Sitecore Cloud Hosting - White Paper

Sitecore in the Cloud Explore the business advantages of a new hosting approach

White paper // Sitecore in the Cloud

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Copyright © 2001-2015 Sitecore Corporation A/S. All rights reserved. Sitecore ® and Own the Experience ® are registered trademarks of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand and product names are the property of their respective owners. This document may not, in whole or in part, be photocopied, reproduced, translated, or reduced to any electronic medium or machine readable form without prior consent, in writing, from Sitecore. Information in this document is subject to change without notice and does not represent a commitment on the part of Sitecore.

Table of contents

Introduction ��3

Agility 3

Economics 3

Scalability 3

What are the different cloud offerings? ��3

Infrastructure as a service 3

Platform as a service 3

Software as a service 4

Cloud computing and web hosting vendors ��5

Microsoft Azure 5

Business benefits of using cloud hosting ��5

Agility 5

Economics 6

Scalability 7

High availability 8

Security and compliance 8

Business continuity 9

Testability 9

Expertise on demand 9

Compatibility 9

Green IT awareness 10

The power of platform as a service �� 10

Sitecore Azure module ��11

Key benefits of the Sitecore Azure module 11

Alternatives to the Sitecore Azure module 12

About the Authors �� 13

Appendix A – References �� 13


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IntroductionIn recent years, cloud hosting has rapidly gained popularity and market share as the preferred web hosting across many different industries� Solutions are provided by various large cloud computing providers such as Microsoft, Amazon, Salesforce, Google and many others�

However, most organisations still host their Sitecore® solution on premise� More often than not, this incurs high infrastructure costs as well as the need to maintain a pool of skilled professionals in-house or engage an outsourcing partner to support their system(s)�

Cloud hosting demonstrates business value through optimising resources, lowering costs, and providing solutions on-demand when and where your company needs it� This white paper outlines major key business benefits that will help you to decide whether cloud hosting could assist your organisation in optimising business performance and costs�

There are many drivers that could form the reasons for your enterprise to adopt cloud hosting for your Sitecore solution� The three most common are: Agility, Economics and Scalability�

AgilityCloud hosting vendors can provide new server instances and storage in minutes, a far cry from the weeks or months the same provisioning process can typically take in larger enterprises� This allows your organisation to enter new markets and explore business opportunities very quickly, giving you a competitive advantage�

EconomicsCost is often another major factor when a company decides to run its applications in the cloud instead of on an on-premise infrastructure� Utilising and paying for on-demand resources eliminates the fiscal burden of supporting idle capacity for any length of time�

The cloud presents enormous savings opportunities, in terms of data centre real estate, staffing,

software and hardware maintenance, power consumption, accounting and others�

ScalabilityGrowing organisations need solutions that are able to grow with them� When a legacy platform hits its cap, things like uptime and response time are affected and you will most likely experience a loss of business opportunities� Cloud hosting will provide you with the resources required to enable your enterprise to reach your customers on a global scale at any point in time�

What are the different cloud offerings?

Infrastructure as a serviceIn IaaS, the vendor provides physical computer hardware including CPU processing, memory, data storage and network connectivity� The vendor may share its hardware among multiple customers, referred to as “multiple tenants”, using virtualisation software� IaaS enables customers to run operating systems and software applications of their choice� Typically the vendor controls and maintains the physical computer hardware, whereas the customer controls and maintains the operating systems and software applications�

Example IaaS vendor services include Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), GoGrid and Rackspace Cloud�

Sitecore is compatible with the IaaS offerings, so you can deploy your solution with any of the Sitecore reference architectures�

Platform as a serviceIn PaaS, involves the vendor provides IaaS plus operating systems and server applications such as web servers� PaaS enables customers to use the vendor’s cloud infrastructure to deploy web applications and other software developed by the customer, using programming languages supported by the vendor� Typically the vendor


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controls and maintains the physical computer hardware, operating systems and server applications whereas the customer only controls and maintains the only software applications developed by the customer�

Example PaaS vendor services: Microsoft Azure Websites and Web Roles, Google App Engine, Force�com and the Amazon Web Services Elastic Beanstalk�

