MICROSOFT

MICROSOFT

How
HowMicrosoft
Microsoft is is
driving
driving
defense
defense
innovation
innovation at at
thethe
speed
speedof of
relevance
relevance
DIGITAL
DIGITAL
REPORT 2021 2021
REPORT
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How Microsoft is
Driving Defense
Innovation at the
Speed of Relevance
Traditional acquisition and development techniques
lack the agility required to deliver mission critical
technology solutions in the defense and intelligence
domain. Kate Maxwell explains how that’s changing.

D
efense and intelligence missions
are moving increasingly into the
information domain,” says Kate
Maxwell, CTO, Defense & Intelligence for
Microsoft Worldwide Public Sector. It’s
a radical shift from what Maxwell calls
“kinetics”, which remain a threat, but even
traditional defense benefits from the
advances in data science and connectivity.
“Information is helping our defense
customers get ahead of their adversaries,”
Maxwell explains. “Cloud computing
enables secure information sharing across
services, domains, and the allied community
- all the way from headquarters to the
tactical edge, to that soldier at a forward-
deployed location. And once that level
of interoperability is achieved, we help
our customers figure out how to turn raw
data into insights. That's a big leap that
is facilitated by capabilities like artificial
intelligence, machine learning and high
performance computing. Raw data is one
thing, but how do we get to insights and

Microsoft.com 3
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1975
The year Microsoft
was founded

1986
The year Microsoft
stock shares first
went public

$143bn
Microsoft's
revenue
in USD, in 2020

4 Microsoft.com
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“As technologists, we often run after the

amazing and shiny new technology.
But if we don’t get the culture right and
really seek to understand how people and
technology interact, that new technology
is not going to take hold. Period”
KATE MAXWELL
CTO, DEFENSE & INTELLIGENCE
WORLDWIDE PUBLIC SECTOR,
MICROSOFT

infer intent? When our customers can turn data

into insights and get inside their adversary’s
decision cycle, that's how they find competitive
advantage in the digital battlespace.”

MISSION SPEED
Despite Microsoft’s gigantic clout in the
cloud computing arena, there’s more to
the future of defense than spinning up a
Microsoft Azure server or two. “Mission
speed,” is one of Maxwell’s mantras, which
means 5G and satellite communications
are high on her list of priorities, not to
mention virtualisation technologies –
augmented reality, virtual reality, mixed
reality (a significant upgrade to traditional
training and mission planning activities that
often include “drawing pictures in the sand”).
But fostering a culture of innovation is
crucial to Maxwell’s own mission.
“As technologists, we often run after the
amazing and shiny new technology. But if
we don’t get the culture right and really seek
to understand how people and technology
interact, that new technology is not going
to take hold. Period.”

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Microsoft for Defense and Intelligence
“Our focus is on
delivering world-class
capability and digital
transformation to the
international defence
allied community”
KATE MAXWELL
CTO, DEFENSE & INTELLIGENCE
WORLDWIDE PUBLIC SECTOR,
MICROSOFT
6 Microsoft.com
She talks about Will Roper’s ‘digital
trinity’ as a philosophy and is also
insistent that “antiquated, quite lengthy”
government acquisition is a problem to be
fixed. “It’s really hard to drive innovation
at the speed of relevance when you
have bureaucracy and red tape. But you
also have to balance the need for speed
with maintaining the integrity of the
acquisitions process.
“And then there’s cultural transformation.
I mention all these digital models, but
people are at the core of any transformation
effort. We have to upskill the defense
workforce, give them the right digital skills
so they’re prepared to build and develop
capabilities in new ways. We have to
introduce design thinking into workplace
processes so we can truly understand the
customer and be a mission partner. I feel
Microsoft is extremely well positioned to
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do that. And this is an amazing time to be

