Gartner defines Microsoft product support services as support for Microsoft products, delivered either directly from Microsoft or indirectly from an alternative support provider. Technical support services for Microsoft products help customers in medium to large organizations resolve operational problems. (Smaller organizations likely use free support.) Gartner considers any provider of support services for Microsoft products — including Microsoft itself — to be part of the market for Microsoft product support services.

Microsoft Product Support Services

3D Print Service Bureaus

3D Printing Workflow Software

4G and 5G Private Mobile Network Services

4PLs

5G Enterprise Data Services

5G Network Infrastructure for Communications Service Providers (Transitioning to CSP 5G Core Network Infrastructure Solutions ; CSP 5G RAN Infrastructure Solutions)

A/B Testing Tools

AI Avatars

AI Code Assistants

AI Offerings in CSP Network Operations

AI and Data and Analytics (D&A) Service Providers

AI in CSP Customer and Business Operations

AI-Augmented Software-Testing Tools

AI-Enabled Interview Intelligence

AI-Enabled Translation Services

AIOps Platforms

API Management

API Protection

Absence Management Software

Access Management

Account-Based Marketing Platforms

Account-Planning Tools

Accounting Practice Management Software (APMS)

Accounts Payable (AP) Recovery Audit Services

Accounts Payable Invoice Automation Solutions (Transitioning to Accounts Payable Applications)

Active Metadata Management

Ad Tech Platforms

Ad Verification Tools

Adaptive Project Management and Reporting

Advanced Analytics Service Providers for Marketing

Advanced Contract Analytics

Advanced Distribution Management Systems

Affiliate Marketing Platforms

Alternative Legal Service Providers (ALSPs)

Analytics Query Accelerators

Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms

Analytics and Decision Intelligence Platforms in Supply Chain

Anti Money Laundering (AML) Software

Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) (Transitioning to 'Talent Acquisition (Recruiting) Suites')

Application Composition Platform

Application Crowdtesting Services

Application Delivery Controllers

Application Development Life Cycle Management

Application Integration Platforms

Application Platforms

Application Portfolio Management Tools

Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) Tools

Application Security Testing

Application Testing Services, Worldwide

Artificial Intelligence Applications in IT Service Management

Asset Investment Planning Solutions for Energy and Utilities

Asset Leasing Software

Asset Performance Management Software

Audience Intelligence Platforms

Audit Management Solutions

Augmented Analytics

Augmented Data Quality Solutions

Augmented Reality Development Software

B2B Customer Community Platforms

B2B Gateway Software

B2B Marketing Automation Platforms

B2B Profit Optimization Software

BPM-Platform-Based Case Management Frameworks

Background Check Software

Backup as a Service

Balance Sheet Management Software

Banking Payment Hub Platforms

Bankruptcy Software

Barcode Software

Benchmarking Services for Transportation Rates and Logistics Performance

Benefits Management Software

Blockchain Advertising Platforms

Blockchain Consulting and Proof-of-Concept Development Services

Blockchain Platforms

Blockchain as a Service

Brand Advocacy Services

Brand Compliance Software

Brand Protection Software

Brand Strategy Agencies

Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS) Tools

Business Continuity Management Program Solutions

Business Process Automation Tools

Business Process Management Platforms

Business Valuation Software

Business-Outcome-Driven Enterprise Architecture Consulting

CPS Protection Platforms

CRM Customer Engagement Center

CRM and Customer Experience Implementation Services

CRM in Life Sciences

CSP 5G Core Network Infrastructure Solutions

CSP 5G RAN Infrastructure Solutions

CSP Customer Management and Experience Solutions

CSP Revenue Management and Monetization Solutions

CSP Service Design and Orchestration Solutions

CSP Service and Network Assurance Solutions

Candidate Relationship Management (CRM) Software

Capital Investment Management Software

Carbon Accounting and Management Software

Carbon Offset Platforms

Cash Flow Management Software

On... both !

We're using private cloud with an SDDC architecture (software defined data center) to get rid of physical servers.

Then, we're using public Cloud (Microsoft Azure) to deploy new application.   Plus also, all the SaaS subscriptions we may have.

Hi,


This is an interesting thread.  My thoughts on this are that if you're building out on private cloud you're doing two things, firstly you're building a private cloud capability and then building on top of that.  I would be interested to hear what people think a private cloud is.  I think that is open to lots of different interpretations, everything from running your own servers in a DC to actually building a self-service automated infrastructure with a range of services and tooling to support it.

