Intrapreneurship – What to build?

I realized after my first post that there was another topic to cover – what to build in the first place! I have a framework for this that has served me well, so you might find it useful too! I chose three examples I was directly involved in to illustrate the approach: Exchange Unified Messaging, Office 365, and Microsoft Teams Rooms Managed Services.

My framework considers three components: the business landscape, the technical landscape, and the <insert your company name> overlay. Since I work for Microsoft, I think of it in three overlapping circles, like this:

The opportunities lie in the evolutions happening in the business landscape, the technical landscape or both; however, these changes won’t help you unless you leverage the strengths of your particular company. Great intrapreneurship exists at the intersection of these three circles.

I realized in writing, that the examples I use below mirror a progression of how I believe the delivery of productivity applications has shifted over the years. The three shifts are:

1. Datacenter consolidation (circa 2000)
2. Cloud management of productivity applications (circa 2010)
3. Cloud management of the edge (now!) - which is a continued evolution #2 into managing the operations of remote endpoints

Datacenter consolidation: Exchange Unified Messaging: In 2001 if you wanted voicemail in your inbox it was provided by a dedicate unified messaging server that was connected to your PBX (private branch exchange) through a phone line.

1. Business landscape: Growth in email. If you wanted unified messaging, you had to separately license and manage unified messaging servers.
2. Technical landscape: Voice over IP (VOIP) emerging, and VOIP gateways showing up on the market. Email server consolidation into centralized data centers.
3. Microsoft overlay: As the leader in email, voicemail was a natural extension to our core business, and we could charge extra for it.

We realized we could put VOIP gateways on the edge, convert the calls to IP and send them over the network to a centralized Exchange server that would do the voicemail processing. No new servers, lower management cost. We created partnerships with a set of VOIP gateway providers and pretty soon we had a compelling unified messaging business that was a natural extension to our email business.

Cloud management of productivity applications: Office 365 (originally BPOS- Business Productivity Online Services)

This was a big one.

1. Business landscape: Emergence of new cloud services for productivity. Customer fatigue and inefficiency in running server operations.
2. Technical landscape: Improved internet connectivity; continued datacenter consolidation, emerging hosted services.
3. Microsoft Overlay: Key market position in on-premises productivity applications and servers. 

In 2006 I did the initial set of customer interviews for Business Productivity Online Services. A lot of customers were planning to move from Notes to Exchange, and frankly, they didn’t want to have to learn how to run a brand new email server infrastructure – been there, done that! They were open to the concept of enterprise services run from the cloud. Our plan for hosted email expanded to include documents, and communications (Exchange, SharePoint and Lync). We created BPOS by gathering our server products together and adding operations tools, a multitenant directory, an authentication infrastructure, and a cloud administration experience.

From BPOS to Office 365 we shifted to a federation model for delivering the service. Each internal team - Exchange, SharePoint and Office Communication Server - was responsible for running their own service and our team connected them together through general administration, the cloud directory (MS Online Directory Services) and authentication services. This execution shift was critical and Microsoft specific. This is where knowing how your company works is so important. For Microsoft, we needed a model where the core engineering teams that owned the servers also owned the services. Without this they would never have been mainstreamed, embraced, and ultimately never have become the success they are today!

Another key differentiator for Microsoft was on-premise servers and rich Office clients. Having these assets as well as the on-premises servers meant that we could do a great job of the rich client and hybrid experience – far better than our competitors – and again, leveraging this strength, was a key part of our “overlay”.

Cloud management of the edge: Teams Meeting Rooms Managed Services

1. Business landscape: You’re living it! Facetiming your friends. The rapid emergence of video communications for personal and business use. Likely expansion of the hybrid workspace post COVID. High customer trust in 3rd party services to get work done.
2. Technical landscape: Emergence of cloud conferencing service providers. Proprietary room conferencing systems displaced by less expensive PC and Android based rooms systems. Greatly improved internet connectivity.
3. Microsoft Overlay: Strong asset in Microsoft Teams, deep enterprise strength in security and management. Trusted brand in services and the enterprise.

How acceptable will it be to walk into a conference room 6/9 months from now and see a telephone while the rest of the world is doing video? But for me, the key question is how will the room system be delivered? Will customers have the resources and skill set to expand rapidly with demand? Do customers want to gain the skill and expertise to manage these sophisticated, network connected, business critical, end points themselves?

If the price is right - and at cloud scale the price is usually right compared to what it costs to learn and do it yourself – doing something non-strategic to your core business often doesn’t make sense. Properly running a room system isn’t strategic, it’s a means to an end - you just want them to work and work reliably. It’s like those customers that had Lotus Notes and didn’t want to learn another email system all over again. Microsoft is well positioned for this opportunity because we know how to keep customers properly managed and secure and we know how to build great services!

The business opportunity I’m locked in on actually goes beyond conferencing or room systems. It is that we are seeing a third wave of managed services. A wave of managed services for the intelligent edge that focus on operations, management and security. Office 365 was a wave of managed services that moved your datacenter operations to Microsoft, but things that were hard to move got left behind. We sit here today with great network connectivity, customer trust in the cloud, and the ability to create services that can relieve the burden of managing the intelligent edge. This is what our managed services, both the Microsoft Teams Rooms Managed Service my team builds, and the Microsoft Managed Desktop Service my sister team builds for PCs are all about!

I hope the process above for uncovering intrapreneurship opportunities sparks some great ideas out there!