4-page Partner Case Study - Posted 6/28/2009

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eMazzanti Technologies

Windows 7 Helps IT Consultant Operate Lean and Green

Situation

eMazzanti Technologies is all about delivering powerful solutions in the most efficient manner possible to its more than 400 small and mid-size customers. The Hoboken, N.J. firm is located in one of the most densely populated—and competitive—regions in the U.S. Increasing productivity through better technology solutions is a philosophy eMazzanti first internalizes, then evangelizes to its customers and prospects. For example, its technology adoption must meet one or more criteria: (1) enhance the ability to serve its customers, (2) increase productivity in significant, incremental ways, (3) help create a competitive advantage, (4) promote conservation and green alternatives. "Since our customers pay a flat monthly rate, we have to be efficient in order to keep them happy and maintain profitability," said Carl Mazzanti, vice president, eMazzanti Technologies. "We look to best practices and technology to help us be more competitive, productive and profitable.” "We're also looking for greener IT solutions for our customers that save paper or power," noted Jennifer Mazzanti, president, eMazzanti Technologies. "PC users often turn off or change power saving features that drive up electricity costs or have negative productivity effects because laptop battery life is not what it ought to be.” “To make PC energy consumption more personal, ZDNet.com calculated the average CPU and monitor wasted approximately $90 per year in electricity,” noted Jennifer Mazzanti. “There’s both an economic and an environmental incentive to pay attention to greener computing.”

Solution

Trigger Start Services is a new Windows 7 feature that fires-up services only when needed. It enables faster startup and shut down as well as reducing power consumption. Jennifer Mazzanti, President, eMazzanti Technologies

Trigger Start Services
Trigger Start Services fires up an application’s service, such as a webcam software update or the availability of an IP address, in a more efficient manner. Windows 7 consolidates or batches service requests to more efficiently use computer resources.

Problem Steps Recorder
This feature enables eMazzanti customers to record their interactions with an application or computer operation and provide a detailed screen-by-screen view with accompanying keystroke annotation. Problems can be more clearly communicated to eMazzanti staff which in turn reduces help desk resolution time.

Power Management
Laptop batteries last longer with power-saving features like Battery Power Management. For example, adaptive display brightness dims the display if an engineer has not used the PC for a period of time.

Snap, Shake, Peek
Snap windows to a side-by-side view by dragging windows to borders, left and right. Grab and shake the foremost window to make all other windows disappear. Shake again to make all open windows reappear. The Peek feature is invoked by clicking on the lower right hand Show Desktop rectangle. The desktop is immediately visible to view gadgets and other desktop icons.

Taskbar Customization
Jump Lists allow users to see the most recent files by right-clicking on the Taskbar.

Federated
Search Windows 7 has enhanced search features that deepen search capabilities, essentially making Windows 7 Professional a giant search engine scouring local PCs, HomeGroup, network, external drives, and the Internet.

Benefits

Faster Trouble Ticket Closure, Estimated to Save Over $75,000
"Problem Steps Recorder is our number one most valued feature in Windows 7," said Carl Mazzanti. "It precisely captures the problem event and gets trouble tickets closed. Our customers are happier and we've been more efficient in solving the problem." "Problem Steps Recorder helps us to solve customer problems up to 50 percent faster," continued Mazzanti. "Since we handle as many as 14,000 tickets a year, the time savings could be worth as much as $75,000."

More Efficient Computing
"Trigger Start Services is a new Windows 7 feature that fires-up only when needed. This enables faster start-up and shut down of your computer as well as reducing power consumption,” said Jennifer Mazzanti. "It takes time for a computer processor to get to a true idle state. Think of it as the deep REM sleep we finally get to at night," continued Mazzanti. "In previous operating systems and over time, a long list of automatic service requests associated with webcams, IM clients, MP3 players and photo editing applications keeps consuming resources -memory, I/O and CPU. These all bog the computer down. Fortunately, Windows 7 has the answer and 'batches' the work or engages just as the resources are needed."

Extended Productivity, Greener Computing
"The Power Management feature in Windows 7 doubles the battery life of our laptops," commented Jennifer Mazzanti, "effectively doubling our engineer's productivity when they're working on the run without a plug-in power source." "Windows 7 is so operationally 'lean' that it can run on older hardware," shared Mazzanti. "That means our customers can extend the life of their hardware investment which often is a mix of new and older machines." "Windows 7 has another 'green' side," noted Mazzanti. "Group policy enabled power management is a great new tool to help a company be more environmental friendly. Power savings can be particularly significant across an entire school district or organization."

More Efficient Navigation
“Snap, Peek, Shake and Jump Lists make document navigation more efficient. Engineers routinely work on 3-4 support calls at their multi-monitor workstations. Windows 7 streamlines the complexity." Mazzanti continued, "Jump Lists are very powerful productivity features, especially since they can be used with non-Microsoft applications like graphics programs that are used to create marketing style guides and logo libraries."

Deeper, More Powerful Searches
"Federated Search examines hard disks, network and Internet sources, even down to command lines and control panel content," said Mazzanti. "We save time finding customer support information and customers save time with more accurate searching." "Federated Search is so powerful that we've found custom scripting files, something highly unlikely with previous search options," continued Mazzanti.

More Built-in Security
"The security features and capabilities now built into Windows 7 can many times eliminate the need to buy extra third-party software," said Jennifer Mazzanti. "The customer saves money and they have confidence that everything works together well."

Windows 7
Faster and more reliable: Windows 7 will help your organization use information technology to gain a competitive advantage in today’s new world of work. Your people will be able to be more productive anyway. You will be able to support your mobile work force with better access to shared data and collaboration tools. And your IT staff will have better tools and technologies to enhance corporate IT security, data protection, and more efficient deployment and management. For more information about Windows 7, go to: www.microsoft.com/windows/business