The Applied Information Technology Laboratory at the São Paulo State University (UnESP ), Brazil, conducts technology research projects. The lab helped doctors comply with a new XML-based standard for exchanging health data over the Internet. Researchers used Open XML Formats to embed the mandated XML schema compliant data into a form using Microsoft® Office Word 2007. Now doctors can fill out the form while simultaneously complying with the new standard.

Leading outsourcing consultant EquaTerra wanted an automated, scalable tool to enable clients to better implement best practices and other recommendations, but existing systems didn’t support EquaTerra’s comprehensive approach. So, the company launched EquaSiis, partnering with Microsoft and RCM, a Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner. The result, EquaSiis Enterprise, can save a client millions of dollars a year in reduced governance costs and recovered fees. And thanks to the partnership with Microsoft and RCM, EquaSiis developed the solution for less cost, and is seeing strong sales in the company’s target market of Global 2000 companies.

Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP, which employs more than 800 lawyers and professionals in 15 offices worldwide, had outgrown the labor-intensive ways in which it created budgets and monitored the firm’s performance. To help ensure continued growth and profitability, the firm turned to The Glenture Group, a Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner, to help create budget-planning and key performance indicator (KPI) systems based on Microsoft Business Intelligence. Now, budget reports are created 10 times faster than before, and KPI data is displayed in real time rather than monthly, with instant drill-down capability to explore details. With this greater speed and analysis capability, management is spending less time administering data and more time analyzing information to make better decisions for the firm and its clients—at a time when law firms are facing increased pressure on profits.

The road to recovery: Eagleville Hospital knows it well, having helped people fight addiction for more than 40 years. Caregivers at the 310-bed hospital and its affiliated outpatient clinics depend on e-mail for communication concerning patient care. The hospital replaced its aging Microsoft® Exchange 2000 Server messaging system with Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 to improve system reliability and ease compliance with governmental regulations. The hospital also transitioned from a highly manual process for reporting hazardous incidents to a records management system based on the 2007 Microsoft Office system. This change helped the hospital ensure a higher level of security for patient health information and streamlined reporting processes that lead to improved patient and staff safety. The hospital has significantly reduced time spent fielding support calls.

For years, the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO) used a multivendor, partly mainframe-based IT environment. Seeking to improve productivity and streamline processes, the agency implemented the 2007 Microsoft® Office release, including Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007. In addition, the agency deployed a simple, customized user interface and a powerful Office Business Application that provides access to a vital line-of-business solution. Now, office-based and mobile employees alike can access and track documents far more easily, the agency’s grant-approval process is more efficient and provides greater accountability and transparency, agency presentations are more professional and compelling, and IT costs are down by more than U.S.$1 million yearly. Moreover, the agency is now viewed as a technology leader by other governmental entities.

Hercules Offshore is a global provider of offshore contract drilling, liftboat, and inland barge services based in Houston, Texas. After a series of acquisitions and mergers, Hercules Offshore needed to standardize and automate its various health, safety, and environment (HSE) processes. Instead of buying an off-the-shelf software solution, the company decided to build a Web-based dashboard, using Microsoft® collaboration and database technologies that it already licensed. HSE Dashboard is an Office Business Application that allows employees to effectively collaborate using Microsoft Office system products, promoting the ubiquitous adoption and widespread commitment to HSE that Hercules Offshore wanted. Employees are using the solution’s standardized workflows and detailed reporting to reduce administrative expenses and to make better HSE policy decisions.

Shipping leader FedEx wanted to provide customers with more value by integrating FedEx® services directly into its customers’ business applications to complement their functionality, so it decided to develop a number of applications for the 2007 Microsoft® Office system. One such application, known as FedEx® QuickShip, provides an easy way for customers to ship packages while working in Microsoft Office Outlook® 2007 or Outlook 2003. FedEx developed the applications using a software-plus-services approach and tools such as Microsoft Visual Studio® 2005. All the applications support the company’s goals of increasing access to FedEx services and improving customer productivity and loyalty. By increasing access, FedEx hopes to boost its revenue while maximizing the use of existing technology assets.

Chesapeake Energy, the leading natural-gas producer in the United States, is a rapidly growing company that tripled its employee headcount between 2005 and 2008. To meet the challenges of such rapid growth, the company needed a more powerful intranet solution to boost worker productivity, improve workflow, and enhance collaboration across the oil and gas value chain. Using Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007, Chesapeake Energy developed and deployed a new solution that integrates the company’s intranet, extranet, and Internet presence. Through its extensibility, the solution streamlines collaboration across project teams—including teams with remote employees—and creates a foundation for business intelligence applications, stronger content management, and consistent communications with external stakeholders.

IT infrastructure provider BMS Digital Solutions needed a way to help its field staff stay in better communication with customers while on the road, as well as receive and respond to critical information faster. Now equipped with Windows Mobile® 6 phones, BMS staff are more responsive to customers, arriving at site visits armed with the very latest information.

When the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) emerged as a public standard for working with structured content, Content Technologies recognized its value. It also saw problems for com-panies trying to widely deploy an authoring architecture that requires XML experts and special tools. So the solution provider built DITA Exchange, which enables users to develop and publish DITA content using Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007. To make the process even easier, the company built an Office Busi-ness Application that enables any user to create DITA content within the Microsoft Office Word 2007 user interface. Because Content Technologies customers can roll out the authoring solution across the enterprise to simplify content reuse and maximize return on investment, the solution has received strong interest from many organizations.