New Technology: The Projected Total Economic Impact™ Of The Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform

Solution Integration And Scaling Efficiencies

Evidence and data. The interviewees and survey respondents shared that transitioning to the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform improved the efficiency of their organizations’ data analytics solution integration and scaling work.

Regarding integration, the interviewees consistently mentioned that Azure’s cloud-based connectors were key to simplifying the establishment of integrations and accelerating data ingestion. For example, the platform architect from an energy firm stated: “Azure’s native connectors enable us to do data explorations and pipe data into our solutions much faster. They accelerate our ability to take things from an idea to really proving it out.” This interviewee shared that it used to take 15% to 20% of someone’s time if they were building a new integration between point solutions but that, with Azure, this has been reduced to “almost no time at all.”

The data and analytics architect from a financial services firm noted: “When we needed to ingest a new data source into our legacy data warehouse, it was much harder to achieve. Now, it’s very easy to use Azure’s connections to integrate and orchestrate our solutions. It’s a much more unified experience.” This interviewee also shared that their organization reduced its integration time from two months per quarter for two or three IT professionals down to a couple of days.

Survey respondents said they expect that leveraging the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform would reduce the cost of integrating data and analytics solutions by:

• 46% at the 75th percentile.

• 33% at the 50th percentile.

• 23% at the 25th percentile.

The interviewees also noted that moving to the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform had a positive impact on the scaling of their organizations’ data and analytics infrastructures. For example, the platform architect from the energy industry shared that before utilizing the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform, it would take up to one month to scale data and analytics infrastructure when needed. One-quarter of this time was spent actually completing the scaling work and three-quarters of this time was spent just waiting to procure the necessary infrastructure. The same interviewee said that with the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform, scaling takes only a few hours.

Modeling and assumptions. For the composite organization, Forrester assumes:

• 25 IT professionals work on data integrations and scaling.

• These professionals spend 60% of their time doing integration work.

• the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform improves the efficiency of this work between 23% (low) and 46% (high).

• the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform helps these professionals avoid between 240 and 480 hours of time they would previously have spent on scaling on-premises infrastructure for data and analytics work.

• The composite achieves 50% of the benefits in Year 1, with 100% of the benefit accruing in Years 2 and 3.

Results. This yields a three-year projected PV ranging from $1.6 million (low) to $3.1 million (high).

Improved Productivity Of Data And Analytics Work

Evidence and data. The interviewees and survey respondents said investing in the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform would have a positive impact on the efficiency of data and analytics work and that it would benefit both data professionals and the broader employee base.

They said part of this benefit is attributable to the accelerated integrations and scaling provided by uniting data and analytics work on Azure solutions. For example, the platform architect from the energy industry stated: “The Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform would also improve the productivity of our data professionals because workload scaling becomes nearly instantaneous. Access to data becomes faster, as does the ability to deploy to test and production environments.”

The Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform also enables the establishment of templatized internal data products, which enables more efficient data access while reducing data sprawl. The same interviewee said: “People used to take data, copy it from its source system, and do their own analysis. The Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform enables us to have produced data products at the ready. These are sanctioned and viable, letting users access the same sets of data from the same place and run analyses. It also improves trust in our data.”

The data and analytics domain manager from a financial services firm concurred, saying: “For payments, we used to have a team building their own repository for data analysis, but now this is in a global platform. The team no longer needs to maintain their own repository. They can just be a producer for the global repository.” This interviewee estimated that improved access to global repositories helped to improve their organization’s data science productivity by as much as five times. They also estimated that the efficiency of data professionals improved by 30% for data scientists and 10% for data analysts.

Importantly, these benefits have a knock-on effect to the wider employee base. For example, the director of analytics from the healthcare industry noted that their organization was able to significantly improve the delivery of data to end users by between 6 to 7 hours. They said: “All of our practitioners will monitor the data. But, if they can only see yesterday’s data in the late afternoon, you’ve lost a lot of hours in the day. Sometimes, a patient will even be discharged. So, we would have to follow up with them for additional care after the data comes in.”

The data and analytics architect from a financial services firm concurred, saying: “The Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform allows us to reduce end-user wait times for data because it gets us out of central gatekeeping. We are saving 15 to 20 people waiting around for results on multiple requests monthly.” The data and analytics domain manager from another financial services firm similarly estimated that whole teams previously sometimes waited two weeks for data requests, and now they receive answers in just a few days — if not hours.

