What’s your trust quotient?
Trust is a key differentiator for your business
In 2004, the founder of the first software company ever in the world, Bill Gates, said:
“Ten years out, in terms of actual hardware costs you can almost think of hardware as being free. I’m not saying it will be absolutely free but in terms of the power of the servers, the power of the network will not be a limiting factor.”
I vividly remember when Bill Gates made this statement. Even for a software engineer back then, the statement was bold.
Years have proven Bill’s vision. Hardware has become commodity.
In the pharmaceutical industry, a brand name drug becomes generic after some number of years. A similar thing has happened to hardware. It is now generic.
In 2007, Steve Jobs said how Apple views itself as a software company vs. a hardware company. For example, an iPod is a device with software on it, that is connected to the software on your computer, all stored in the cloud. Sure, it’s presented in a physical item, but at the end of the day, the software is what makes the product.
What we’re seeing now, is that software is becoming generic.
For example, most organisations have built their technology stacks on open source software. Tech stacks are a crucial part of developing web or mobile apps. These are the frameworks, languages, and software products everything is built on.
One can even build an entire cloud company with the open source software! Open source software is about sharing, collaborating and innovating. In open source, no one owns a project, but it is influenced by everyone. This keeps it transparent, inclusive, and collaborative. Of course, you must differentiate when to use open source and when to keep things confidential on propriety software.
What makes the difference in IT decisions?
One thing, Trust. It is the shortcut to success.
Trust is not something that can be bought at the supermarkets. You need to earn trust and earn it consistently. It’s about being transparent. Trust is the basis of all relationships. No trust, no relationship. It’s that simple.
Being There
Trust means being there. Being there for you. Being there with you.
Microsoft has consistently been around as an industry leader for decades. This is what makes Microsoft a trusted company and further a trusted partner to its customers.
Within Microsoft, it’s the services team that understands the customer’s objectives and bring a fresh perspective by challenging the status quo. Consisting of trusted advisors, it’s this team that ensures customers achieve their desired outcomes. They advocate for customers both internally and externally.
Microsoft Services is in 191 countries. They speak 46 languages. With 35,000 fully aligned global partners, and 22,000 top skilled employees worldwide, Microsoft Services is serving 95 percent of the global top fortune 500 companies now.
Security
Security is an important pillar of trust.
Microsoft invests more than $1B a year in security and employs more than 3500 security experts to protect your information.
Microsoft offers threat protection to its customers which is informed by trillions of signals across from 54 global Azure regions that we receive every day. These signals come from more than 1.2B devices scanned or more than 750M Azure user account authentications. This volume of data is unprecedented.
Compliance
Another important pillar of trust is compliance.
Azure has more than 50 compliance certifications specific to global regions and countries, including the US, the European Union, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, India, and China.
There are also 35 compliance offerings specific to the needs of key industries, including health, government, finance, education, manufacturing, and media. GDPR had huge effects in organizations in the way they store, process, and protect sensitive and personal data. We’ve built a resource centre to help organizations stay compliant.
It’s on paper
One last thing, trust here at Microsoft is not just on dry words, it’s on paper. Most of our offerings are backed by strong SLAs with financial consequences.
And we don’t just talk the talk, we walk the walk. We use the very same security and compliance offerings to protect our organization that we offer our customers. So, we know what works. And we’re continuously improving and updating them to ensure we all stay ahead of new threats, governance and compliance.
More than the hardware, or software, it’s the trust that will differentiate one to another, it will be the trust that will earn the customer’s businesses and most importantly, it’s the trust that will be shortcut to success. So, what’s your TQ?
Find out more
7 steps to a holistic security strategy
About the author
Volkan Civelek is a Cloud Solution Architect at Microsoft, focusing on advanced analytics and AI. He has been in the software engineering industry for almost 20 years. Prior to Microsoft he was working on scalable systems, big data, and cloud technologies at companies like Akamai and Equinix. He is trusted and passionate about making his customers successful.