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Virtually nose-to-nose here out the gate, would be great to hear some arguments for/against your choice... <mention id="5e6a8f62d36e1d3f177aea6b" displayname="Brad Babin"></mention> thanks for participating in the poll - I recently joined Pulse so we can put that interview we were planning in my past life on permanent hold ;)  - any additional thoughts here? Thanks!

We have a strategic goal to reduce our owned data center space.  We will always have some private cloud but it will be much less than public cloud

When building, it’s about velocity &amp; optimizing skill sets for me.

I’m still fighting a “fear of the cloud” from ownership and clients, so there’s slightly more acceptance of Private Cloud, regardless of the fact that it might actually be less secure than Managed Public Cloud…

My strategic plan has both in place depending on the criticality and risk level of the identified systems and data. PII will always remain in the private cloud. Customer-facing systems and less risk level systems will move to the public cloud with a secure integration back to the private cloud. This helps to reduce physical systems, cost, and administrative overhead

Compliance and regulations in the industry imposes it

Improved speed to execute and exit.  And forced compliance/upgrades for security.

Intent is to build cloud native applications which can use the resources to the best. Hence makes sense to adopt the cloud for anything new

Costs are going up faster than my onsite costs. Can&#39;t claw the data back when you need to handle GDPR and other compliance issues.

On... both !

We&#39;re using private cloud with an SDDC architecture (software defined data center) to get rid of physical servers.

Then, we&#39;re using public Cloud (Microsoft Azure) to deploy new application.   Plus also, all the SaaS subscriptions we may have.

Hi,


This is an interesting thread.  My thoughts on this are that if you're building out on private cloud you're doing two things, firstly you're building a private cloud capability and then building on top of that.  I would be interested to hear what people think a private cloud is.  I think that is open to lots of different interpretations, everything from running your own servers in a DC to actually building a self-service automated infrastructure with a range of services and tooling to support it.

Hybrid and Multi Cloud option not available.

About 50/50.
Public cloud (Azure) whenever possible
On-prem VMs (VM Ware, ProxMox) for industrial apps and some large, mostly static document storage such as artwork (cost-prohibitive in public cloud)

There is also a 3rd way, the hybrid approach,  the best one where you have your sites offices on remote areas.

I'm building most on... share "why" in comments...

Consulting & Professional Services

When making a product selection, it's crucial to consider various factors, and Snowflake proves to be a strong contender in many aspects. Here are a few key areas where Snowflake excels:


1) Capabilities: Snowflake offers impressive capabilities, such as efficient data sharing, minimal administrative requirements, and automatic infrastructure pausing. This ensures that you won't encounter unexpected costs and provides an easy learning path for users.


2) Cost: While not strictly pay-per-query, Snowflake's model comes close to it. The separation of storage and compute allows for more flexibility and cost optimization, ensuring efficient resource allocation.


3) Features: Snowflake boasts a wide range of features that cater to diverse data needs. It provides robust support for XML, JSON, and geospatial data, along with comprehensive data sharing and security features. Additionally, Snowflake offers a data marketplace and many other functionalities to meet various requirements.


4) Availability of resources: Snowflake's use of standard SQL makes it easier to find skilled professionals proficient in the language. The platform also offers excellent training materials, and there is a growing online knowledge base to support users.


5) Integration: Snowflake has built a thriving ecosystem of integrations with other products, simplifying data movement and integration tasks. It seamlessly pairs with popular tools like Microsoft Power BI, as well as complementary solutions like Matillion and FiveTran, enhancing data analysis, visualization, and data pipeline capabilities.


Considering these factors, Snowflake emerges as a strong choice.

2022

2023

2024

DataBricks is easy to integrate with enterprise technology and has advantages in easy-to-use problems for data exploration, analysis, and visualization. But that&#39;s in my opinion, it all depends on the needs of each company is different.

When making a product selection, it&#39;s crucial to consider various factors, and Snowflake proves to be a strong contender in many aspects. Here are a few key areas where Snowflake excels:


1) Capabilities: Snowflake offers impressive capabilities, such as efficient data sharing, minimal administrative requirements, and automatic infrastructure pausing. This ensures that you won&#39;t encounter unexpected costs and provides an easy learning path for users.


