Cineplex Entertainment, Canada’s largest motion picture exhibitor, serves approximately 60 million guests annually. In an effort to improve communication among its geographically dispersed locations, which include theaters and home and district offices, the company deployed Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007. With this new solution, the company’s IT department expects to resolve issues faster because advanced presence capabilities will help staff members quickly find the expertise they need. Presence integration with the 2007 Microsoft Office system lets users see who is available at a glance—from within familiar desktop programs. Cineplex Entertainment also anticipates that the new solution will help the company conduct highly productive remote meetings, which will simplify and improve collaboration across time zones and reduce travel expenses.

The Edmonton Oilers organization operates three ice hockey teams in North America. Many of its employees, who include talent scouts and sales, marketing, and public relations staff, travel extensively. They rely on e-mail messages and the telephone to communicate and collaborate. However, the organization wanted to provide employees with more effective collaboration tools and lower costs associated with its telephone system. In May 2007, with Support from Gold Certified Partner, Compugen Inc, the Oilers implemented a new Windows®-based IT infrastructure and deployed Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007 with Unified Messaging and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. With this new solution, the organization has improved employee communication and collaboration, which has saved time, reduced telephony costs, and centralized IT management.

Over the past five years, Ski Bromont, a four-season activity resort in Quebec, Canada, has enjoyed tremendous growth. But while employees easily managed the upswing in sales, its sales kiosks and online sales channel couldn’t cope with the volume of transactions. System crashes during the holiday season took a toll on sales and customer confidence. Ski Bromont turned to Microsoft® Certified Gold Partner Conamex to upgrade its IT environment. Before moving ahead, Conamex implemented a Software Asset Management (SAM) plan to evaluate the IT environment. Through SAM, Ski Bromont gained a clearer picture of its IT environment, helping it make decisions about future software investments. Ski Bromont was also able to establish clear guidelines around IT use for employees, ensure all of its software was compliant, virtually eliminate downtime and reduce IT service hours by 50 per cent.

With a constant drive to further safeguard its IT environment, Canadian media company Torstar chose to become an early adopter of the Windows Vista™ operating system. The company is eager to take advantage of the built-in security features that are available with the new system, anticipating reduced IT support costs and time as well as greater user productivity.

After moving to a standardized environment in 2006, printing company Pelican Media experienced a significant jump in productivity and recognized the benefits of newer technology. Thus, the company recently upgraded its client computers to the Windows Vista™ operating system with the help of partner Crossman Graphic Supply. With the upgrade, Pelican Media is experiencing another increase in user productivity, as well as enhanced system manageability.