4-page Case Study - Posted 12/10/2007

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EMC

EMC Saves Millions with Enhanced Productivity and Communication Tools

As business continues to expand, EMC employees have found an increasing need to communicate and collaborate globally. Eager to make its 33,000 employees as effective as possible, Hopkinton, Massachusetts–based EMC has deployed Microsoft® Office Professional Plus 2007, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 to a group of 550 employees, and plans to deploy the software companywide in early 2008. With this move, EMC will equip employees with productivity-enhancing software that helps them create more compelling documents and more easily manipulate data, manage messages, and use instant messaging and videoconferencing. The upgrades will lead to savings of U.S.$19 million by eliminating separate voice-mail and videoconferencing systems and lowering IT management and support costs.

Situation

As business becomes increasingly global, workers become more mobile and geographically separated. EMC Corporation, a leading developer and provider of information infrastructure technology and solutions, has watched this phenomenon accelerate in the past few years as its business has spread around the globe. EMC, based in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, offers a variety of products and services that enable customers to compete and create value from their information.

“Any U.S. company that wants to expand its markets and lower its costs has to move outside the country, and that means more global partnerships,” says Chris Murphy, Director of IT for EMC. “In the past five years, we’ve expanded our presence across the world to drive additional revenues, to support our geographically dispersed customer base, to reduce manufacturing costs, and to partner with companies that can help drive our vision locally.”

With our investment in Office Professional Plus 2007 and Exchange Server 2007, we’ll save $19 million over the next four years in IT management and equipment costs. Chris Murphy Director of IT, EMC Corporation

Little annoyances such as switching between multiple communications methods throughout the day, trying to find information on collaboration sites, looking for features in productivity programs, and playing “phone tag” used up minutes every day for every employee. When multiplied by 33,000 workers, those lost minutes added up to a lot of friction and frustration in the daily flow of business.

“Our job in IT is to give users technology that will help them be more, not less, productive,” Murphy says. “But that’s a never-ending job. We have to keep up with innovation so that business users and IT staff both can work as effectively and efficiently as possible.”

Solution

EMC is a longtime user of Microsoft® productivity and messaging software, so it naturally looked to Microsoft for its next desktop productivity boost. “Microsoft is at the core of messaging and productivity software and at the forefront of where the industry is going with unified communications,” says Kevin Brisson, Principle Architect at EMC. “We wanted to team up with a vendor that had a holistic solution and an assured future. Microsoft provided all that.”

EMC workers already used Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 messaging and collaboration server software. EMC was eager to adopt Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007 and Exchange Server 2007, as well as to explore Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, which integrates presence (the ability to see if individuals are available and how they would like to be contacted), instant messaging, software-powered voice over IP (VoIP), and videoconferencing. Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 is the client program through which users take advantage of Office Communications Server 2007.

The IT staff liked the integration between Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and Office Professional Plus 2007, Office SharePoint® Server 2007, and the Windows Vista® operating system. According to Brisson, “You get the most benefit out of Exchange Server 2007 when you’re using Office Outlook 2007. The availability features and unified messaging capabilities tied in with Outlook 2007, as well as presence awareness and linkages to Office Communicator 2007, are key. The advanced search capabilities are also critical.”

The unified messaging capabilities of Exchange Server 2007 (the ability to receive e-mail messages, voice mail, and faxes in a single Inbox) and the unified communications capabilities of Office Communications Server 2007 (the ability to make one-click transitions between e-mail messaging, instant messaging, voice calls, and videoconferences) are automatically activated in Office Professional Plus 2007 programs, making the deployment of the latest Microsoft productivity software all the more desirable.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 deployment at EMC

EMC worked with Microsoft in early 2007 to deploy Office Professional Plus 2007, the Windows Vista Enterprise operating system, Exchange Server 2007, Office Communications Server 2007, and Office SharePoint Server 2007 to a group of approximately 550 users across the company. This initial deployment involved workers in sales, finance, marketing, customer support, development, and other key functional areas of the company.

For the desktop deployment, EMC was able to take advantage of Microsoft Systems Management Server and deployment efficiencies included in Windows Vista and Office Professional Plus 2007. EMC also used the Microsoft Solution Accelerator for Business Desktop Deployment, which provides tools and practices that simplify the deployment of Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office system, and features Zero-Touch Provisioning. According to Murphy, “Deployment of Office Professional Plus 2007 is very easy using Microsoft Systems Management Server; fully deploying it over the wire is seamless and painless.”

Instead of creating multiple desktop images for each language spoken in the company’s many geographic locations, EMC used language-agnostic Windows Vista to create a single desktop software image and customize it for each location. This dramatically reduces the number of images needed for the global organization and enables the IT staff to manage a single enterprise image across the organization. Using Zero-Touch Provisioning, EMC can create customized images of Office Professional Plus 2007 and deploy them over its wide area network from a central location, without visits to every EMC facility and desktop.

EMC will accompany its companywide deployment of Office Professional Plus 2007 with computer-based training supported by telephone-based tutors and classroom training for workers who need to get up to speed immediately.

Employees can use the unified messaging capabilities of Exchange Server 2007 and the Microsoft Office Outlook® 2007 messaging and collaboration client to review their e-mail messages, voice mail, and faxes from a single Inbox, from any computing device. When using Office Professional Plus 2007 programs, employees can see if colleagues are at their desks—whether down the hall or across the globe—and contact them for instant communication and faster decisions. Features such as presence and easy transition from e-mail message to instant message to a voice call are available from any Office Professional Plus 2007 program using a desktop, portable, or handheld computer. From Office SharePoint Server 2007 sites, users can search for information and people and see if those individuals are available for contact at that moment.

