Civil engineering firm, Aas-Jakobsen in Oslo, Norway, wanted to provide its staff with the tools to maintain a high level of productivity. The firm standardized on Microsoft® software, and as its staff grew to 90 people, wanted to reduce its software licensing costs. Working with OfficeTeam, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, the firm acquired a Microsoft Open Value Subscription with the single-platform option. Through this subscription Aas-Jakobsen pays a fixed cost per desktop for the operating system, Microsoft Office Professional, and client access licenses for core server products. The firm can add or subtract PCs or upgrade products covered under the subscription without changing the cost per desktop. As result, Aas-Jakobsen reduced desktop administration time by 25 percent, lowered licensing costs by 27 percent, and gained more value and predictable licensing costs.

Just Energy is a leading independent energy supplier with more than 1.5 million electricity and natural gas customer accounts in North America. To accommodate a growing need for improved business continuity and real-time access to data, the company wanted to minimize the costs associated with maintaining and developing its data infrastructure. After analyzing various IT options, Just Energy determined that creating a data management platform based on Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 would represent a cost-effective method to improve its data compression and warehousing capabilities. Today, the company is using SQL Server 2008 to operate within a cost-effective, secure and scalable IT infrastructure that features strong server consolidation and a higher availability of corporate data.

Radio Flyer, one of the oldest and most prestigious names in children’s toys, didn’t want to play around when it came to applying business intelligence (BI) to understanding current and future sales trends. So it rejected Oracle and SAP Business Objects solutions in favor of a Microsoft® solution that enables better decision making, requires less IT staff time for reporting, and has a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) than other options.

Rome-based Birra Peroni the leading brewer of Italian premium lagers, wanted to improve coordination and collaboration of its iconic marketing campaigns and trade marketing activities in Italy. Previously, the company relied on spreadsheet software, but lacked the tools to track and analyse the results of promotions at their events. Working with two Microsoft Gold Certified Partners in Italy, Ecobyte Technology and Istante, Peroni migrated to Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007 collaboration technology as the most cost-effective control environment for its marketing cycle planning. Planning, approval, reporting and analysis of a campaign or promotion, which used to take between one week and one month to produce, is now available in near real time. Peroni parent company SABMiller, one of the world leading brewers, is now considering extending the solution to the rest of the group.

From November 2008 till July 2009, S-OIL built an enterprise-wide communications and collaboration platform. S-OIL not only upgraded its existing groupware but also from an integration perspective, chose to a method to link a single platform for portal, collaboration, groupware, mobile, search, messenger and video conferencing as well as IP telephony utilizing Microsoft’s technologies and solution. In addition, it deployed 2007 Microsoft Office System in the business user environment and laid the groundwork for comprehensive enterprise security system with Active Directory and Forefront product families. With this project, S-OIL achieves more about 121% of ROI effects including innovation of conference culture, improvement of payment related work processing speed and real time support of decision making.

E-learning specialist Aula Salud wanted a highly available, robust, and cost-effective solution to deliver education programs with video streaming for healthcare professionals in Spain. Aula Salud chose Atnova, which offered this kind of solution based entirely on Microsoft® technologies, rather than open-source development tools. With these solutions, Aula Salud achieved increased student numbers and a return on investment in the first year.

Genea provides energy management solutions to commercial property owners. Its Building Optimization Platform provides visibility into and control over energy consumption from the point of demand through billing for property managers and tenants. When it decided to create a Web-enabled, hosted version of its solution, Genea chose to use the Windows® 7 operating system for its performance, security features, scalability, and built-in Microsoft® .NET Framework 3.5 technology, along with Windows Server® 2008 R2 Enterprise for high availability. Genea noted that key software components of its solution run 35 percent faster on Windows 7 than on previous operating systems. The company is streamlining management of the Building Optimization Platform through enhanced remote access capabilities, while delivering a highly reliable solution that can handle large transaction volumes.

Construction company Crest Nicholson needed a resilient IT infrastructure that would require less support. The firm chose Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner Computacenter to implement an infrastructure based on Windows Vista® Enterprise and the 2007 Microsoft Office suite. Crest Nicholson now has a robust and reliable infrastructure—and because its employees can work remotely, productivity has increased.

Client Profiles saw an opportunity to develop legal practice management software that was easier to use than established solutions from Lexis-Nexis and Thomson Reuters. The company built a solution that takes advantage of the integration between Microsoft Dynamics® CRM and Microsoft® Office Outlook® to automate common tasks, such as retrieving new contacts for archival in a shared marketing database. To meet project goals, including rapid time-to-market, Client Profiles capitalized on the flexibility of xRM, the business application framework that underpins Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Developers accessed prebuilt workflow components and reporting services available through xRM to quickly infuse CRM4Legal with features that benefit multiple roles within any law firm. With xRM, Client Profiles dramatically reduced development time and achieved an estimated cost savings of U.S.$2 million.

CCH, which provides software for business professionals, adapted its sales tax–calculation application to run on the Windows Azure™ platform. CCH expects its use of Windows Azure to result in greater choice for customers, the ability to scale on demand, and lower costs. The company found the learning curve for the migration experience to be smooth and easy for developers because of the familiar tool set and operating environment of the Windows Azure platform.