers programme which attracted 250 teachers from 75 countries had a local winner, Barry Costigan from Millennium Integrated Primary school in Saintfield, County Down. In the Innovative Schools programme St Mary’s College in Derry and Ashfield Girls’ High School in Belfast were both winners.

“This year saw the opening of the Centre of Excellence, for Leadership, Innovation and Learning, (CELIL) which was a partnership with Stranmillis College, the Regional Training Unit (RTU), and Microsoft. The centre will provide development opportunities for education professionals at both pre- and in-service stages.

“For us our work in education is about tools that make learning more engaging, interactive and fun for students through devices and software they are more familiar with.”

Future

Looking to the future, the big challenge, according to McLean, is “the new economics.”

“We have got to find new ways to do new things with fewer resources. The main aim has to be for Northern Ireland to remain competitive. This new environment, he concludes, is going to be very challenging and the big challenge will be “how the public sector can leverage the opportunity presented by the cloud to deliver its services.”

Profile: Barry McLean

Barry McLean is Microsoft’s regional manager in Northern Ireland. A business studies masters graduate he worked in the financial services sector and then moved to Business in the Community where he set-up two award winning programmes. He then joined Sx3, now Northgate “at an exciting time, helping set up a new organisation”. He joined Microsoft three years ago, and was recently appointed to his regional role. Today the Northern Ireland team consists of 20 people in its Belfast office.

Interests includes spending time with his family, as well as having an interest in most sports “usually from an armchair, although I do play five-a-side and golf badly.”