FSA Group serves Australians who need help controlling their debt. In mid-2007, the company redesigned its outdated IT environment to offer enterprise-class capabilities, standardizing on Windows Server® 2003, Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003, and other core Microsoft software. These improvements led to rapid growth in the data the company had to manage. To address this challenge, FSA Group worked with CommVault—a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner—to deploy CommVault Simpana software for data management, archiving, replication, and resource management. Using technology from FAST—a Microsoft subsidiary—Simpana also offers rapid content-based indexing and searching. Now, FSA Group retrieves archived documents in seconds instead of hours, saves about 40 hours a month on user requests, has achieved 99.999 percent uptime, and has simplified the path for upgrading its core Microsoft software.

CSR Limited (CSR), which traces its roots to 1855, is one of the largest manufacturers in Australia. It is the sixth largest sugar producer in the world and a major manufacturer of building products including plasterboard, roofing material, insulation, and glass. CSR is also a joint venture participant in the Tomago aluminium smelter. The company uses SAP software to manage its multinational enterprise. CSR originally deployed SAP on a UNIX/Oracle stack, but later migrated to the Microsoft® Application Platform including Microsoft SQL Server® 2005 database software. Running SAP on SQL Server has proven so effective that after the company recently purchased Australia and New Zealand’s Pilkington Glass, it again migrated SAP from the UNIX/Oracle stack to the Microsoft Application Platform. CSR is enjoying a lower total cost of ownership, enhanced performance, and high availability.

Having a successful product can place lots of pressure on IT. That’s what BT Financial Group (BT) found after the company’s Wrap application for managing investment portfolios proved so popular that the influx of new customers threatened to outpace the capacity of its application infrastructure, based upon a 32-bit database management system (DBMS). BT considered options including moving to a 64-bit version of its existing DBMS. After working with Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner Avanade to conduct a proof of concept study and lab tests, BT migrated its Wrap infrastructure to the Microsoft Application Platform, including Microsoft SQL Server® 2005 Enterprise Edition (64-bit) database software. BT gained the performance and scalability it required, with some operations being completed more than 10 times faster, while enjoying a lower total cost of ownership.

Having been in the business since the 1860s, Australia’s QR Limited knows how to run a railroad. As the company prepared to upgrade its SAP R/3 enterprise resource planning (ERP) software it decided to move its SAP applications and databases from a mainframe and DB2 environment to the Microsoft® Application Platform, including Microsoft SQL Server® 2005 database software running on a geocluster supported by the Windows Server® 2003 Enterprise Edition operating system. The company estimates it is saving about U.S.$100,000 per month in mainframe costs, since moving its SAP infrastructure to a cluster of commodity servers running the Microsoft Application Platform. QR Limited reports 20 to 40 percent faster SAP transactional response times and up to 8 times faster batch processing since moving SAP to SQL Server 2005.

Snowy River Council faced a common challenge for local government. On one hand, they had a growing population and an increasing demand for services to be delivered online; on the other they faced tight budgetary restraints and constituent pressure not to increase rates over normal Consumer Price Index (CPI) rises. By rationalising their IT environment and standardising on the Microsoft platform, they were able to increase operational efficiencies, improve compliance in document management and deliver essential services online in a manageable secure environment.

The Town of Claremont, a local authority in the Western Suburbs of Perth was looking to meet new compliance requirements as a result of the introduction of new legislation. By replacing a complex manual system with Meridio, a Microsoft-based Electronic Document Management and Records Management solution, they were able to meet the new compliancy requirements and gain significant other benefits including: strengthened security; greater efficiencies through automation; and improved ease of use. They also plan to leverage the system’s integration with other Microsoft-based solutions to create an aggregated portal view for each citizen which shows their current and past interactions with Council.

As Business Imaging Solutions (BIS) Service Strategy Manager for Canon Australia, Charles Stephens makes customers a priority. Yet he had difficulty accessing sales data from the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to optimize service policies. After Canon Australia deployed a Microsoft business intelligence solution from Microsoft Gold Certified Partner ComOps, Stephens is using accurate, timely information to align his policies with corporate goals that focus on customer care as a key differentiator. Canon Australia is sharing product usage reports and actual service calls records with customers to strengthen relationships and drive brand loyalty.

Victoria-based Costa Group is a premier supplier of fresh fruit and vegetables to the Australian retail market. Grape Exchange operates across the supply chain and comprises seven separate business entities. Separate purchase and sale orders have to be generated between each of these entities as supermarket orders are processed through the supply chain. Grape Exchange’s administrative staff were overburdened because they had to enter data manually to produce every commercial document that passed between each commercial entity. In 2007, Grape Exchange standardised its accounting systems on Microsoft® Dynamics™ GP. Using custom workflow forms, the company connected Microsoft Dynamics GP to its order input web interface. Data flowed seamlessly from ordering to invoicing, documents were produced automatically, accuracy improved, and the business reduced its administrative workload.

Genexis Consulting, a Microsoft® Registered Partner, offers custom software solutions in the areas of mobility, Web, infrastructure management, and design. To enhance its solutions’ value and to improve flexibility and overall user experience, Genexis increasingly uses a software-plus-services approach. Genexis has seen a trend toward these flexible solutions, leading to its increased growth and revenue potential.

Brisbane Girls Grammar School (BGGS)'s IT team has an enormous responsibility, with more than 750 desktops, 200 classroom applications, email and other administrative systems. This technology infrastructure facilitates teaching and learning, so system downtime can seriously disrupt classroom activity. The school regularly upgrades to the latest Microsoft technology, which helps improve the administration of the school and provides teachers with more options in the classroom. The school's IT team needs to plan and carry out these technology upgrades smoothly while continuing to maintain existing systems. To address this need, BGGS signed up for Microsoft Services Essential Support. Essential Support helps BGGS more effectively manage its IT infrastructure, meet strategic goals, spend less time and money on outside IT resources, and better prepare for technology migrations and upgrades.