Nearly 300 government, health and education IT officials trekked to the 10th annual Public Sector CIO Summit in Redmond, Wash., last week sponsored by Microsoft. For those who couldn’t make the trip, Breaking Gov sat down with Greg Myers, who heads Microsoft‘s federal business, to get his read on what agency officials are asking for most – and what he thought were the highlights for federal IT officers at this year’s summit.

Myers, a former Oracle and BearingPoint executive who joined Microsoft in 2009, spoke with Breaking Gov Editorial Director, Wyatt Kash, about the coming merger of IT and telecommunications, the growing importance of cross platform eDiscovery, what’s ahead in cloud computing and mobility, and what federal officials can expect from Windows 8, Skype, and other Microsoft products.

Breaking Gov: Given the budget pressures government agencies are under, what ideas or solutions surfaced as the most important at this year’s Public Sector CIO summit?

Greg Myers: For the federal track, we tried to stay away from the bucket of product dumps and really focus on three major things. They’re a direct byproduct of both (former and current Federal CIOs) Vivek Kundra’s and Steve VanRoekel’s directives.

The first elephant in the room is the economic pressure that these folks are under and how can they exploit investments they’ve already made and avoid duplicative costs–not just in software but the tail of that, which is about manpower and the soft hidden costs of integration.

When you put cybersecurity as a thread into that, as Mr. VanRoekel talks about–not as an island, but a thread throughout everything they’re doing–it’s not just a huge cost burden, it’s a huge security burden as well. So we talked about leveraging the investment of what they have across the Microsoft portfolio. That is an obligation we take very seriously with our federal clients.

Mobility: Beyond the Device

The second piece is around mobility and the changing dynamics of the workforce. I think people automatically jump to the end node when they talk about mobility. That’s obviously critical and the idea of productivity on any form factor is key. But there is a lot more to mobility besides the end-user device. It’s the management of that device in a secure and single-pane capability to be able to drive simplicity and security.

I sympathize greatly with what the CIO community and what the executives have to deal with in terms of leveraging that pressure of consumerization with the pressure of the mission and security, and the types of data these folks are handling. We [deal with] several verticals inside of federal, having PII (personally identifiable information), health data, patient data, warfighter data. Convenience is wonderful but not convenience at the stake of security to be able to do that piece.

The other piece about mobility are key components inside of Windows 7–and obviously will be in Windows 8–that have the ability to drive out costs: Things like DirectAccess (which allows remote users to securely access enterprise shares, web sites, and applications without connecting to a virtual private network); or components that facilitate telework; or do things like branch caching–which takes into account network optimization–so that you’re not constantly going back to the central server, but leveraging a departmental cache to run [a process.]

BitLocker (encryption software) is another seemingly simplistic thing. Yet, as (Microsoft CEO) Steve Ballmer alluded to (in the summit keynote), it is critical to what our federal clients want–which is security that if something gets taken, then that device is locked down. Yet, we find our clients are already invested in these capabilities, but are using precious funds on one-off or siloed solutions to be able to run that capability. Mr. VanRoekel gets it: [that mobility is] much more than just the end-node device.

Cloud: Supporting a Spectrum of Needs

The third thing that we’ve tried to do through the summit is to talk to clients about this cloud continuum and the cloud on their terms. It doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing proposition on what they do with the cloud.

There’s citizen data; there’s safety data; there is a data for the public good that we can publish right now leveraging our public cloud capabilities–leveraging SQL and Azure to put datasets out there for the developer community to take advantage of right now. If you are a subscriber to MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network), you get time on Azure to be able to play with these things.

So we’re trying to make it as easy as we can for the government to be able to have access to those capabilities–for those applications or those needs or those datasets that are fully ready to go right now out to the public cloud.

Or perhaps there are folks that say, “I understand the community cloud, but I really want to dedicate an instance; I want to drive data center consolidation; I want to meet the needs and the mandates, but I want to do that in more of a private cloud setting to be able to run that piece.

We don’t think, in talking to our clients, that everyone is going to abandon the need for on-premise capabilities. We want to give our customers a flexible architecture with code uniformity–that creates an integrated management layer throughout–and really is device centered and location independent in terms of being able to offer solution sets.

We’re working increasingly with General Counsel’s office and with privacy officers where we used to just talk to IT folks.”

Microsoft dedicates a lot of engineering and developer resources to help agencies with their mission work. What are the latest needs you’re hearing from your customers?

We spend a lot of time, for example, in the collaboration area looking at things like records management and eDiscovery.

So many of the things we talk about really aren’t technology issues; they’re policy issues. We’re finding, for example, a whole bunch of silo solutions that our customers are using that are creating a drain in terms of financial resources, consulting resources, and integration to get to the information–or, how do I cloud enable something that’s located in four or five different silos in this organization?

We’re working increasingly with General Counsel’s office and with privacy officers where we used to just talk to IT folks. Balancing this need between openness and citizen service and preserving PII and HIPAA and obviously secure sensitive data is a big issue for us as well.

PBX: Merging IT and Telco

Another area we’re being asked for help in is around unified communications. There’s never been more of a premium on getting more with less, but doing that in an economic model that is not so disruptive or [anticipate when] new (capital expense) dollars aren’t going to be there in the future. So taking a look at telecom infrastructures, and exploiting desktop or mobile devices to be able to do that.

I have our unified communication platform on my mobile phone as well as on my desktop. I hardly ever use my handhold phone. Quite honestly, I can do without it sitting on my desk if I needed to. And it’s driven my (operating expenses) down considerably.