driving that digital transformation for the KATE MAXWELL
defence community. TITLE: CTO
“Microsoft is an iconic technology COMPANY/SECTOR: DEFENSE &
enterprise; we’ve been around for a long INTELLIGENCE FOR MICROSOFT
time, and we’ve been serving defence and WORLDWIDE PUBLIC SECTOR
intelligence customers for the better part
INDUSTRY: TECHNOLOGY
of 40 years. In Worldwide Public Sector,
our focus is on delivering world-class
capability and digital transformation to Kate Maxwell is the Chief
the international public sector community. Technology Officer for
And my team focuses specifically on the Defense & Intelligence in Microsoft’s
allied defense & intelligence community. Worldwide Public Sector. Maxwell is
“Microsoft has the largest and most an accomplished technology leader
mature cloud partner ecosystem in the and strategist with almost 20 years
entire market, which is critical when it of experience supporting Defense
comes to driving innovation. Our job is & Intelligence customers around
to break down the barriers to entry so the globe.
independent software vendors can bring Prior to joining Microsoft, Maxwell
their capabilities to bear for the defence held various engineering leadership
and intelligence landscape. It’s a huge roles within Raytheon Technologies,
part of our value proposition.” including Technical Director and Chief
Engineer of multiple product lines.
THE DEFENCE LANDSCAPE She was also the Founding Director
When Maxwell discusses the defence of the Raytheon Innovation Center
landscape, she is talking about an array of – a global corporate innovation
threats. “This is not meant to be a doom engine that inspires and empowers
and gloom story,” she says as she paints a employees to innovate.
picture of growing global disorder where Maxwell is a
established threats live alongside non- passionate advocate
state actors increasingly armed with for STEM outreach
sophisticated tools. Throw in geopolitical and diversity, and
and civil unrest, terrorism, climate change she commits her
and public health crises, and it looks time to making a
EXECUTIVE BIO

decidedly doomy and gloomy. difference through

“Technology is advancing at a really volunteerism.
incredible pace, and that’s good for
defense agencies, but it’s also good for
their adversaries, because technology is
increasingly capable, available, and in some
cases becoming less expensive by the day.
Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUAS),
or drones, are a great example of this.
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“We’re seeing this

evolving defense
landscape where The US Air Force has maintained air

there is a contest
superiority for decades, and all of sudden
that air superiority is being threatened by

in every single
$400 quadcopters that you can buy at any
big-box store. The threat is asymmetric,

domain: land, air, and very real.

“We’re also seeing this evolving defense

sea, space and landscape, where there’s contest in

every single domain: land, air, sea, space

cyberspace” and cyberspace. The battlefield itself

KATE MAXWELL
CTO, DEFENSE & INTELLIGENCE
WORLDWIDE PUBLIC SECTOR,
MICROSOFT
is changing. The landscape is moving
increasingly to the digital domain. It’s all
about who has information dominance.
It’s all about data. It’s about insights.
It’s about secure connectivity, especially
at the tactical edge.”

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168,263
Current worldwide
Employment
Headcount
at Microsoft

97,656
Current
Employment
Headcount
at Microsoft
in the US

CEO
Satya Nadella
is the current chief
executive officer
of Microsoft

2030
Last year, Microsoft
announced their
plans to be carbon
negative by 2030

THE DX JOURNEY “The second horizon is about expanding

“At Microsoft, we take a very customer-driven
and mission-centric approach to everything
we do. This is not a one-size-fits-all digital
transformation journey. So, we see three
horizons for defence and intelligence. First
is the foundational transformation, where
we are helping our customers modernise
the defence workplace, facilities, and
installations. Data is a critical asset, so we help
our customers understand where all of their
data lives and map out their data estates.
Migrating unclassified data and workloads to
the cloud is a great first step. Then we help
them work out how to harness and fuse that
data and put it to work for them.
on that transformation and helping our
customers become even more data-
driven and agile. We help our customers
migrate qualified, sensitive data estates to
the cloud. We help them take advantage
of digital engineering tools and methods,
ubiquitous computing, and AI to draw
out insights, optimize their operations,
and enable a common operational
picture across domains, all the way to the
tactical edge.
“And the third horizon is about unlocking
all of the advanced capabilities that you
can bring to bear once you have gone
truly digital – enabling our customers

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MICROSOFT'S
4 PILLAR STRATEGY
Four key pillars of Microsoft
Worldwide Defense & Intelligence
digital transformation strategy:
Modernise the defence and
intelligence workplace
Deliver trusted and secure
infrastructure and services
Protect the information domain and
help grow cyber force capabilities
Optimise defence and intelligence
operations and enhance data-
driven decisions
10 Microsoft.com
to disrupt and deliver innovative mission
capabilities at the speed of relevance.
This includes a host of advanced capabilities
including productivity tools for manned-
unmanned teaming, cyber ops capabilities,
synthetic environments for training and
mission planning, and growing our customers’
network through avenues like space and 5G.”
SPEED IS EVERYTHING
“Speed,” Maxwell insists, “is everything.”
One of her top priorities for the defense
and intelligence community is enabling
modern methodologies like DevSecOps,
and improving the feedback cycle to
constantly deliver improvements and
high-value mission capabilities. “You don’t
win a conflict by being the first to invent a
capability,” she explains, “you win by being
the first to field it.”