2) Cost: While not strictly pay-per-query, Snowflake&#39;s model comes close to it. The separation of storage and compute allows for more flexibility and cost optimization, ensuring efficient resource allocation.


3) Features: Snowflake boasts a wide range of features that cater to diverse data needs. It provides robust support for XML, JSON, and geospatial data, along with comprehensive data sharing and security features. Additionally, Snowflake offers a data marketplace and many other functionalities to meet various requirements.


4) Availability of resources: Snowflake&#39;s use of standard SQL makes it easier to find skilled professionals proficient in the language. The platform also offers excellent training materials, and there is a growing online knowledge base to support users.


5) Integration: Snowflake has built a thriving ecosystem of integrations with other products, simplifying data movement and integration tasks. It seamlessly pairs with popular tools like Microsoft Power BI, as well as complementary solutions like Matillion and FiveTran, enhancing data analysis, visualization, and data pipeline capabilities.


Considering these factors, Snowflake emerges as a strong choice.

Between the two cloud data platforms Snowflake & DataBricks, which one do you prefer? Please explain why in the comments.

At Canal Barge we have several groups collaborating on this:
1) We have a Cybersecurity Core Team that reviews the evolving situation and creates acceptable use policies and guidelines.
2) We have an internal communications group that produces well-formatted, well-worded guidance for employees.
3) We have a forward-leaning early adopters group that is tasked with developing best practices and use cases for these tools, which we can then communicate to others.

We overcame initial concerns about our internal information becoming part of training for other users of the same AI tools.   We saw that the enterprise versions of both Microsoft and OpenAI ChatGPT provide clear legal statements that they protect our prompt content from ending up in the training for other customers' use.

And our acceptable-use policy for employees provides some simple but hopefully clear guidance about not putting critical data into prompts, especially of other tools, not ever putting PII into prompts, and being skeptical about results as they may include hallucinations, and hence should not become parts of internal or external communications without the appropriate review by authorized leaders.

I’m not sure this fits the entire requested application, but as it relates to Copilot and Microsoft 365, I’d suggest you consider NuliaWorks by Nulia (<a href="https://nulia.com/?ref=pulseqa">https://nulia.com/</a>), this is a company to watch. See my Forbes comment, here: “I recommend Nulia Works, which offers training and certifications tightly integrated with Microsoft 365. Its learning platform is intuitive, easy to use and free when you subscribe to certain Microsoft 365 solutions through Rapid Scale. Additionally, it’s listed as a certificate issuer on LinkedIn. - <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2024/02/20/top-tech-learning-resources-for-both-pros-and-laypeople/?ref=pulseqa">https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2024/02/20/top-tech-learning-resources-for-both-pros-and-laypeople/</a>“ Nulia Works is an education/learning platform with new functionality coming soon to help with Copilot.

Depends upon organisation structure and executive mandate/buy-in.

Typically, HR is involved in L&D activities for AI depending upon needs and user levels across business (including IT). HR works with external learning partners (for MS, AWS, Google etc.) and also use online learning platforms (such as Udemy etc.) to develop training plans and execute it. Many organisations have taken "train the trainer"  approach, and formed internal experts group to educate/train people internally.

IT also plays a key role in terms of defining rudimentary framework including policies, awareness sessions, experimentation (use case based), adoption and deployment of AI solutions (tools) and providing support services.

The major challenge organisation faces is lack of skills to use / implement AI, and it is not just IT, but collaboration with business, HR, Legal, Security, Data is equally important to drive such AI initiatives.

Develop Responsible AI guidelines. Create governance strategy and governance board (cross-function) with accountability. Align business and technology groups. Put the tools in employee hands and empower them to be creative to better understand how the technology works in practice. HR/Learning teams create and deliver standardised learning paths (paths vs one-offs) on the technology and the use of the tooling, acceptable use guidelines etc. Engineering/product teams part of the content creation and delivery. Provide opportunities for power users to step up and lead, help with ideation on new capabilities, provide feedback loops back into product/engineering. Use competitions/gamification to drive user adoption and experimentation. We have found the challenge is not so much a technology usage/learning issue, more a cultural issue for people to change their ways of working to adopt.

