Aviva, a leading provider of financial services worldwide, wanted to help customers save money by basing auto insurance quotes on the behavior of individual drivers instead of statistics. To better understand potential customers, Aviva needed to collect telematics data from moving vehicles, but deploying on-premises infrastructure was too costly and complex. That changed when it implemented a hybrid-cloud solution based on Windows Azure. The solution uses smartphones to collect telematics data that it stores in the cloud on Windows Azure SQL Database. It also integrates with an on-premises quote system and social media such as Facebook and Twitter. With this highly scalable, extensible and secure cloud platform, Aviva can bring innovative solutions to the marketplace with a rapid lifecycle, help customers save up to 20 percent, and reach customers through the devices they use every day.

With its 2020 Vision for the Keihin Group, Keihin Corporation aims to expand globally by promoting various initiatives such as the development of information infrastructure that links offices worldwide, and achieve its goal of becoming a truly independent system parts manufacturer capable of competing with mega-suppliers on products and technology that contribute to the global environment. The company revealed that its IS department faced difficulty in allocating sufficient resources to the planning and development of new initiatives, as it was burdened by system maintenance operations that have expanded from the backbone system to the information system. It leveraged on “Management Consulting”, a corporate technical support service provided by Microsoft Premier Support team. Through Management Consulting, it was able to identify issues in its business which led to a breakthrough.

Deliver Australia works with local partners to provide transport solutions across the Australian continent. Its business runs on a Microsoft Office 365 and Windows Azure cloud infrastructure. The company sought a process diagramming tool and chose Microsoft Visio 2013 because it works in a cloud environment. Now, Deliver Australia and its partners can co-author transport process diagrams to better serve customers, who can track their deliveries by viewing dynamic diagrams with near real-time information. By using Visio 2013 for data visualization, Deliver Australia has boosted its competitive advantage and improved its relationships with both its customers and partners.

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.

Yokohama Tire Canada, a major tire distributor was using manual processes to create and approve custom quotes, despite having several line-of-business systems deployed. Spot Solutions connected these systems via Microsoft SharePoint® 2010, improving visibility into business processes, cross-company collaboration, competitive advantage, and profitability.