In the era of the data economy, enterprises are more eager to radiate more vitality than ever before. This is why, in recent years, a large number of companies have started digital transformation strategies. However, the road to transformation is not a smooth one. There are many great companies that have also suffered a lot in the process of digital transformation.
"The ideal is very full, the reality is very skinny", more and more enterprises are finding that there will be many unexpected difficulties and challenges in the digital transformation. In-depth understanding of the reasons can be summarized as follows:
❈New technologies such as cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things have proliferated, and new technologies have brought powerful conditions to promote digital transformation. However, many companies still have limited awareness, understanding and mastery of new technologies;
The digitization of enterprise business means that business models and user experience will be closely integrated with new technologies, but the enterprise's past technical experience cannot meet the needs of such integration;
Lack of sufficient technical talent to navigate new technologies and meet digital transformation;
In the face of these common challenges in the digital transformation of enterprises, Microsoft has a team known as the "Marine Corps"---Microsoft Greater China Innovation Technology Cooperation Division (Microsoft CSE) . Customer communication ability and new technology ability, the main job is to help users understand and master new technology, at the same time eliminate the gap between enterprise business and new technology, promote the integration of business and technology, and promote the digital transformation of enterprises.
Focus on what customers need most
We are entering an era of technology superposition and integration. Take the current rapidly emerging IoT applications as an example, that is, integrating edge computing, cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, communication technology and other technologies, built on a number of new technologies Convergence-based new services and new applications place extremely high demands on users' learning ability, and at the same time make enterprises more cautious and even overwhelmed in technology selection.
"In the era of cloud computing, users' technology selection is a more costly decision. Cloud computing technologies such as containers and microservices may affect the architecture and organizational structure of users' products and services. Customers' technology selection decisions will be more Be cautious, our team is to help users solve these worries." said Yan Fei, general manager of Microsoft Greater China Innovation Technology Cooperation Division.
According to Microsoft CSE, its expert team mainly focuses on the five technical fields of ABCDE, namely: artificial intelligence (AI), big data (Bigdata), cloud computing (Cloud), digital interaction (mixed reality) and Internet of Things (Connect Everything) , These five technical fields have a lot of demands in the current Chinese market.
To this end, the Microsoft CSE team plays the role of a new technology evangelist to some extent. In addition to the regular third-party technical community activities, the CSE team also focuses on increasing direct communication with customers, and communicates with customers by means of OpenHack, one-on-one Hack, etc., analyzes the challenges they face, and provides guidance to customers. and related information. Yan Fei said: "In this way, our experts have communicated and answered customers' various questions about new technologies well, and Microsoft experts have played the role of coaches to help everyone reduce the use of New technologies.” According to Yan Fei, this kind of communication will become the norm at Microsoft, and there will be a series of OpenHack communication activities including artificial intelligence and deep learning in the future.
In fact, this kind of in-depth communication tests the communication skills of Microsoft CSE technical experts. Whether it is technical presentations or various forms of Hack, they can communicate well with customers in a common language and provide valuable suggestions and specific guidance. This is what customers need most. In addition to communication skills, another down-to-earth ability of the CSE expert team is the on-site coding ability, which solves the problems of using new technologies in business scenarios for customers on the spot. "Our team only intervenes when a customer encounters a problem in a specific business scenario. Through in-depth communication with the customer about the scenario requirements, and then on-site coding until the problem is solved. This ability of the CSE team is very popular with users." Yan Fei said Introduce the technical positioning of its expert team.
It is commendable that the Microsoft CSE team pays great attention to the solution to the problems encountered in specific business scenarios among industry customers. Yan Fei introduced that they will sort out some representative scenarios of the industry, "We need to ensure that the problem is solved in this way. Part of the code has demonstration and representative significance for more industry customers."
Yan Fei also repeatedly emphasized that the CSE team is a fully open and cooperative team. Whether it is for Microsoft's internal pre-sales, sales, or Microsoft's system integrators and independent software development partners, CSE will have full cooperation and cooperation, so that everyone Make better use of Microsoft's technology to serve good customers.
Envision Energy: The Best Reflection of the Value of Microsoft CSE Experts
The Microsoft CSE expert team has been favored by more and more customers in the Chinese market. Among these customers, Envision Energy is a typical customer. As a leading energy Internet technology service provider, Envision Energy's business mainly focuses on the research and development and sales of smart wind turbines, smart wind farm software services, energy Internet technology services, and overall smart city solutions. Computing, big data, artificial intelligence and other technologies are used to promote the intelligent transformation of the traditional energy field and better serve global customers.
Envision Energy itself has deep IT accumulation and strong technical capabilities. Many business structures are developed by itself. However, in the process of enterprise digital transformation, Envision Energy hopes to build a PaaS+SaaS platform in the wind power industry and open its capabilities to peers. industry customers. Liu Shijun, a Microsoft CSE expert, said: "Envision Energy is a typical customer with very complex needs. Its business involves many technologies such as Internet of Things technology, machine learning, visual display, microservices, etc. There are many requirements for business integration on the cloud, but each point requires a lot of technical investment to deepen.”
To this end, the Microsoft CSE team dispatched IoT experts, BI visualization experts, machine learning experts and Envision Energy to discuss the combination of demand points and Microsoft technology. The ability of machine learning.” Liu Shijun said that Envision Energy hopes to have the ability of machine learning, and then quickly provide this ability to its customers, so that these customers can also build their own analysis capabilities.
Subsequently, Microsoft and Envision Energy determined the cooperation point of Azure Machine Learning Studio in response to this situation. Using Microsoft's SaaS-layer machine learning interactive service, data scientists can quickly complete a complete algorithm model by simply dragging and dropping modules on the web page. build, train and publish. "Microsoft has cooperated with Envision Energy to integrate Azure Machine Learning Studio into EnOS of Envision Energy. In addition to using the already packaged algorithms, Envision Energy's customers can also use this service to quickly build their own algorithms," Liu Shijun added.
In Liu Shijun's view, this kind of detailed communication for business scenarios can not only solve problems more quickly and effectively, but also make the cooperation between the two teams more sincere. "As a small example, in the discussion of Machine Learning, An engineer from Envision Energy conducted a detailed discussion on the integration of Hadoop and Microsoft services. Microsoft experts provided them with two solutions, and conducted architectural design, technical analysis, and even one-to-one on the feasibility of different technical solutions. hack."
"The most important thing is to really solve the problems in the customer's business scenario." Liu Shijun finally said.
postscriptIn today's digital transformation of enterprises, the integration of business and new technologies, as well as changes in business models, will create many unknown and uncertain difficulties and challenges, which often require close communication between enterprises and technology service providers to jointly explore and solve them. Therefore, in the future cloud computing market, companies that communicate well with customers' business scenarios and solve the integration of technology and business will inevitably be welcomed by customers. This will test not only technical ability, but also cooperative attitude towards users. From these aspects, the Microsoft CSE team has undoubtedly set the benchmark.