Sitecore is compatible with the Microsoft Azure PaaS offering, so you can deploy your solution with any of the Sitecore reference architectures�

Software as a serviceIn SaaS, the vendor uses its cloud infrastructure and cloud platforms to provide customers with software applications� Example applications include email and an environment where users can collaboratively develop and share files such as documents and spreadsheets� These end-user applications are typically accessed by users via a web browser, eliminating the need for the user to install or maintain additional software� Typically the vendor controls and maintains the physical computer

hardware, operating systems and software applications� Customers using this model would only control and maintain limited application configuration settings specific to users, such as creating email address distribution lists�

Example SaaS vendor services include Microsoft Office 365 (formerly called Business Productivity Online Suite), which consists of Microsoft Office Web Apps, Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and Microsoft Lync; Salesforce�com Customer Relationship Management (CRM); Google Docs; and Google Gmail�

The Sitecore® Experience Database™ (xDB™) is the data collection and reporting engine for Sitecore� There are a few different options for hosting this engine but the most exciting is the SaaS offering hosted on Microsoft Azure (Sitecore® Experience Database™, Cloud Edition)�

A full SaaS version of the Sitecore® Experience PlatformTM is also in development� Current information regarding an initial release suggests availability in mid-2015�

On-Premise

Applications

Data

Runtime

Middleware

O/S

Virtualization

Servers

Storage

Networking

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Applications

Data

Runtime

Middleware

O/S

Virtualization

Servers

Storage

Networking

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Applications

Data

Runtime

Middleware

O/S

Virtualization

Servers

Storage

Networking

You

man

age

You

man

age

You

man

age

Man

aged

by

Mic

roso

ft

Man

aged

by

Mic

roso

ftWindows Server

Windows Azure Virtual Machine

Windows Azure Cloud Service


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Cloud computing and web hosting vendorsNowadays organisations can choose from an array of cloud hosting providers including Microsoft, Amazon, Salesforce and Google� Cloud venders are periodically assessed and categorised by the vendors’ ability to execute as well as completeness of vision in a particular field� Two of the most recent reports put Microsoft offering of IaaS[2] and for PaaS[3] as leaders and visionaries in the field�

Sitecore is a Microsoft Gold Independent Software Vendor (ISV) partner� This status in the Microsoft Partner Program recognises Sitecore’s expertise and total impact in the technology marketplace� As a Gold ISV Partner, Sitecore has demonstrated expertise with Microsoft technologies and proven its ability to meet customers’ needs� Microsoft Gold ISV Partners receive a rich set of benefits, including access, training and support, giving them a competitive advantage in the marketplace� As such, Sitecore recommends and fully supports Microsoft’s cloud computing and web hosting offering, Microsoft Azure�

With Microsoft recognised to be a market leader for both their IaaS and PaaS offering and when paired with Sitecore, who are market leaders in the Web Content Management space, you have the instruments to stay ahead of your competitors�

Microsoft AzureMicrosoft Azure provides organisations with on-demand compute, storage, networking and content delivery capabilities to host, scale and manage Web applications on the internet through Microsoft data centers�

It is hybrid-readySome cloud providers make you choose between your data center and the public cloud� Not Azure� Its enterprise-proven hybrid cloud solutions give you the best of both worlds, expanding your IT options without added complexity� With Azure, data storage, backup and recovery become more efficient and economical� It’s also easier to build applications that span both on-premises and the cloud�

It is open and flexibleAzure supports any operating system, language, tool and framework – from Windows to Linux, SQL Server to Oracle, C# to Java� It puts the best of Windows and Linux ecosystems at your fingertips, so you can build great applications and services that work with every device�

It is economical and scalableAzure can quickly scale up or down to match demand, so you pay only for what you use� Per-minute billing and a commitment to match competitor prices for popular infrastructure services such as compute, storage and bandwidth mean that you’re always getting unbeatable price for performance�

It is everywhereAzure runs on a growing global network of Microsoft-managed data centers across 13 regions, giving you a wide range of options for running applications and ensuring your customers always get great performance� Azure is the first multinational cloud provider in mainland China and is continuing to expand to new regions around the globe�

Business benefits of using cloud hostingAlthough most of the benefits described in this chapter are universally applicable for various cloud vendors, this paper specifically outlines the benefits of Microsoft Azure’s being Sitecore’s recommended vendor�

AgilityBusiness agility leads the list of drivers for adopting cloud computing, according to a recent survey by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services[1]�

Cloud computing delivers improved agility, because it has on-demand self-service and rapid elasticity� IT resources can be acquired and deployed more quickly, and, once deployed, they can be increased or decreased as needed to meet demand� This means that your company can innovate, introduce new products and services, enter new markets and adapt to changing circumstances�


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Because the cloud resources are operated by an external organisation, there is less need to train people within your company� Skills acquisition often takes longer than any other operation associated with deploying a new resource� The reduced training needs for the public cloud are a major contributor to cloud-based agility�

Business process changesBusiness agility requires the ability to create new business processes and change existing ones� This often means adding to or changing the supporting IT resources� The difficulty of doing this, and the time that it takes, can be major barriers to innovation� Cloud computing can remove these barriers, by enabling your company to add to or change your IT resources quickly and easily�

Procurement and deployment cycleWhen new projects are initiated, it is usually necessary to identify the infrastructure requirements and plan with IT the procurement and deployment� It can be a lengthy process to acquire the new hardware, set it up and integrate it with the existing infrastructure�

Microsoft Azure provides much shorter time to market, since infrastructure is immediately available, allowing you to deploy your website in no time� An easy-to-use web interface allows you to create resources and scale them at the click of a button�

EconomicsSelf-hosting, dedicated server hosting or cloud hosting?

The three most commonly considered hosting options and some of the impacts they might have on your organisation’s balance sheet are:

Self-hosting

When you self-host, you spend upfront to acquire equipment and space and pay for power and cooling on an ongoing basis� For storage, you buy the initial hardware components, which can be expensive even if you need only a small amount of storage�

Dedicated server hosting

When you outsource, there is no upfront capital expenditure� You pay a monthly fee for dedicated servers� If dedicated storage is needed, you lease expensive hardware� The cost of the hardware to interface with the servers can also be very expensive, which means you have high startup costs�

Cloud hosting

Hosting servers in Microsoft Azure is significantly less expensive than dedicated hosting from a monthly cost perspective (50% and more savings are not unusual)� Furthermore, you can turn cloud servers off when they are not needed and pay for their use per minute� Most dedicated server hosting companies do not allow you to do this� For cloud storage, there is no large initial leasing expense, because the Microsoft solution amortises the cost of the hardware across multiple customers� Cloud storage is truly pay-per-use�

Where can you save?Handing over hosting of your Sitecore solution to Microsoft will allow you to save costs in various areas:

Eliminate the need for a data center

Building your own data center is a very expensive undertaking that can be simply eliminated� Some of the major cost factors include the costs for real estate, energy, security staff and monitoring�

Identify Server Needs

Budget Cycle

Time

Hardware Purchase

Deployment

Validation in Data Center Environment

Integrating into Environment

Cloud On Premises


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Eliminate overprovisioning

When you self-host or rent dedicated server infrastructure you build to accommodate peak loads – the highest predictable activity, such as a compelling marketing promotion� This means that you have the capacity for peak loads but your average utilisation of servers may only be 20% or even less� What impact does it have on your total cost ownership if 90% of the time you are not using 80% of your capacity?

Eliminate maintenance costs

Using Microsoft Azure, the costs for hardware upgrades and software licenses including upgrades and patching are included in the service fee�

Move from CapEx to OpEx

When switching to a pay-as-you-go model, many companies find that savings accrue from changing their financial accounting for computing assets from capital expenditures to operating expenditures� With CapEx, the full cost of an asset is depreciated over time� With OpEx, the expense can be deducted in full in the year it occurs�

In a nutshell, Microsoft Azure offers an opportunity to replace high capital expenses and acquisition costs, lengthy budgetary cycles and approval processes with a monthly subscription-based operating expense�

TransparencyMicrosoft Azure is priced so that you can understand exactly how much a resource is costing you, a calculation

you might have a hard time replicating for on-premises assets, since you typically host a variety of applications on the same infrastructure� You can calculate the precise cost impact that would come from adding or changing an application or from adding or removing a server, computing instance, storage or database� As a result, your decision-making acumen becomes much sharper and you easily save money over time�

PredictabilityMicrosoft Azure shoulders three major cost burdens of the IT world:

1. Upgrade cycle Forget about upgrading servers, routers and other physical components, as this is all taken care of by Microsoft.