Survey respondents estimated that the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform would improve the productivity of data and analytics work by:

• 60% at the 75th percentile.

• 50% at the 50th percentile.

• 40% at the 25th percentile.

They also estimated that it would improve the productivity of the broader employee base by:

• 25% at the 75th percentile.
• 20% at the 50th percentile.
• 15% at the 25th percentile.

Both interviewees and survey respondents estimated that the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform would further enhance productivity of both data professionals and the broader employee base by improving the development and adoption of AI and automation at their organizations.

For example, the director of data platforms from a professional services organization noted that their firm used the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform to establish optical character recognition for automated form reading. First, they noted that by utilizing a unified Azure-based platform, their organization was able to move from building new APIs for automation at the rate of about one per year to a rate of approximately one per month. Second, they said their organization used one particular API for automated form reading, and that given the number of forms the firm received annually, using the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform enabled the company to reduce a six-to nine-month processing time for any given form down to three days.

The director of analytics from the healthcare industry noted that their organization was able to use the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform to develop and deploy bots to prevent employees from repeating workstreams. For example, they said one hospital’s systems required the same data to be recorded five to six times in different locations. By deploying automated bots, it was able to prevent this repetitive work and have data recorded across all systems in parallel.

Survey respondents estimated that improved adoption of AI and automation would improve employees’ productivity by:

• 62% at the 75th percentile.

• 30% at the 50th percentile.

• 21% at the 25th percentile.

Modeling and assumptions. For the composite organization, Forrester assumes:

• 150 data professionals (e.g., data scientists and data analysts) improve their productivity by between 30% (low) and 50% (high) at an average fully burdened annual rate of $200,000 each

• An average of five employees wait for a single data request 600 times per year for an average of two weeks (80 hours) per request.

• The Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform improves these wait times between 38% (low) and 56% (high).

• The fully burdened hourly rate for a general employee is $35.

• The composite recaptures productivity at a rate of 50% because not all employees are fully impacted by unproductivity and not all of them use their newly freed time productively.

• 50% of the benefits accrue in Year 1, with 100% accruing in Years 2 and 3.

Results. This yields a three-year projected PV ranging from $12.4 million (low) to $20 million (high).

Improved Efficiencies Of Data Security, Governance, And Compliance

Evidence and data. Interviewees and survey respondents said that in addition to making data professionals and the broader employee base more productive, investing in the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform would have a positive efficiency impact on data security, governance, and compliance work.

For example, the platform architect from the energy industry said: “Security work would definitely improve. Because it’s a smaller, more contained footprint to manage than point solutions, our security teams could deliver on security posture more cheaply and faster.”

The data and analytics domain manager from a financial services firm indicated that both data governance and data governance work would improve thanks to Microsoft’s better tools. They shared: “The Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform has better monitoring and more possibilities [than competing solutions]. Our teams can now tackle security and governance end-to-end, with less handover compared to our prior on-premises environment. Patching has become far less complex and is done more and more by DevOps, freeing our security teams to focus more and even specialize.”

The director of data platforms from the professional services firm similarly said: “[The Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform’s inclusion of Microsoft Purview means that] we can now scan and see data models in one shot. We’ve never had this level of visibility before, and it means the data business is not a black box to the developer.”

The data and analytics architect from a financial services firm also noted that Purview could enable a reduction in repeat work. They said: “We hope to get a lot more use out of existing artifacts with Purview. The ability to jump on existing data sets and analyses can reduce having to go through governance workflows over and over again, reducing days or weeks of wait time each time we want to leverage these artifacts.”

The same interviewee also said Purview has the ability to reduce the burden on audit and compliance work. They said: “Having an overview of data assets, their ownership, descriptions, and criticality levels will benefit the organization from multiple angles. On compliance, specifically, by providing an auditor with a working solution to prove that we track and classify data assets appropriately, we can save up to 50% of the current time devoted to these audits.”

Modeling and assumptions. For the composite organization, Forrester assumes:

• 20 security professionals save between 10% (low) and 15% (high) of their time managing solutions, security posture, and security threats at a fully burdened annual rate of $180,000 each.
• 10 IT professionals work on data governance and compliance, saving between 19% (low) and 70% (high) on the former and between 15% (low) and 30% (high) on the latter at a fully burdened annual rate of $120,000 each.
• 50% of benefits accrue in Year 1, with 100% accruing in Years 2 and 3.

Results. This yields a three-year projected PV ranging from $1.6 million (low) to $3.5 million (high).

