- [Narrator] It's lunch time, and this is Bard Anderson's lunch break. Here in Redmond, we're visited by some of the smartest people on the planet pretty much everyday. Every chance I get, I meet up with them for lunch. Today I finish talking with the CTO of Estee Lauder, a very smart and always fabulous Rhonda Vetere. So now let's take a look at your team itself. And, you now, the IT department. How has the morale gone now that you've moved so much to the cloud, how has that morale gone up? Do people say that their jobs are more impactful, or have they this, this fear that they have, well maybe my job gets eliminated? What's been that impact? - That's been an interesting transition. And really worked with a team on the mental model shift. Their mental model on growing and spring boarding into what we call the new technology world. The morale is up. At first you have what I call going the valley of despair. And then it goes back up, just like things in life. But as you lead and show them how things come more productive, how they're giving back, how they can free up their time, quite frankly, and work on more fun things. And not so fingers on the keyboard on operational issues. Their morale goes up. And we're proud of that. And there's a lot of rock stars that have developed out of that. - So that topic of staying relevant is really important. You know, during your career, you spent time at CompuServe and WorldCom and MCI. You've had a front row seat at companies who were at the pinnacle of driving different portions of the industry, and then kind of fell away, right? What can technology leaders learn from that? What did you take away from those experiences? - Being relevant and that you become obsolete overnight. And not realize it. No matter what field that you're in. Being in technology, you can be merged, acquisitions, everything happens. And things are coming at you from all angles and you need to be able to manage that change. So I took that as a learning experience, and stayed through all the different merges and acquisitions to be that constant denominator to drive that change in making the companies more relevant as the world changed. - I read an article where you listed your top ten list of business standards. And there were three of them that just like really hit home with me because I value these three as much as you do. One of them is what you called managerial courage. - Very good. - Recognize your team. And then know your metrics. - Yes. Recognize your team. So I'm always about it's the team. And recognizing them. It's celebrating success as most people forget to celebrate. - It can be little successes that you celebrate. That have a tremendous impact on the culture. - Absolutely. - Give me an example. You talk about leadership courage. - Leadership courage is the ability to step up and say the power of no in a nice way. I don't agree with this, this is what it means, we're doing the wrong thing, and even on a team and partners I look for that. Someone who has a challenging spirit that can tell you you're going down a wrong way. - All too often, people are afraid to say no. And most times, you know, who you're talking to, they just wanna know what the answer is, and no is okay. But it takes courage, and for many people, that's a courage that has to be developed. That's actually one of the interview questions that I asked when I'm interviewing senior leaders. Tell me about a time when you had to say no and were convicted that the right answer was no. And you knew it was gonna be a challenge to get the rest of the organization aligned. I'll tell you, if people cannot come back and give me an example of exactly when they've done that, they haven't had enough leadership time. They haven't had enough leadership experience. - Great point. That's great. - It has been a pleasure. - It's been a pleasure. Thank you. All right. Thank you. - Thank you so much. Bye. - [Brad] Next time on Brad Anderson's lunch break. Duckworth-Lewis. - The Duckworth-Lewis say, I can give a, it says one of the most illogical things to happen in that regard. Erstwhile, deployment architectures, you know are a thing of the past. You can't manage such explosion with that kind of a thing.
