Day-Timer, the world-renowned maker of personal productivity tools, wanted to increase its own productivity by reducing costs—including the U.S.$725,000 annual cost of the mainframe on which it ran its business. The company migrated its ERP software to Windows Server® and the Microsoft® .NET Framework, using tools from Alchemy Solutions. The result cut costs by 94 percent. As a bonus, batch processing is 10 percent faster and developers are 25 percent more responsive to business needs.

The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), manages the world’s largest archive of climate and weather information. NCDC provides support for the study of global climate change and other environmental issues. One of the center’s major initiatives is to digitize its vast archive of paper records and make them available to researchers over the Internet. NCDC previously used a records management system developed, managed, and hosted by Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner National Interest Security Company (NISC). While pleased with the NISC system, NCDC wanted a solution it could manage and host locally, if necessary. Working with NISC, NCDC used Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007 to develop a simple, reliable records management system that can handle vast amounts of data and that its users can adopt seamlessly.

SharePoint Server 2007 is the industry standard for creating convenient, easy-to-use enterprise portals that are compatible with other corporate software. TNK-BP's SharePoint portal supports the work of 18,000 users across twenty Russian regions, making it the largest such portal in Russia.

When the Egyptian government wanted to build a tourism portal for the City of Luxor, the site of ancient Thebes, it turned to Microsoft Services for expert assistance. Microsoft Services coordinated a diverse project team, including cultural experts from the University of Cairo and local IT partners, to create a comprehensive, virtual tourist destination. The portal takes advantage of the latest Microsoft products and technologies to deliver sophisticated, interactive multimedia experiences, including a customized mapping service that details lodging, recreation, and amenities in Luxor. In addition, Microsoft Services transferred the skills needed to create and maintain the portal to local IT partners. Now, the City of Luxor anticipates capturing a greater share of tourism and investment in the region.

Leveraging Microsoft products for own needs, ALAN company not only enhances its experience in design, deployment, maintaining and support of the technologies for its customers, but also improve internal business processes.

The Dept. of Social and Family Affairs in Ireland promotes a caring society by providing income and other supports to enable active participation in society, promote social inclusion, and support families. It wanted to use the reach and immediacy of Internet communications to raise public awareness of its mandate and provide secure e-government services. To accomplish these goals, the Department had to upgrade its HTML-based Web site and streamline its content publication processes. It chose Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to support its portal and launched www.welfare.ie to immediate acclaim. The site boasts 50 percent more content, improved search, intuitive navigation, and new online services. It won an Irish eGovernment accessibility award. The new portal is supported by a streamlined Web publication process that significantly reduced the time required for site updates.

Siemens PLM Software offers Teamcenter, a product lifecycle management (PLM) solution that customers use for global collaboration during product development and launch. The company opted to integrate Teamcenter with Microsoft® Office programs to extend the power of PLM to departments throughout the enterprise for faster overall product development. Users also can take advantage of the familiar interface for increased productivity.

Unicorn IT, a hosting company based in London in the United Kingdom (U.K.), wanted to reduce its operating costs by bringing its backup and disaster recovery solution in-house. In 2008, it introduced a new system based on Microsoft® System Center Data Protection Manager 2007. Now, employees can restore customers’ files in minutes instead of hours, and IT operating costs have been cut by 30 per cent.

Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications provides consumers and businesses worldwide with advanced cell phones, wireless modems for PCs, and other cellular and broadband technologies. To stay a leader in this fiercely competitive industry, Sony Ericsson sought technology that could help its employees access applications and IT services faster over the company’s global network. To accomplish this, Sony Ericsson deployed Windows Server® on WAAS—Cisco Wide Area Applications Services (WAAS) running Windows Server 2008. With the Windows Server on WAAS solution, teams in different parts of the world can access enterprise applications and share data files more easily. Plus the streamlined, more cost-effective data and branch IT architecture helps the company save about €17,000 (U.S.$24,000) per branch annually.

WorleyParsons, a provider of professional services to the energy, resource, and complex process industries, has grown substantially through a series of mergers and acquisitions. To best reflect its international presence, and to be able to publish information in a timely manner, the company had to replace its outdated Web site. WorleyParsons used Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 as the foundation for its new Web site. In less than three months, the company launched a new global corporate site, with tools that allow users to seamlessly publish content to WorleyParsons.com—with minimal involvement from IT. The publishing process is so much simpler that the company saves three days of time each week among IT and marketing personnel responsible for the publishing process.