Partner Stories

Dollar Thrifty Auto Group (DTAG) is one of the largest car rental companies in the United States. It generates 66 percent of its business through online sales. A critical business application, the Rate Engine, provides DTAG rate information to customers. Instead of spending U.S.$700,000 to upgrade the Oracle platform, it migrated the Rate Engine to Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise data management software.

Working with CSC and Microsoft Services, the government-owned Royal Mail Group (RMG) in the United Kingdom decided to implement the virtualization service with the Hyper-V feature of Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter and the Microsoft System Center suite of monitoring tools. By virtualizing its server estate, RMG expects a return on investment in 19 months and savings of £1.8 million over four years.

Pentair Technical Products needed to upgrade its aging product life-cycle management system. After choosing ENOVIA V6R2009x, it evaluated the performance of Oracle Database 10g and Microsoft SQL Server data management software. The company found that SQL Server offered lower total costs and better performance, improving both productivity and customer service.

Ferno-Washington wanted to simplify file sharing between engineers and suppliers, speed access to data, and support the reuse of parts between groups. The company also needed to eliminate unplanned system downtime. To address these challenges, Ferno engaged 3DVision Technologies to help replace its design tools with a comprehensive solution from Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corp.

Desert Schools Federal Credit Union is one of the largest credit unions in the United States. To maintain that position, it must continue to provide member service that delivers competitive advantage. That’s why it adopted a call center solution from Fiserv based on Microsoft technology. Now agents handle members’ calls faster and more effectively; agent training focuses on service, not systems; and business agility is up, too.

Fundtech developed a new payment solution, based on Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010, Windows Server 2008 R2, and other Microsoft technologies. The solution adds SEPA-compliant processing to existing payment systems and supplies developers with built-in tools to make their work easier and gives customers fast-deployment capabilities.

With the prevalence of broadband, HSN saw an opportunity to deliver its retail programming to customers via its website. The company also wanted to expand its presence to mobile devices, giving customers a consistent HSN shopping experience on any platform. To accomplish these goals, HSN used Microsoft Silverlight, which supports Internet Information Services Smooth Streaming.

With the help of Microsoft Gold Certified Partner HP, Black & Veatch Corporation decided to implement a solution to provide presence, instant messaging, conferencing, desktop sharing, and voice capabilities across the enterprise. With this solution, the company could help mobilize a global work force and enable them to communicate anywhere, anytime with colleagues, clients, and business partners.

DeLaval uses a Siebel customer relationship management (CRM) system for its mission-critical sales activities. The company decided to replace Oracle with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Enterprise data management software and the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system. The Microsoft Application Platform products provide enterprise-level performance for the company’s mission-critical system at a fraction of the cost of the equivalent Oracle solution.

KapStone needed to implement an IT infrastructure that would revolve around an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. To do so, KapStone deployed Microsoft Dynamics AX, and with the integrated solution, the company reduced costs, saving as much as U.S.$9 million on implementation costs compared to SAP; eased IT management; enabled continuous productivity improvements; and supported growth.

Aerotek Inc., one of the largest staffing providers in the United States (and part of the Allegis Group), specializes in placing temporary workers in the engineering, clinical, scientific, automotive, energy services, and aviation industries. Aerotek calculates that the Kronos-SQL Server solution has lowered its total cost of ownership (TCO) and enabled it to better monitor costs, increase reliability, and improve business insights and customer service.

Silicone manufacturer Dow Corning needed a scalable, flexible platform to support asset visibility within the supply chain. A pilot deployment of Microsoft BizTalk Server RFID reduced its delivery windows by 97 percent, to 20 minutes, and reduced costs by U.S.$450,000. With a faster, cheaper, and more accurate process, trailer tracking and inventory accuracy have improved, and trailer asset utilization has increased.

Kelley Blue Book developed its kbb.com app for Windows Phone 7 in only six weeks, enabling the company to capitalize on the Windows Phone initial release to drive customer acquisition—and deliver a rich and polished mobile application experience.

The retailer of casual apparel for teens and young adults focuses on youth culture as a key differentiator, but its employee portal was based on green-screen technology that was older than many of the store’s employees. To update its portal, which ran on the point-of-sale system, Pacific Sunwear chose Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and related technologies.

Silicone manufacturer Dow Corning needed a scalable, flexible platform to support asset visibility within the supply chain. A pilot deployment of Microsoft BizTalk Server RFID reduced its delivery windows by 97 percent, to 20 minutes, and reduced costs by U.S.$450,000. With a faster, cheaper, and more accurate process, trailer tracking and inventory accuracy have improved, and trailer asset utilization has increased.

International Game Technology (IGT) wanted to eliminate excessive costs related to the Oracle database used by its PTC Windchill Product Lifecycle Management system. The company migrated to Microsoft SQL Server 2005 data management software, which delivers 18 percent better performance than Oracle and will reduce the company’s total cost of ownership by 90 percent.

Teradyne adopted new processes for managing the requirements of product development projects, collaboration on project team documents, and change orders, implemented through Siemens PLM Software’s Teamcenter® software and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. Now, personnel have faster and easier access to more accurate data, which has led to less manufacturing rework, lower scrap costs, faster change-order cycles, lower project scheduling slip rates, lower change-order processing costs, and higher customer satisfaction.

SunGard creates solutions for 41 of the world’s top 50 banks, so it wants the best platform on the planet to support its massively scalable asset and liability management (ALM) solution—Ambit ALM. This scalability benefits SunGard customers by enabling more complex simulation models to be processed, which helps enhance predictive accuracy.

Working with Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner Temenos, North Shore Credit Union (NSCU) deployed a comprehensive core banking platform running on Microsoft-based technologies. Today, NSCU is meeting its technology and industry challenges by improved data management and trend forecasting, all of which improves member service and gives them a clear competitive advantage.

International Game Technology (IGT) wanted to eliminate excessive costs related to the Oracle database used by its PTC Windchill Product Lifecycle Management system. The company migrated to Microsoft SQL Server 2005 data management software, which delivers 18 percent better performance than Oracle and will reduce the company’s total cost of ownership by 90 percent.

To help ensure consistent data collection and analysis, Zurich built a Global Risk Engineering Workstation (GREW) based on the xRM application development framework in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The Risk Engineering team now adds greater value to the overall organization, especially by helping the policy-underwriting group and customers better understand risk exposure and identify potential solutions.