Wednesday, 23 October 2024
Brad Anderson's Lunch Break s7 e7 Mauricio Guerra, CISO, Dow Chemical
- [Narrator] It's lunchtime and this is Brad Anderson's lunch break. (playful music) Two of my favorite things about Microsoft are the smart people that constantly visit campus, and the great fleet of shuttles. Whenever I can, I try to take advantage of both of these things and I grab lunch with some of the tech industry's best and brightest. (playful music) Today I'm talking with Mauricio Guerra, the Chief Information Security Officer at Dow Chemical. (playful music) (greets in foreign language) - Hola, Brad. Nice to meet you. (speaks in foreign language) - [Brad] Dow Chemical, one of the biggest chemical companies in the world, you make plastic, you purify water, you're in agriculture, fifty four thousand employees, one hundred and twenty year old company, and you've got to keep it all secure and safe. So if someone is watching this and they've got a set of executives that really, you know, have some misunderstandings or just don't have the awareness of cyber security and cyber threats, what advice would you give them in, you know, an IT professional, in educating their managers or leaders? - The most effective way, but of course is the way that we don't want, is learning the hard way. - Yeah. - Is learning the hard way, after the fact, after a couple of incidents, but what is effective is bringing an external perspective. So I myself have a more positive, constructive way to do it. Inviting external, well established companies to present to the board of directors. - So we're gonna play a little game called this or that. And so I'm gonna give you two different things that I'm going to give you a description and you're gonna tell me which one of those matches the description. - [Mauricio] Okay. - [Brad] Okay. Now I want you to tell me if I'm describing a blind date or a proof of concept for some kind of a security offering. - Okay. - [Brad] First, you can't believe you let someone you trust talk you into this. - I would say my initial answer was both. - Yes. - I mean it can go either way. Cannot play for both. - Yeah. Perfect. That's exactly right. - Okay, more than a few times you've wondered, am I better of with familiar disappointments, rather than new adventures. - Oh I'll go for the second one. (laughing) The proof-of-concept. - That's what I thought too. You get stuck with the bill at the end. (laughing) - Okay, okay. Proof of concept for sure. Blind date very likely will be as well. (laughing) - [Brad] Yeah so one of these that you've mentioned that I thought was really interesting was you know, the move to the cloud, more and more mobile devices being used, what you're being asked to protect is expanding and it's going outside of the traditional confines of the perimeter that, you know, we've all used for security. Now, you know, Dow, big user of Office 365, big user of enterprise mobility and security, what kind of a role did you play as these decisions were being made to move to these cloud services? - [Mauricio] We understand the value of cloud, we have a vision that in two, three years eighty percent of our information will be.. - Eighty percent? - in the cloud, and we are moving aggressively into that direction. So the way we are approaching cloud, we said, okay, let's do it in an organized way, meaning that we will partner with enterprise class providers. - Yup. - That's kind of the first key topic, I mean, instead of going here and there, we pick few cloud suppliers and say, okay, we will partner with those. After that, we will look for industry certifications, making sure that cloud providers, like Microsoft, give us good certification, industry certifications, SOC reports, that helps us feeling more comfortable that our information is in good hands. After that we need partnership, that's the type of partnership that we have established with Microsoft, meaning that we have permanent dialogue, that you keep us updated on what you're doing, what is our new roadmap in the cloud, what is the roadmap in collaboration tools, what is the roadmap for digital transformation. Understanding that cloud needs to mature. We are in the early stages of cloud. The basics are there but there is more that needs to be done in the area of security. Directionally, I do believe, or we do believe at Dow, that's the way to go. And as a matter of fact, that's what the IT industry is going to be doing. - Everyone's gonna head there, it's just at what pace. - It's just when. (playful music) - [Brad] Next time on Brad Anderson's lunch break, - [Mauricio] Cyber security is not implementing a couple of firewalls here and this and that and that. It's making sure that from the executive level down the companies understand and properly manage their risk. (playful music)
Monday, 21 October 2024
Accessing the Visual Studio Subscriptions admin portal and setting up admins for volume licensing
- [Narrator] Accessing the Visual Studio Subscriptions Admin Portal and setting up admins for volume licensing agreements. Welcome to the Visual Studio Subscriptions Admin Portal. In this portal, admins can manage their organization's Visual Studio subscriptions. If you're the primary or notices contact for your organization's volume license agreement, you'll receive super admin access to the portal by default. When you receive your welcome email, it will indicate which email address to use to sign into the portal. (soft electronic music) Once you're signed in, select the Manage Admins tab. Here you'll see that you're a super admin, allowing you to control admin access to subscription management and agreement level preferences. As a super admin, you can add other admins to help with the assignment and management of your organization's Visual Studio subscriptions. You can assign them to a super admin role, like you, or just an admin role. Once you've set up your admins, they'll receive an email letting them know that they can access the portal and begin managing subscriptions. As a super admin, you can select the gear icon from the flyout panel to choose agreement level preferences, such as adding a contact email, setting default subscription levels, download settings, and more. Your selections will automatically populate for your admins when they're assigning subscriptions, making the assignment process more streamlined for them. If you wanna learn more about being an admin or super admin, visit our Visual Studio Subscriptions admin webpage at aka.ms/vs-admin, or contact support at aka.ms/VLSupport. (upbeat electronic music)