Hong Kong Jockey Club is a leading provider of horse-racing and betting entertainment. To improve the availability of its mission-critical betting system, the club is implementing a solution that includes Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Enterprise and Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2012. As a result, it will cut failover time from half an hour to two minutes. The club is also consolidating its server infrastructure by 30 percent, cutting deployment time from two days to three hours, and gaining better support for operational goals.

IT Services Hungary Kft. (ITSH) did a pilot project testing Windows 8 and its related services and functionality from various perspectives on several different devices. One of the goals of the pilot was to find a reliable operating system that would run seamlessly on desktops, notebooks and tablets, while also meeting the organization’s extremely high security requirements. The ability to remotely deploy and manage the operating system was also a key requirement. Through the pilot, ITSH gathered hands-on experiences on a 100-strong machine pool to enable quick and easy mass deployment of the Operating System after the successful conclusion of the project. Microsoft Consulting Services aided in the implementation of the pilot project by providing a tablet for testing and offering assistance in adapting the company’s most widely used applications to the Windows 8 environment.

Singapore firm SATS, a leading provider of gateway services and food solutions, wanted to move its mission-critical SAP ERP environment to a more cost-effective and easily scalable environment. The company implemented a solution based on a Microsoft platform that includes Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise. As a result, the company cut operating costs by approximately 20 percent while increasing scalability about 30 percent. SATS can now expand its enterprise resource planning (ERP) capabilities more easily and affordably, provide remote real-time access to line-of-business software and cloud-based office programs, and streamline its IT environment and business processes.

The Missiles and Fire Control (MFC) business area of Lockheed Martin creates specialized products that range from missile defense systems and precision engagement weapons to heat rejection panels that protect those living aboard the International Space Station. MFC has long used SAP software for its enterprise resource planning processes. Since migrating its SAP infrastructure from a UNIX/Oracle solution to Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise, the company reports enhanced performance and reliability as well as lower total cost of ownership, including a significant savings in software and maintenance costs. The company’s internal testing has found that the new data compression features reduce database size by total 74 percent while enhancing performance of some runs by more than 80 percent.

Direct Edge, one of the largest equities exchanges in the world, wanted a better, faster business intelligence (BI) solution for its financial analysts to use to create reports. Direct Edge implemented a data warehouse and BI solution based on Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse, which has given the company more visibility into its data. The firm can also provide analytical reports in seconds rather than hours and can better drive business growth.

Irish Life, based in Dublin, Ireland, offers life insurance and pension products to individuals and businesses throughout the country. To respond to a difficult economy, the company sought a more cost-effective environment to support its critical insurance administration application. Irish Life migrated the application to a new solution based on Microsoft database technology. As a result, the company will save US$2.5 million in annual operating costs and will be able to increase its business. The solution also lowers system runtimes by 75 percent, boosts application availability, and increases developer productivity.

To deliver competitive services that balance risks and returns, Union Bank of Israel needed greater operational insight. To achieve this, the bank replaced a third-party reporting solution with one based on the Microsoft platform. With it, the bank speeds efficiency by over 50 percent, increases insight and accuracy, minimizes risk, improves collaboration, and facilitates agility.

The Halo franchise is an award-winning collection of properties that has grown into a global entertainment phenomenon. To date, more than 50 million copies of Halo video games have been sold worldwide. As developers prepared to launch Halo 4, they were tasked with analyzing data to gain insights into player preferences and support an online tournament. To handle those requests, the team used a powerful Microsoft technology called Windows Azure HDInsight Service, based on the Apache Hadoop big data framework. Using HDInsight Service to process and analyze raw data from Windows Azure, the team was able to feed game statistics to the tournament’s operator, which used the data to rank players based on game play. The team also used HDInsight Service to update Halo 4 every week and support a daily email campaign designed to increase player retention.

As a leading provider of value-added network services in Korea, Smartro processes millions of invoice, settlement, credit card, and purchase transactions a day for Korean retailers. To speed up manual data extraction and analysis processes, Smartro implemented a data warehouse using the HP Enterprise Data Warehouse Appliance Optimized for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse. Smartro now has a technology foundation for expanding its business and processing more transaction data. Because business users can easily produce their own reports, report requests have decreased by 62 percent, and data extraction time has been slashed by 80 percent. Additionally, Smartro can adapt its data warehouse to accommodate constantly changing regulatory policies.

Airfreight container management company Jettainer is winning new business and needs faster data processing to keep up with growing volumes of data. The company also wants to reduce the complexity of its IT environment, which has separate platforms for inventory control and business intelligence (BI). Jettainer is implementing a solution based on Microsoft technology, which will improve system performance and data quality.