4-page Case Study - Posted 6/17/2009
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Indian Architecture Firm Improves Productivity with Windows® 7
Based in Bangalore, India, Idicon Space Designs is a full-service architecture and design firm. Since its launch in 1998, the company has served a wide range of clients, including corporate, residential, and commercial. They also provide landscaping, retail design, urban planning, and project management services. Idicon employs a staff of 20 architects, designers, engineers, and project managers, and runs 7-10 PCs. In addition to its main Bangalore office, Idicon also operates satellite offices in Gurgaon, Hyderabad, and Chennai to expand its cross-country reach. The company relies on a freelance IT professional for technical support. By deploying the Windows® 7 operating system, Idicon was able to increase the efficiency of its applications, reduce the amount of resources required for day-to-day operations, and ensure the integrity of its data.
Situation
Idicon provides each of its customers with comprehensive, personalized service for their building and design projects. After meeting with the client to ensure a clear understanding of their vision, the company builds a draft and presents it for review before finalizing the plans. To ensure clear communication and optimal project efficiency at every step along the way, the company needed an operating system designed to empower small businesses.
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Our entire team is very pleased with the performance of Windows 7. It’s fast, it’s more stable, and it doesn’t require as much memory. |
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Priya Ravishankar,
Senior Architect, Idicon |
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Priya Ravishankar, Senior Architect at Idicon, uses her computer primarily for technical drawings and presentations. She and the other architects run many resource-heavy applications, such as AutoCAD and Adobe PhotoShop, which require a large amount of computing power. When running on previous systems, these programs were often sluggish and unstable, causing inefficiencies in the design process. Idicon sought a cleaner, more resourceful solution that would have no problems supporting its heavy applications and graphic-based work.
Like many other small businesses, many of Idicon’s day-to-day frustrations were related to the PC interface. The company needed to reduce the amount of employee time required for routine tasks and to make it easier for them to navigate their systems. It also needed a better method of storing, organizing, sharing, and accessing information within its small number of computers.
Finally, Idicon sought a more robust backup tool to replace its current manual backup procedure, which was not adequately protecting its data from potential loss or corruption.
Solution
Windows 7, offering ease of use, more robust performance, and business-efficiency features, creates an efficient computing environment for small businesses like Idicon. According to Steve Ballmer, Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft®, Windows 7 has “…all the right ingredients: simplicity, reliability and speed.”
Upon deploying the new operating system, Idicon found the solution it had been seeking. Ravishankar has been highly impressed with the system’s speed and efficiency. “Our entire team is very pleased with the performance of Windows 7,” she says. “It’s fast, it’s more stable, and it doesn’t require as much memory.”
Benefits
Power for Resource-Intensive Processes
Windows 7 ReadyBoost™ allows Ravishankar’s team to improve the performance of their computers without purchasing additional memory. Users simply insert a USB flash drive into their existing PCs; the portable memory is then used to run more applications and process more information, without accessing the hard drive.
“The ReadyBoost function will really help us with rendering graphics and running resource-heavy applications,” Ravishankar notes. “I love the idea of increasing our memory at no extra cost.”
Business Efficiency
The Idicon team has also been pleased with the many efficiencies built into the Windows 7 interface. With Aero® Snap, Ravishankar can easily compare multiple drafts of drawings side by side on the screen. She also likes the new Aero Shake feature, which allows her to instantly minimize background windows with a shake of the mouse.
Accessing essential data is much easier with the improved search functions of Windows 7. The Federated Search feature essentially turns Windows Explorer into a search engine, allowing users to query not only the files, folders, and Libraries across the entire network, but also Web sites, services, and remote repositories. In addition, it offers intuitive guesses for impartial search strings.
Mobility and Networking
With the large number of client presentations made by Idicon’s staff, the improved Mobility Center is a tangible asset. By combining all of the most common PC settings in one central location, this feature allows mobile users to quickly configure their computers in remote locations. It even remembers favorite settings so they don’t have to be re-entered multiple times.
Like many small businesses, Idicon has only a few computers on site and had not been running a network server. With the HomeGroups feature in Windows 7, the company can easily set up an ad-hoc network without the expense of a server, allowing the seamless sharing of hard drives, documents, and printers. With Windows Libraries, co-workers can store all versions of drawings and designs in a central, shared location that functions just like their local drives.
“HomeGroups and Libraries let us easily share drafts and resources,” remarks Ravishankar. “Even though we’re a small business, we can perform like a big one without the extra cost.”
Worry-Free Backup and Recovery
Prior to Windows 7, Idicon was running manual backups only intermittently. Although this saved the company from having to purchase separate backup software, it was also putting its large amount of graphic files and customer records at risk for loss or corruption. With Windows 7, advanced backup functions are included at no extra cost. Ravishankar and her co-workers can now back up their PCs – or their entire HomeGroup network – with a single click, and can even schedule regular backups.
The Shadow Copy feature also promises to preserve Idicon’s peace of mind. By periodically backing up the most recent version of a document, this functionality allows users to restore the previously saved version of a file, in the event of it getting accidentally deleted, lost, or corrupted.
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
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 Compu Solutions products and services, call or visit the Web site at:
www.compusolutionsindia.com
For more information about Idicon Space Designs products and services, call 080 41538940 or visit the Web site at:
www.idiconspace.com
