Vivo barefoot Upgrades Technology Infrastructure Vivo barefoot is an innovative shoe company that recently undertook a major review of its technology infrastructure to determine what changes needed to be made to support and accelerate the company’s already rapid growth. Vivo barefoot’ success is connected to the growing popularity of barefoot or “minimalist” running. In fact, the company lays claim to the first minimalist shoe, originally produced in 2004, offering an ultrathin, puncture-resistant sole that provides “maximum sensory feedback and maximum protection.” The specialist shoe company is headquartered in the United Kingdom, but also has a team based in China, where all of its manufacturing takes place. Vivo barefoot sells it shoes online, through a variety of partnerships around the world, and in its store in Covent Garden, a popular shopping district in London. According to founder Galahad Clark, the company went from selling 30,000 pairs of shoes per month to over 300,000 per month—over the course of just five years. As with many companies that experience rapid growth, over the years, Vivo barefoot had acquired a hodgepodge of hardware and software that was no longer meeting its needs. According to Damian Peat, global operations director for the company, “We were working with some pretty archaic systems. We had three servers in our basement all running Windows Server 2003 and backed up to tape, and I would worry a lot about the chance of something not working.” Vivo barefoot employees were also using multiple versions of Microsoft Office, and staff in China were forced to use personal Gmail accounts because they could not reliably access the company’s Microsoft Exchange email server in London. Managing the variety of hardware and software systems was becoming time consuming and costly. And, like thousands of other companies, Vivo barefoot was also faced with the reality that it would soon be forced to migrate away from Windows Server 2003, as Microsoft was ending its support of the outdated server operating system. According to Peat, “Upcoming end of support for Windows Server 2003 gave us concerns around security patching and mounting management costs, and we already had significant risk around data security. … My priority became to get everything onto one safe, reliable platform as soon as possible.” After a review of available technologies, Vivo barefoot chose to replace Windows Server 2003 with Windows Server 2012 R2 and Hyper-V hypervisor software, giving the company both physical and virtual server capabilities, including the capacity the company needs to host file servers and business-critical applications, such as accounting software and stock management systems. The company also migrated to Office 365 in both its London and China offices. Office 365 had particular appeal for the company because, as a global cloud service, it is easily accessible in China, where staff are now more easily able to communicate—using Vivo barefoot email addresses rather than Gmail accounts. Vivo barefoot staff are also making use of Microsoft’s One Drive for Business, where they can store, share, and sync files. According to Peat, with these cloud-based upgrades, the company “can ensure everyone can see the same documents and access them whenever they need, which is really beneficial.” As part of a phased process, the company is also moving many employees to Windows 8.1 laptops and Surface Pro tablets. As part of its efforts to streamline its IT infrastructure at all levels, Vivo barefoot has also moved away from tape backups to a remote hosted back-up service, and the upgraded server technology means that many other system management tasks have been simplified, as well. Data security has been improved, and IT staff have gained the ability to manage the company’s servers remotely. While Vivo barefoot still has work to do to migrate all of its technology to the same platform, the company’s efforts have gone a long way toward providing the company with an updated and more rational arrangement of hardware, software, and cloud computing SOURCES: “Frequently Asked Questions,” Vivo barefoot, “http://www .vivobarefoot.com/us/customer-services/frequently-asked-questions” \l “FAQST1” www.vivobarefoot.com/us/customer-services/frequently -asked-questions#FAQST1, accessed December 11, 2015; Ho, Geoff, “Shoe Manufacturer Vivo barefoot to Step It Up to Fund Expansion Plans,” Express, May 3, 2015, www.express.co.uk/finance/city/574639 /Shoe-manufacturer-Vivobarefoot-raise-money-fund-expansion-plans; Worth, Dan, “Windows Server 2003 Migration Helps Shoe Seller Vivo barefoot Put One Foot in the Cloud,” V3.co.uk, April 17, 2015, www .v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2404420/windows-server-2003-migration-helps -shoe-seller-vivo bare foot-put-one-foot-in-the-cloud; “Pioneering Footwear Brand Unites Teams for Secure, Remote Working,” Microsoft, www.microsoft.com/en-gb/smb/customer-success-stories/vivobarefoot -unites-global-teams, accessed December 11, 2015; Curtis, Joe, “How Vivo barefoot Escaped Windows Server 2003 in IT Upgrade,” IT Pro, July 8, 2015, www.itpro.co.uk/server/24948/how-vivobarefoot-escaped -windows-server-2003-in-it-upgrade

Société de transport de Montréal (STM) Implements Innovative Mobile App Montreal, in the Canadian province of Quebec, is considered one of the world’s most livable cities. The city, whose official language is French, is the culture capital of Canada with opera, museums of history and fine art, a symphony orchestra, cathedrals, many fine restaurants, and international jazz and comedy festivals. The Société de transport de Montréal (STM) is the bus and metro public transit system serving roughly 1.4 million daily passengers in the greater Montreal area. STM riders can use a rechargeable smart fare card—called Opus— on which riders can add and maintain a balance to cover their transit fares. STM tracks use of the Opus card to capture passenger riding history. This data has revealed an alarming problem—STM is losing about 13 percent of its riders through attrition each year. Analysis shows that this attrition can be attributed to a variety of causes, including deaths and moves out of the city. STM also determined that some amount of attrition is due to university students who, upon graduation, quit riding the STM and purchase or lease an auto to commute to their job. After a year of looking at options, STM decided to launch a six-month pilot loyalty project to combat this problem. The scope of the project, which is limited to about 20,000 current riders, will test if the proposed solution works, identify full implementation costs, and identify any potential barriers to success as well as unintended consequences of the program. Results from the pilot will be used to modify the initial solution and/or rollout plan. The pilot project must meet certain predefined success criteria in order to support a recommendation for a full rollout. The foundation of the loyalty program is a mobile app called STM Merci, which presents riders with exclusive, personalized offers based on their user profiles, travel habits, and level of ridership: top-tier, mid-tier, and first-tier. For a particular offer, for example, tickets to the Opera de Montreal, 100 top-tier riders might receive an offer for free tickets, while 100 mid-tier riders are offered 50 percent off tickets and 100 first-tier riders are offered 20 percent off tickets. STM hopes to recruit a large number of event and commercial partners willing to participate in the program in return for the strong geo marketing opportunities

Critical Thinking Questions

1. What are some of the competitive advantages Vivo barefoot gained through its infrastructure update?

2. One ongoing concern for Vivo barefoot is the quality and speed of the Internet service available to its office in central London. Given that, do you think it made sense for the company to move more of its IT services to the cloud? Go online and do some research about Microsoft’s Office 365 product. What options does it offer for working offline if Internet service is not available? Does that change your opinion about Vivobarefoot’s shift to the cloud?

3. Estimates for the number of computers still running Windows Server 2003 range from hundreds of thousands to several million—even though Microsoft has stopped supporting the product. What are the risks for companies that continue to use software or hardware technology after a vendor ends support for it?