Question: 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's success is connected to the growing popularity of barefoot or "miminalist" 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." Vivobarefoot 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, Vivobarefoot 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, Vivobarefoot 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 Vivobarefoot email addresses rather than Gmail accounts. Vivobarefoot staff are also making use of Microsoft's OneDrive 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, Vivobarefoot has also moved away from tape backups to a remote hosted backup 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 Vivobarefoot 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.

Critical Thinking Questions

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

2. One ongoing concern for Vivobarefoot 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?