THE WORLD’S LARGEST PARTNER ECOSYSTEM
Kate Maxwell explains Microsoft’s unique partnership position
“Partnership is critically
“We have more partners than all our
top cloud competitors combined.
We’re partnering with many defence
systems integrators as well as independent
software vendors. As an example, we
partner with Myriad Technologies for
multi-domain, multi-level security
collaboration. We partner with Semantic
AI on artificial intelligence capability.
We’re collaborating with C3.ai to help us
solve predictive maintenance issues for
defense customers. And we’re partnering
with companies like SES and Kongsberg
PARTNERSHIP
Satellite Services (KSAT) on the space
side of the house. And that’s just the tip
of the iceberg.
“Partnership is critically important,
because we seek to drive innovation to
the defence and intelligence missions
MICROSOFT
important, because we
seek to drive innovation
to the defence and
intelligence missions we
serve. Our technology
partners are bringing
these new mission
capabilities forward”
KATE MAXWELL
CTO, DEFENSE & INTELLIGENCE
WORLDWIDE PUBLIC SECTOR,
MICROSOFT
we serve. Our technology partners are
bringing these new mission capabilities
forward. And we know a lot of small
and commercially-facing independent
software vendors have a hard time
breaking into the defence community
because they might not have the
clearance, infrastructure, or domain
knowledge needed to do it. They might not
have the right license or accreditations to
be able to sell to government acquisitions
bodies. So enabling technologies – cloud
platforms, containerisation, microservice
architectures – unlock the door for those
companies to come in and serve up their
capabilities to defense customers. And
that is one way to inject diversity and
capability into the defense ecosystem, and
drive innovation at the speed of relevance.”
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“Legacy platform
procurement doesn’t
work today, especially
for software systems.
This demands agility.
We need innovation at
the speed of relevance”
KATE MAXWELL
CTO, DEFENSE & INTELLIGENCE
WORLDWIDE PUBLIC SECTOR,
MICROSOFT

12 Microsoft.com

And that’s why she insists government
acquisition models need to adapt. “Historically
speaking, they have not been set up to
accommodate that need for speed. Most
government contracting vehicles are set up
to support legacy platform procurement –
a really lengthy bid, proposal, and development
process. That doesn’t work today. And it
certainly doesn’t work when you’re talking
about building software systems. They
demand agility. We have to modernise our
acquisition methods to match the mission
need, and that will help unlock innovation
at the speed of relevance.”
Despite legacy acquisition processes
(“antiquated”, “frustrating”), Maxwell notes
MICROSOFT
that they were installed for good reasons,
and that change is not just at the service of
technology. Those processes were, after all,
“put there with good intent.” But the time for
change has come.
“The key point is that digital transformation
is not just about the technology. It’s also about
people, process, and governance. And that, in
many ways, is the hardest part.”
When asked why Microsoft is so passionate
about the defense & intelligence domain?
“These efforts save lives. That’s why I come to
work every day. I think it’s incredibly rewarding
to see our customers realising the value of
their own digital transformation, and hearing
success stories from the field. This matters.”
So digital transformation is about cultural
transformation? “This is very much a people
story. This is about people and their
interactions with the system. As Peter Drucker
says, ‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast’. One
of the things we do at Microsoft, and one of
the things that brought me here, is that we
put people and mission at the core of
everything we do. We frame every digital
transformation around the customer need,
and their challenges and stakeholders.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty around digital
transformation. People might not know what
it means for them or for their job. They might
be worried. ‘Is my role going to change? Do
I have the right skills to do this?’ For every
organization that is transforming, your number
one objective has to be bringing your people
along on that journey, and getting it right so
that it works for them. And that is certainly true
for defense and intelligence as well. Digital
transformation is a people story, and Microsoft
is a mission partner.”
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