Reduced Cost Of Prior Solution And Vendor Management

Evidence and data. Interviewees and survey respondents said they expect their organizations to save on the costs of their on-premises data and analytics infrastructures, its management, and the management of its vendors via decommissioning once they switched to the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform on Azure.

For example, the director of data platforms from the professional services firm stated: “Once we fully adopt the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform, it will be much easier to manage the same amount of data and analytics or even more with less dedicated resources. I’d expect this to reduce between 30% and 40% — no sweat.”

The data and analytics architect from a financial services firms said, “I expect to see savings of about 50% of resources dedicated to managing that infrastructure once we move over to the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform fully.”

The director of data platforms also noted they also expect their organization to save on vendor management as well by moving away from point solutions and unifying data and analytics on Azure with the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform. They said: “We currently meet with 15 to 20 vendors. Over time, that would reduce to three or four total once we’re fully on the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform. This would mean months of discussion completely gone.”

Modeling and assumptions. For the composite organization, Forrester assumes:

• 80 IT professionals manage the prior on-premises infrastructure for data and analytics at a fully burdened annual rate of $180,000 each.

• The Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform improves this by between 30% and 50% once the composite fully decommissions its legacy infrastructure.

• The decommissioned solutions cost a total of between $775,000 and $1.75 million outside of management costs.

• Decommissioning happens at a rate of one-third each year, achieving 100% decommissioning by Year 3.

Results. This yields a three-year projected PV ranging from $5.8 million (low) to $10.5 million (high).

Reduced Outages

Evidence and data. Interviewees and survey respondents said that by transitioning their organizations’ data and analytics infrastructures to Azure rather than on-premises, they expect to reduce the number of outages that impact this work. For example, the director of analytics from the healthcare industry noted that in their organization’s on-premises environment, it experienced frequent outages of up to one or two every month. These outages would last for days at a time and impacted the ability of the organization to run data and analytics workloads, which delayed important work. The interviewees and survey respondents noted that any outages on Azure last only minutes if they occur at all.

Modeling and assumptions. For the composite organization, Forrester assumes:

• 12 outages occur annually on premises.

• Each outage costs approximately $125,000.

• Azure reduces outages by between 90% (low) and 99% (high).

Results. This yields a three-year projected PV ranging from $3.4 million (low) to $3.7 million (high).

Improved Income From Better Customer Analytics

Evidence and data. Lastly, the interviewees and survey respondents noted that deploying the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform could have a positive impact on revenues and, therefore, profit. At the simplest level, unifying on a single cloud-based platform could enable organizations to have better conversations about data and customer analytics, which would improve their abilities to attract and retain customers. For example, the director of data platforms from the professional services organization said: “We’re having really active discussion surrounding customer analytics that we couldn’t even have two years back. We’re expecting to achieve a 5 percentage point improvement to retention once we’re able to more fully deploy the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform.”

The data and analytics domain manager at a financial services organization noted that investing in the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform could improve both cross-selling and retention. They said: “The Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform will help us discover patterns of behavior and run predictive analytics on our customer base, improving our ability to cross-sell and prevent churn. By getting attractive products in front of the right customer faster than before, we’ve already received an €80 million return on our investment in the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform products last year, and [we] are expecting about €20 million more from a separate business line as well.”

The director of data platforms from the professional services firm also noted that the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform enabled their organization to launch a new business line. They said: “Once we knew more about our customers, we could expand from seasonal to yearlong engagements with them. We actually recently spun up a new, nonseasonal financial product for our customer base. The Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform solutions we currently use have helped us to reduce the cost and timeline for launching this, with bottlenecks reduced from three months down to 3 minutes.”

Modeling and assumptions. For the composite organization, Forrester assumes:

• The composite’s annual revenues are $36 billion.

• Using the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform improves the composite’s revenue between 0% and 2%.

• The composite has a 5% profit margin.

• 5% of the benefit is attributable to the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform alone, as opposed to human ingenuity and skill.

• 50% of the benefit is achieved in Year 1, with 100% accruing in Years 2 and 3.

Results. This yields a three-year projected PV ranging from $1.1 million (low) to $2.9 million (high).

Unquantified Benefits

Interviewees mentioned the following additional benefits that their organizations experienced but were not able to quantify:

• Partner ecosystem. The interviewees noted that their organizations benefitted from Microsoft’s efforts to build a broad partner ecosystem in the data and analytics space. For example, the director of analytics from the healthcare industry said: “Microsoft has a great partner ecosystem. They’re attacking all the verticals, providing tooling, and supporting capabilities across the industry.” The director of data platforms from the professional services firm said: “Azure’s broad partner ecosystem enables us to focus on our needs while Azure does the background work to vet third-party vendors. This really helps build our internal ecosystem quickly.”