We’re talking to people about leveraging this across the spectrum of federal government–military, civilian agencies, even national security–and working with key partnerships to make that balance between not losing all of the benefits of unified communications and what’s out there in the marketplace but still preserving that nuance and the uniqueness of the security needs within the federal marketplace.

How long will it take before PBX systems disappear? And how will Skype (which Microsoft acquired last October) and Lync help government agencies move faster on the unified communication front?

Myers: There are some folks that are literally ready to go tomorrow in terms of taking that next step. And there are others who are going to take a bit longer.

We certainly think the Skype acquisition offers some unique capabilities, especially for multinational installations and folks that are struggling with network bandwidth and some of the costs to be able to do that.

Certainly, with (travel and expenses and operating expense budgets), we see wonderful opportunities for optimization: This whole idea of being able to exploit with Telco and IT together in the same room–to look at the capabilities, look at user communities and look at opportunities for everything from simple chat and IM to presence to an integrated fashion, where I can leverage that inside of SharePoint (Microsoft’s collaboration product); the whole information portfolio that Microsoft can bring and leverage that [can make communications] much more economical [relative to the cost of PBX] and some of the expenses they’re running right now.

Do you see the acquisition vehicles evolving sufficiently to be able to bring IT and Telco together?

Myers: I think that’s among some of the things our agency and department customers are taking on internally. Agencies are putting more pressure on–looking at that specific issue to figure out how to optimize that. But we have that capability, and many of our clients are ready to be able to exploit those technologies.

Where else are you sensing new demands?

We’re certainly being brought in for citizen service–how can we address mission needs, especially [in light of] of the $1.2 billion duplicative spending report that GAO just came out with–and is there an easier, more reliable, more nimble way in an agile environment to get systems up in a platform that I can build once and deploy often?

We’ve had great results in quick-to-market applications [such as] Microsoft’s Dynamics and solutions in areas like call centers and social services.

We’re seeing a lot of focus away from traditional 18-month efforts that gets you about 60% to 70% there.

I think we’re second only to the Defense Department in terms of threat attacks (around the globe.)”

Are you seeing different needs between civilian, defense and intelligence communities?

Myers: We are seeing collaboration and discussion amongst national security, civilian and defense like we have never seen before.

I think this is driven directly from the economic pressure that the agencies and branches of service are under.

Before they were able to afford to be different and to say we don’t need that or we’re just fine on our own. It makes it easier for us, quite honestly, to have a business-based discussion as opposed to an organizational type discussion. So we welcome it.

Microsoft’s Curt Kolcun (vice president, U.S. Public Sector) announced plans here at the summit for developing a joint-tenancy government community cloud. Can you elaborate on your plans?

Myers: Sure. So we have a FISMA-certified architecture for private cloud for federal agencies.

But as you’re well aware, GSA has a blanket purchase agreement solicitation out there and we have bid all the blocks, including a government community cloud which will offer a shared tenant infrastructure with governments only. That includes federal, state and local and tribal organizations. And we have submitted our response to that and we’ll be offering that capability.

What should federal employees look for in the introduction of Windows 8, announced here (March 1)?

Myers: I think you’ve probably heard more about iOS, Linux, iPads, and Androids at a CIO summit than you’ve ever heard in the past and that’s because of the reality of the consumerization [of IT products] and the ability to bring disparate devices [into the federal workplace.]

I think the challenge for many federal agencies is the ability to manage securely and to be able to provide the right level of customer services for this proliferation of devices.

This is [driving] Microsoft’s foray into true touch-enabled and choice-enabled technology. The ability to have a uniform set of code throughout PCs, tablets and phones, to be able to exploit Intel as well as ARM processor architectures–these are new avenues for us that quite honestly, our clients have been pounding the table asking for.

So we’re very excited to be able to say, “You don’t need to choose between an interface that is conducive to the application and security–or the integration of everything that Microsoft invests nearly $10 billion a year into.

We’re working with key ecosystem partners that have developed on those other platforms to do that same development in a Win 8 environment (to improve) the ability to run from a performance standpoint, from a power management and flexibility standpoint, and really drive choice down to the agency level in terms of what is the right form factor for this capability and not sacrifice one iota of management, integration or security.

We heard a lot about Office 365 and Office 15 at the summit. What should federal managers and employees expect from them?

Myers: Every product that’s developed at Microsoft is developed with an extreme focus to be engineered for the cloud. This is not an afterthought– or icing that happens on the cake afterwards. It is in the batter.

That’s what I’ve spent three days meeting with the engineers and developers on, bringing federal requirements as to what agencies want in some of these solution sets, including Office 365 and Office 15, and driving those either as a function–as a true software-as-a-service–or being able to address either platform or the infrastructure layer for those folks who want to develop or bring their own ecosystem.

We truly believe we’re uniquely positioned as the only provider to have a holistic discussion at all three layers – platform, infrastructure and software-as-a-service to be able to do that.

And security will continue to be at the center of these products.

We have a dedicated cyber security practice. As one could imagine, we are threatened all the time. I’ll need to check this, but I think we’re second only to the Defense Department in terms of threat attacks (around the globe.)

So obviously we make our own investment. We also have programs that basically share that knowledge, not just from our own software standpoint but in terms of best practices and in terms of cybersecurity threats, in terms of manpower and keeping key federal customers up to date. We’re being asked under (non-disclosure agreements) obviously, to go through those things and actually sit on one side of the table going through this.

Again, it can’t be an afterthought; it has to be a part of the DNA of what we do and intrinsic to what we work with our clients on.