We have broadly rolled out four different tracks for all our employees 


1. AI Fundamentals
- AI Foundations
- AI Ethics
- AI for All and the AI Lenovo Services Group Point of View


2. AI Expertise
- Reimagining Work with Generative AI
- Harnessing Generative AI for Business Transformation
- Generative AI and its Impact to Everyday Business
- Unlocking Business Solutions with AI-Powered A


3. AI in Practice
- Understanding the AI Landscape for Developers
- AI Models
- AI Apprentice to AI Arch


4. AI for leaders
- Lenovo - Managing in the AI Era
- Leading an AI Transformation
- Human Skills to Sustain an AI Transformation

I'm curious what are companies doing with regards to educating and training their organizations on AI (the "what", the tools, the how to use those tools/create good prompts, etc.), and also who is taking the lead efforts on driving the training (e.g. is it product development, IT, corp comms, or other functional areas)?

First we established acceptable usage guidelines. We then deployed private instances across Azure, GCP and AWS (to give our staff a broad range of options). Additionally we've rolled out MS Copilot to a small group and we hold bi-weekly catch-up on their experiences so as we roll this out to the larger team, we have a built-in experience guide. This is all being driven from my technology group.

I'm curious what are companies doing with regards to educating and training their organizations on AI (the "what", the tools, the how to use those tools/create good prompts, etc.), and also who is taking the lead efforts on driving the training (e.g. is it product development, IT, corp comms, or other functional areas)?

Think about what they care about. Security, availability, automated compliance, a slider for cost via increasingly managed services, all of these are of paramount importance to the cio. Having a concrete plan and architecture that utilizes aws to promote specific capabilities and design choices is always the way forward.

Most mature platform with the most flexibility, availability of highly qualified staff plus always available AWS support staff to help you with anything you need. If you want to move to the cloud it would be hard to go wrong.

Compare with the other top 2 cloud providers (Azure and Google Cloud) in following categories, applied to your particular use-case:


- Establishment
- Availability zones
- Market shares
- Services
- Estimated Costs

Security, Functional capability, Scale, Easy of use, Quality of Support, Ease of training &amp; onboarding new people, Availability of Talent, Integration with Enterprise network and systems, Professional services support, Comparative cost advantage, Availability of multi zone and multi regions, and Many more are the possible aspects where AWS can differentiate itself from the competition.

The most mature cloud provider, with the highest market share and the highest amount of services.

Moreover its the most innovative cloud compute provider, with new services and functions released (almost daily!) to accommodate to any present and future needs.

The most important thing is their strategy - they want to help you get what you need and pay as little as possible. They actually help you reduce your cloud costs and optimize them.

I would recommend AWS for the following reasons: 
- Scalability &amp; Elasticity 
- Easy to use UI
- Cost-Effectiveness 
- Multiple layers of data surveillance
- Reliability of service 
- High-Performance Computing
Overall security, overhead hardware/staffing costs, and the breadth of services alone are worth going with AWS.

I'd pitch AWS from an information security point of view -- particularly for an SMB or medium sized organization.  The rationale would be:


AWS (using AWS for IaaS, PaaS and SaaS etc) can provide far better security for infrastructure, platforms, services and servers for application software and storage than an SMB or medium sized organization because:
* AWS has a huge customer base and can afford to high very expensive specialized security staff and leverage it across a large number of customers (tenants) -- as AWS has an economy of scale most businesses could ever achieve (though not a similar cloud provider such as Microsoft Azure).
* AWS is continually finding, fixing and improving their  IaaS, PaaS and SaaS offerings on a much more timely basis than most organizations -- and, indeed, has a release schedule unmatched by most software vendors (though not a similar cloud provider such as Microsoft Azure)
* AWS can provide redundancy (via multiple regions both domestic and worldwide), storage, backup, monitoring and support -- based on what you want to pay for. (Azure same)
* AWS can provide a ranges of disaster recovery options which would be very difficult and expensive for most SMBs and medium size businesses to set up and run on their own. (Azure same)
* AWS is very clear with customers about what is there responsibility (in security, compliance, disaster recovery / business continuity, etc) depending on what services the customer selects and pays for.

AWS is a well know, reliable, secure cloud platform. It is also the leader, and they provide all related tools and services to help us serve our needs and our clients. Their main competitor is Microsoft Azure, ensuring that there is a healthy motivation to offer the best services.

Security, Functional capability, Scale, Easy of use, Quality of Support, Ease of training &amp; onboarding new people, Availability of Talent, Integration with Enterprise network and systems, Professional services support, Comparative cost advantage, Availability of multi zone and multi regions, and Many more are the possible aspects where AWS can differentiate itself from the competition.   

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