• Reduced risk of a breach. Interviewees said the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform increases efficiency for security professionals in both posture and threat management and that it also enables an unquantified reduction in the risk of a material security breach. For example, the director of data platforms from the professional services firm said: “We have almost 80,000 seasonal workers join us each year, [and] the [onboarding] and off-boarding of which can get quite clumsy, especially regarding security on- premises. With the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform, all of this is much easier.”

  The data and analytics architect from a financial services firm said: “We sit at the intersection of health and finance, so security is a key concern for us. To get the level of security we have with the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform would require significantly more work on-premises.”

• Improved customer service. The director of analytics from the healthcare industry noted that the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform enabled their organization to provide better service to its patients. They said: “By looking at the data of how we spend our time, we’ve been able to identify important trends not only about productivity, but also about safety. Our practitioners now get to spend more time with patients as we’ve optimized their work, and we’ve won the Florence Nightingale Award for excellence in healthcare statistics, which would have never happened without the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform.”

• Easier to find and train talent. The director of data platforms for the professional services firm shared: “With the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform, our tech stack has become much easier. No one is stuck using one single language to access any given solution. This allows teams to share talent, exposing our resources to more technologies, keeping work interesting, and making it much easier to not only find but also retain talent.”

• Better employee experience. Regarding employee experience, the director of analytics from the healthcare firm said: “Life is so much better. We’re no longer firefighting everything. The team has quiet time. They have the headspace to focus on our real needs and do more analysis.”

• Artificial intelligence and machine learning. The interviewees and survey respondents also said their organizations get unquantifiable benefits out of the adoption of AI and ML internally. For example, the director of data platforms from the professional services firm shared: “In addition to our optical character recognition API, we’ve been able to add an API that automates the classification of documents and titles them appropriately. This removes the work from our customers to classify each document they upload, improving their experience. It also improves organization on our end, reducing the time and cost to customer of completing their paperwork.”

  The director of analytics from the healthcare firm shared: “We’re running a number of AI experiments. We’re working with natural-language processing to look through clinical notes and identify high-risk patients. We’re doing process mining to better understand patient flow and identify bottlenecks where patients are getting lost in the system, and [we’re] also working with predictive analytics at the population level to identify factors contributing to large-scale mental health events.”

• Support. Lastly, interviewees said Microsoft’s support is another unquantified benefit of using the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform. The platform architect from the energy firm said: “Microsoft listens and understands market conditions. They know where we are facing the most challenges. They’ve been willing to work with us to understand gaps in their offerings and close these. We don’t have this great of an experience with many vendors.”

Flexibility

The value of flexibility is unique to each customer. There are multiple scenarios in which a customer might implement the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform and later realize additional uses and business opportunities, including:

• Open standards. Interviewees said Microsoft’s reliance on open standards enabled their organizations to remain flexible in their data and analytics operations. For example, the platform architect from the energy firm noted: “We don’t want to lock any of our teams into black-box solutions. If we need to go outside of Microsoft, we can because they’ve established an open, plug-and-play ecosystem that enables this flexibility.”

  The director of data platforms from the professional services firm said: “We haven’t had any need to go outside the Microsoft ecosystem yet. But knowing that the option is there with Microsoft’s use of open standards is attractive if we do ever have to.”

• Better decision-making. The director of data platforms from the professional services firm noted: “I strongly believe the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform has enabled us to make better decisions. With lower data complexity, we have much higher-quality discussions about our data and analytics results. We no longer have lengthy discussions about whose data is right and whose is wrong because we’re all looking at the same thing.”

• Agile project management. The interviewees also noted the ability to adopt agile processes internally thanks to the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform. For example, the platform architect from the energy firm said: “The Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform has helped us remove centralized dependencies on centralized teams. We now have a self-service platform [and] a thin layer on top of Azure services to provide governance and self-service capabilities.”

  The director of data platforms from the professional services firm added: “We’ve changed the structure of our teams entirely thanks to the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform. We now work in squads of eight to 10 people that are so well-oiled they just handle all tasks themselves. We move much faster now.”

Flexibility would also be quantified when evaluated as part of a specific project (described in more detail in Appendix A.)