My View on IT and Business Efficiency
Let’s be honest: 2009 was a year like no other from a global, economic and change perspective. Capital markets have declined, spending is reduced and efficiency is paramount in every business. Information Technology (IT) departments in small, medium and large enterprise businesses are no different. Everyone has been affected and everyone is taking long and hard looks at every business process they have and every dollar that they spend. In years past, when growth and demand was strong, many responded by adding additional labor, additional processes and additional bureaucracy into their computing environments. This cannot and will not continue.
Going forward, we need to have our systems and our computing environments be not only more efficient, but also smarter in how we run our businesses. Business efficiency is about automation. It is about intelligence in decision making. It is also about expertise and trust. If every computing decision, every threat, every piece of malware and every user attack requires the user to understand everything, make the decision themselves and manually solve the problem…we will never improve our business productivity and efficiency. We must build and provide systems that make smart decisions for users, in an automated way and build the trust into the system that enable users to focus on their expertise and their business and not the computing environment.
The computing environment is a tool that enables productivity. This is what Microsoft and Forefront are all about. This is what we strive to achieve and we intend on providing the expertise and building the trust for you to achieve these goals. I am going to share some real inside examples of how Forefront and Microsoft change the game for information technology professionals around the world in the future. Stay tuned, I look forward to driving more on this theme from a technical perspective as we get this blog rolling.
David B. Cross
Product Unit Manager
David Cross is the Product Unit Manager of the Forefront TMG (Threat Management Gateway) organization focusing on security design and engineering in the ISD (Identity and Security Division) of Microsoft. He joined Microsoft in 1998 and has made significant technical and architectural contributions to Microsoft products such as Windows 2000/XP/Vista, Windows Server 2003/2008 and Exchange Server 2003. David spent his first two years as a senior consultant in Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS) prior to joining the Windows division as a Program Manager in the Windows Security team. David has held roles as Group Program Manager and Director within the Windows Security team since joining in September of 2000. In addition, David has been a contributing author on a number of whitepapers and Microsoft Press books regarding Microsoft security and PKI. Prior to joining Microsoft, he spent two years as a Project Manager and Senior Architect with the Microsoft Solution Provider/Partner community and five years active duty with the aviation electronic warfare community of the United States Navy. David has spoken at over 100 internal and industry conferences around the world including TechEd, RSA, ITForum, PKI Forum and NISSC. David holds a B.S. in Computer Information Systems as well as an MBA in Management Information Systems. David enjoys both reading and extensive leisure travel as hobbies with his wife of 9 years.