In addition, by using efficiencies woven throughout the Office Professional Plus 2007 programs, EMC employees can more efficiently create compelling documents that clearly convey complex information. New features of the 2007 Office system are easier to locate using the Microsoft Office Fluent™ user interface.

Benefits

Results from the initial deployment group have demonstrated that EMC business users are able to communicate more effectively using presence and unified messaging capabilities accessible from their everyday productivity applications. They’re also more productive and efficient using the Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007 programs. When EMC rolls out Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and Office Communications Server 2007 companywide, it expects to save approximately U.S.$19 million over 5 to 10 years through a combination of server and storage consolidation, improved information life cycle management, and the elimination of multiple voice-mail systems.
 
More Effective Communications
By deploying Office Professional Plus 2007 and Exchange Server 2007, EMC gains the ability to consolidate all its productivity and communication channels and give employees a single Inbox for e-mail messages, voice mail, and faxes. The IT staff can create automated rules that archive and delete messages, manage incoming and outgoing mail, and create audit trails for all company messaging. With these rules in place, users can more easily find information, and the IT staff can better meet regulatory requirements. Retention managers can ensure that retention periods are defined and managed centrally and consistently, and monitored across the enterprise from a single console.

Besides making message management easier for workers and IT staff, the unified communications capabilities provided by Exchange Server 2007 and Office Communications Server 2007—and accessed through Office Professional Plus 2007 programs—will enrich communications among far-flung employees.

“We have many teams that are spread out over multiple countries,” Murphy says. “With presence and videoconferencing integrated into our core messaging infrastructure and everyday productivity applications, we can easily conduct routine project reviews, status updates, and even daily phone calls. Teams can review documents together online, see from within the document who is at their desk and available for contact, send an instant message, and convert a conversation to a videoconference with a single click. When you can see people’s faces and read body language, comprehension goes up dramatically.”

Adds Brisson, “One of our salespeople told us that one of the things he hated most was playing ‘phone tag’ with a colleague, getting pushed into voice mail, and not knowing when he’d hear from that person. He went on to say that the ability to find out if someone was at his or her desk and talk to that person immediately made him 10 times more effective.”

Enhanced Desktop Productivity
EMC workers in the initial deployment have found that the improvements in the Office Professional Plus 2007 programs help them save time and frustration throughout the workday. Finance employees enjoy the ability to have and search up to 1 million rows in Microsoft Office Excel® 2007 spreadsheets, compared with the previous limit of 65,000 rows. These same employees take advantage of Excel Services in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to gain access to real-time, interactive Office Excel 2007 spreadsheets from a Web browser. Excel Services dynamically renders an Excel 2007 spreadsheet as HTML so that users can access an up-to-date spreadsheet stored on a SharePoint collaboration site. Further, finance workers have created executive dashboards on their SharePoint sites that dynamically integrate changing business data and present it as quick-glance charts and tables.

Staff members in marketing and other departments have found that SmartArt™ graphics, new themes and layouts, and other design and formatting improvements in Office Professional Plus 2007 help them create more professional and compelling communications. “The greatest compliment I can give to Office Professional Plus 2007 is that IT people like me look like we’re in marketing,” Murphy says. “I can quickly put together a presentation that looks ultrapolished. Before, we would have had to pull in professional artists.”

Efficient Desktop Deployment
Using automated deployment improvements in Windows Vista, the EMC IT staff expects to reduce Office Professional Plus 2007 deployment time by more than 90 percent (compared with previous deployments of the Microsoft Office system) due to centralized, zero-touch deployment.

“We’ll move from the sneakernet, in which we had to go from building to building and desk to desk to deploy software, to automated shopping,” Murphy says. “Using Zero-Touch Provisioning services, workers will go to a Web site and sign up for a software upgrade, and the tool will scan their computer and discover whether it is capable of the upgrade, if there is enough network capacity to perform the upgrade, and if the server computer has the capacity to deliver the upgrade. Users will schedule their upgrades at times convenient for them, and the tool will automatically deploy the software. The only time that the IT staff will have to be involved is when something interrupts the process, which we expect will be less than 5 percent of the time.”

By centralizing and automating the deployment of Office Professional Plus 2007, EMC will minimize disruption of work for tens of thousands of workers and keep its IT staff focused on new projects that move the business forward.

Savings of $19 Million
EMC expects significant savings by simplifying its global desktop and communications infrastructure and eliminating redundant voice-mail and videoconferencing systems. “With our investment in Office Professional Plus 2007 and Exchange Server 2007, we’ll save $19 million over the next four years in IT management and equipment costs,” Murphy says. “Switching to the new solution frees up money that we can use to be more efficient with our human capital and create revenue-generating and customer-supporting solutions that increase the effectiveness of our organization.

“It’s very rare that an IT organization has the ability to provide a solution that goes beyond user expectations and gets ahead of user requests,” Murphy adds. “Office Professional Plus 2007, Exchange Server 2007, and Office Communications Server 2007 present one of those opportunities. We have no doubt that our users will use these tools to create very innovative ways to communicate more effectively, close business, solve problems, and improve efficiencies.”

Microsoft Office System
The Microsoft Office system is the business world’s chosen environment for information work, providing the programs, servers, and services that help you succeed by transforming information into impact.

For more information about the Microsoft Office system, go to:
www.microsoft.com/office  

For More Information

For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com

For more information about EMC products and services, call (508) 435-1000 or visit the Web site at:
www.emc.com