Silos

Here’s a new case study about a major success created from removing information silos. And it’s from of all places, Microsoft Security!

Historically, Microsoft Security was an oxymoron.   Bill Gates once actually called a moratorium on writing new code for a month, demanding his people stop and fix the bugs in software they had already built.

Today, Microsoft Security has changed 180 degrees.   Once the security industry’s pariah, Microsoft is now considered “best in class”, even over Apple, long the industry leader. Many consider them to have nearly a two-year lead on Apple.   What changed?

People.

Microsoft is changing the way their people work.   In security, they are removing silos between departments. Security engineers were spread across various departments and often didn’t collaborate, so as problems were encountered there was little coordination of effort.

This is just out from the Nick Wingfield of the San Francisco office of The New York Times:

“Just this week all of Microsoft’s security managers are moving into the same physical space after being scattered around the company’s campus here in this Seattle suburb (Redmond). On a recent tour of the new facility that Microsoft calls its Cyber Security Defense Operations Center, workers were busy outfitting walls with large television sets that will display data about malware and other threats.

‘To me, that speaks profoundly to the importance of connecting people’ across the company, said Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president and chief legal officer. ‘They might still sit in different organizations, but they sit together, and they work together. We’re connecting the information systems so that people see the complete picture and not just information silos.‘

Plenty of bugs are still being discovered in Microsoft’s code. But fears about the security of Microsoft’s programs have gradually abated. In a couple of recent widespread attacks, hackers exploited weaknesses in Adobe and the Java programming platform, not Microsoft software.”

 

Those of us in small business often observe that large companies like Microsoft grow they often succumb to ‘big company disease’ and lose their edge. Silos are a common symptom of this.

Talk to us today about ensuring your information technology is not creating silos in your business!