2. Environment consistency It is easy to set up development and testing environments with exactly the same hardware and environment as would be used in production. This allows for reliable testing and more predictable performance outcomes.

3. Replacement of failed hardware This is a worrisome and unpredictable cost that always seems to occur at the worst time. Microsoft Azure has got a sophisticated health monitoring system built in, which ensures that unhealthy services are automatically replaced by healthy ones.

By moving your hosting needs to Azure, you can trade these substantial, upfront and uncertain costs for a predictable monthly bill�

ScalabilityIn Microsoft Azure, your business can scale up or scale down your operation and storage needs quickly to suit your situation, allowing flexibility as your needs change� You don’t have to purchase and install expensive upgrades yourself; Microsoft handles this for you�

For example, your Sitecore website might be able to serve your customers on a daily basis, running on a

Self-hosting, dedicated server hosting

Utilise 20% Utilise 20%

Pay for 20%Pay for 100%

Cloud hosting


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server farm with two load-balanced servers� During the first couple of hours after sending out an eDM campaign, however, you might need additional computing resources to serve the temporarily increased number of requests� In Microsoft Azure, scalability is only a button click away and will take effect within minutes� When traffic eases off, you can easily remove those additional server instances when they are no longer required�

Dynamic scalingMicrosoft Azure allows you to take scalability even to the next level: dynamic scaling�

Let Azure decide when your website solution requires extra resources to cope with the demand of your customers� Based on parameters such as number of requests, CPU load, memory consumption or queue length, Azure will add or remove compute resources within configurable thresholds� Now you can enjoy your sleep at night without having to worry that your infrastructure might not be capable of serving all your customers, resulting in potential loss of business opportunities�

High availabilityMicrosoft Azure offers a 99�95% availability SLA, 24/7 tech support and round-the-clock service health monitoring� That is why more than 57% of Fortune 500 companies rely on Azure today� From live streaming of Olympic events to online multiplayer games, anything is possible� In fact, you will share the same enterprise-tested platform that powers Skype, Office 365, Bing and Xbox�

GeoredundancyMicrosoft Azure further increases availability by running multiple nodes of each of its services in georedundant locations� Even when a service is deployed in a single location, it actually runs in two data centers that lie at least 400km apart from each other� Furthermore, tools such as the Traffic Manager allow you to configure automatic failover to an alternative location if your website temporarily becomes unavailable in one location�

Security and complianceMicrosoft recognises that having a good reputation for security is a key determinant of their success� Therefore, they provide customers with detailed

CAPEX Over capacity Under capacity

DemandClassic capacityCloud capacity

Rising demand scenario

Falling demand scenario

Time

Cap

acity

Example: Capex to Opex


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information about their security and compliance programs, including audit reports and compliance packages, to help your business to assess their services against your own legal and regulatory requirements�

Microsoft Azure is compliant with the following standards:

■ ISO 27001/27002 ■ SOC 1/SSAE 16/ISAE 3402 and SOC 2 ■ Cloud Security Alliance CCM ■ FedRAMP ■ FISMA ■ FBI CJIS (Azure Government) ■ PCI DSS Level 1 ■ United Kingdom G-Cloud ■ Australian Government IRAP ■ Singapore MTCS Standard ■ HIPAA ■ EU Model Clauses ■ Food and Drug Administration 21 CFR Part 11 ■ FERPA ■ FIPS 140-2 ■ CCCPPF ■ MLPS

If you would like to find out more about the details of each of the listed programs, see the Microsoft Azure compliance page[2]�

Business continuityProtecting your data and systems is an important part of business continuity planning� Whether you experience a natural disaster, power failure or other crisis, having your data stored in Microsoft Azure ensures that it is backed up and protected in a secure and safe location� Being able to access your data again quickly allows you to conduct business as usual, minimising any downtime and loss of productivity�

TestabilityMature software release management for enterprise software solutions recommend to have separate, homogeneous environments for testing, staging, live and sometimes training� Often in on-premises hosting,

the cost factor has a vital impact on the decision to set up heterogeneous environments (e�g�, single servers for environments other than the live environment), resulting in reduced testability� Issues may be identified only after deployment of the solution to the live environment, causing extra stress on the team�

Expertise on demandWith the rise of new technologies including cloud, mobility and virtualization and with the technology challenges we face, such as big data and power management, running a technology estate has only become more complicated� The level and quality of skill required have increased in recent years, making it difficult to recruit and maintain talent in-house� Today you need experts in security, system administration, virtualization, storage and more� Microsoft Azure has experts in all of these disciplines, and you can be assured that they are working in the background, supporting you all the time�

Compatibility

Content management systemsMost enterprise-scale content management systems such as Sitecore provide the necessary optimisations so that they can run in the cloud, taking advantage of vendor-specific service offerings� Sitecore offers a module that allows you to easily deploy your website into a Microsoft Azure PaaS environment� Alternatively, Sitecore can be deployed to Windows Azure via Visual Studio functionality, such as Azure Cloud Project�

Automated build and deploymentMicrosoft Azure supports scripted deployment, allowing you to take your continuous integration to the next level for continuous deployment�

Custom-developed websitesCustom-developed websites that are designed and implemented with scalable best practises in mind run in the cloud without any issue� However, in order to maximise performance, code changes are usually required to utilise the full extent of the offered cloud services�


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Green IT awarenessIn the current social and political climate, many companies want to do all that they can to increase their “green” (i�e�, environmentally friendly) credentials and reduce the carbon emissions of their operations� But at the same time, they are expecting to see rapid growth in their use of IT and corresponding growth in emissions from increased power consumption�

Microsoft Azure addresses two critical elements of a green IT approach:

■ Energy efficiency ■ Resource efficiency

From an energy-efficiency perspective, with less physical equipment plugged in, a data centre will consume less electricity� From a resource-efficiency perspective, server consolidation and resource utilisation result in reduced data centre space requirement and the eventual reduction in the e-waste footprint�

The power of platform as a serviceThe adoption of cloud computing is largely being driven through the provision of platform as a service offerings from cloud providers, and Microsoft Azure is leading the public cloud in this space� There are a number of reasons that PaaS is important to IT and that differentiate it from more traditional offerings such as infrastructure as a service and software as a service�

PerformanceFor many projects, it is difficult to accurately predict how successful they are going to be once they launch, yet that is exactly what IT must do in a traditional environment, as the hardware requirements need to be specified long before the project goes live� If the project is wildly successful, the hardware will almost certainly become quickly overwhelmed – a good problem to have most people will say – until your websites are crashing daily and customers become disgruntled with the patchy service� Even with virtualization, it can take days to rescale an environment and by then the damage is done�

PaaS to the rescue! If your servers are running too hot, you can simply dial up more performance – it can even be done automatically� The same thing happens if the servers are running too cool; simply dial them back and save some money�

Cost effectivenessA side effect of performance “on tap” is that the system always has exactly the right amount of power� This means that costs can be managed linearly to the success of the project� PaaS environments such as Azure are also billed by the minute in most cases, so you are paying only for services that you are actually using� Any services that are not being used can, for the most part, be turned off and do not attract additional costs�

AgilityServices are set up in minutes, as there is very little overhead and no direct connection to physical environments� Cloning a complete live environment for the purposes of bug-fixing a single problem becomes a task that can be completed in hours by one person for a negligible cost� This is virtually impossible in a traditional environment�

IT teams can experiment with, and easily adopt emerging technologies without having to invest in the environments required to run them� This is particularly appropriate to “big data” and “machine learning” where the hardware resources required to run an environment start in the hundreds of thousands of dollars�

FocusPaaS offerings allow IT and development teams to build up environments by selecting from a menu of services and then configuring how much performance they might like from each service� This frees them from concerns about CPUs and memory and more complicated things such as high availability, operating systems and patching� This allows IT to concentrate on what it is trying to make without worrying about how to deliver it�


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Sitecore Azure moduleThe Sitecore Azure module is a Sitecore add-on that allows business users to deploy and manage Sitecore hosted solutions on Azure with the PaaS option�

The Azure module can be installed on Sitecore, converting this instance to an Azure deployment installation� Deployment installations have the added capability of being able to deploy and then manage Sitecore instances on Azure by using PaaS�

The deployment takes care of all Azure configurations and settings to produce an optimised and default hosting environment that is geared for successful, stable and fast hosting of the Sitecore sites�

The Azure hosting settings are all stored within Sitecore and, as with all Sitecore solutions, can be extended and altered as required to meet custom hosting requirements or additional Azure offerings�

Key benefits of the Sitecore Azure moduleAn easy-to-understand user interface designed for non-technical users enables you to automate the deployment of your Sitecore websites to Microsoft Azure�

1. The module is supported by Sitecore and reliably working for hundreds of clients globally already.

2. All project configurations and settings are stored in Sitecore and are therefore secured for reuse, development and available to be backed up for fast disaster recovery.

3. The Sitecore Azure module significantly reduces the costs and amount of time required to deploy your solutions to Azure.

4. The Sitecore Azure module reduces the cost and time required to adjust server capacity in order to meet unexpected load. Business users can scale up and scale down infrastructure.

5. It just works, and its users have unanimously given it the green light!

Admins

SQL VM

SQL Azure

xDB

Sitecore Azure Deployment Installation

Sitecore server (Azure web role)

Sitecore server and enable Installation (Azure web role)

Sitecore server (Virtual Machine)

Sitecore Experience Cloud (xDB)

MSSQL database

Authors

Deployment (On prem) Product Management (Azure PaaS)

Internet

Product Delivery (Azure PaaS)


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Alternatives to the Sitecore Azure moduleThe Sitecore Azure module automates a number of actions to lessen the learning curve and aid adoption of the cloud, but all of the actions that it performs can also be taken manually or using other automation paths such as PowerShell scripts and Azure APIs�

Most teams will experiment with Azure through the publishing tools built into Visual Studio� This allows for seamless, repeatable delivery of a web project to Azure� Sitecore, along with any project customisations, can be delivered to Azure this way�

PowerShell is a powerful scripting environment for Windows built on top of �NET� This allows PowerShell scripts to access all the Azure APIs that normally require code� Both Sitecore and Azure are developer-oriented systems, so this mechanism for provisioning services and applying configurations often appeals to Sitecore developers, as it is well aligned with skills they already have�

Should automation not be required, Azure provides a web-based management interface that is very easy to operate, along with wizards to guide users through the steps for provisioning and configuring services inside their environment�


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About the Authors

Michael Ulmann – Helvetic Solutions Michael Ulmann is the founder and Chief Architect of Helvetic Solutions in Sydney, Australia� He has been working with Microsoft Azure since 2010 and he has many years of experience architecting enterprise scale distributed system and eCommerce platforms� Michael is also a certified Sitecore Advanced �NET Developer and he is passionate about providing best in class solutions for his clients�

Contact Michael through the following channels:

Twitter @michaelulmann

LinkedIn au�linkedin�com/in/michaelulmann

Helvetic Solutions is a leading software consultancy in Sydney that provides Sitecore expertise and custom �NET application and web service development services predominately focusing on technically challenging enterprise solutions hosted in the cloud using Microsoft Azure�

Website helveticsolutions�com

Email sales@helveticsolutions�com

Jerry Norman-Nott – Sitecore Australia / New ZealandJerry Norman-Nott manages the Sitecore partnerships across Australia and New Zealand with an emphasis on technical enablement and business nurturing�

Jerry has a long history in the technology industry with a deep understanding of the Sitecore platform, Cloud computing and Microsoft technologies� He has held senior leadership positions in agencies, software houses and system integration partners for the last 10 years�

Jerry is a regular speaker at industry events on topics ranging from cloud hosting to print strategies�

Appendix A – References[1] “The Digital Dividend: First-Mover Advantage”, Harvard Business Review,

http://www�verizonenterprise�com/resources/reports/ rp_hbr-digital-dividend-first-mover-advantage_en_xg�pdf�

[4] Microsoft Azure Compliance website,

azure�microsoft�com/en-us/ support/trust-center/compliance�

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