Located in the heart of India's premier educational centre, the city of Pune, Symbiosis Centre for Distance Learning (SCDL) is a centre of excellence, offering quality distance education. But the institute’s hosted e-mail service was not user friendly, and took too much time and money to manage. To reduce spending, it decided to replace its aging, in-house student e-mail solution with a hosted solution. SCDL chose Microsoft® Live@edu, a set of free Web-based communication and collaboration services. Students are excited about the new solution’s reliability, as well as the ability to organize their communications in one place. The solution offers online storage with Windows Live™ SkyDrive. Students are using Live@edu to get better organized, and improve communications with their faculty.

Taking its responsibility to students, faculty, and staff seriously, Sacred Heart University wanted a highly effective emergency response plan—one that could be updated at any time, with information always available to first responders and other authorized users. For this lifesaving function, the university built a Web site based on Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007. The result is more detailed, up-to-date plans and better interagency coordination.

Barry-Wehmiller Companies, Inc. is a U.S.$1 billion global provider of manufacturing equipment and services. The company’s employees rely on up-to-date messaging technology to conduct business with partners and customers around the world. Barry-Wehmiller wanted to upgrade to Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007 e-mail messaging and collaboration software. However, in light of tough global economic conditions and a corporate culture that promotes a “Lean” organization, the IT department re-evaluated the cost of deploying an on-premises solution. Instead, Barry-Wehmiller chose Microsoft Online Services to deliver all the scalability, security, and functionality the company needs for desktop and mobile e-mail. The hosted communications and collaboration solution saved Barry-Wehmiller $200,000 in hardware and infrastructure costs, as well as another $100,000 on an archiving solution.

Two Degrees, LLC, a professional services firm headquartered in Seattle, Washington, planned to upgrade its key messaging and collaboration solutions and boost its disaster recovery and data privacy practices. Instead of paying for on-premises migrations, new hardware, and a more secure data center, Two Degrees, LLC became an early adopter of Microsoft® Online Services. Its autonomous technology solutions division, Slalom Consulting, deployed the hosted solution to deliver the security, communication, and collaboration functionality that Two Degrees, LLC consultants need to focus on customers and work productively onsite or at the office—at a 44 percent lower cost per person than it originally budgeted for. After successfully deploying Microsoft Online Services for its parent company, Slalom Consulting can now offer Microsoft Online Services to customers ahead of its competitors.

Seton Hall University in New Jersey is the oldest diocesan university in the United States. Though its computer systems are leading edge, its on-premises e‑mail service did not live up to student expectations. Instead of an expensive upgrade, Seton Hall implemented Microsoft® Live@edu hosted collaboration services, including Windows Live™ SkyDrive™ online storage. Now, students have the tools to be successful on campus and in the workforce.

StatoilHydro, an international energy company based in Stavanger, Norway, wanted to make sure that workers in its increasingly global operations could fully collaborate with their colleagues. Operating in a fiercely competitive market, StatoilHydro recognizes that delivering the information that employees need to do their jobs helps give the company an edge. To address remote access issues that could hinder employee productivity and collaboration, the oil company is implementing the Windows® 7 operating system and the Windows Server® 2008 R2 operating system, which together offer features such as BranchCache™ to improve data access at branch offices and DirectAccess to simplify remote connectivity. As a result of the upgrade, StatoilHydro will deliver seamless access to the corporate network for traveling employees, improve information access at branch offices, and enhance IT security.

Deployment of Exchange Server 2007 with server roles separation allows enhance e-mail protection, lower number of undesirable messages, and decrease viruses’ attacks probability.

AutoTrader.com sought a more dynamic intranet portal and wanted to know more about Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 to see if the product could meet its technical and business requirements. The company attended several Microsoft Technology Center engagements and left with an informed technology decision, an implementation strategy, and the necessary information to develop a portal with the comprehensive functionality that users needed.

Telecom Services Provider, Tata Tele Services Ltd., Cuts Costs By INR 10 Crore (U.S. 2 Million) Annually

emFAST, a Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner and a leader in fax solutions, optimized its FACSys fax-server software to extend the messaging capabilities of Microsoft Exchange Server 2010. By deploying FACSys solutions with Exchange Server 2010, businesses gain incoming and outgoing fax services. As a result, they can increase productivity, reduce costs, enhance security, and get a more complete business record for compliance and other business purposes.