Microsoft Partner, Mamut, provides integrated software solutions and Internet services, including CRM, sales force, logistics, accounting, e-commerce, domain name, e-mail, and Web hosting services, for small and medium-sized businesses in Europe. Mamut chose to implement the Windows Azure platform in order to extend its on-premises solutions with scalable computing power and mass data storage capabilities to create hybrid solutions that will allow the company to offer more services and reach more customers. With Windows Azure, Mamut can now expand its offerings and customer base without investing in additional servers for increased scalability and availability.

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.

Sitemasher, developer of an innovative platform for building and managing Web sites, wanted to help Web professionals create scalable, data-driven Web sites faster, and at lower cost. The company also needed to lower its own systems infrastructure costs. Sitemasher used the Windows Azure™ platform to offer its application as a hosted service, delivering an efficient, highly available, and highly scalable Web site development and hosting environment to its customers. By hosting its application on Windows Azure through Microsoft® data centers, the company has minimized infrastructure costs and reduced ongoing maintenance. Finally, with no data centers of its own to manage, Sitemasher will refocus the time its development staff spent maintaining servers to improving and expanding the Sitemasher application, representing a time savings of approximately 20 percent.

Hostway Corporation is one of the world’s largest Web hosting companies, providing a full range of Internet services to 2 million direct and indirect customers worldwide. To curb server proliferation, reduce hardware and setup costs, and improve availability, the Hostway Enterprise Services division used the Windows Server® 2008 R2 Datacenter operating system, the Hyper-V™ technology, Microsoft® System Center data center solutions, and the Microsoft Dynamic Data Center Toolkit for Hosting to create an on-demand, dedicated virtual server offering. With the new platform, Hostway will slash server deployment work by up to 1,000 hours a month and expects hardware and electrical costs to drop by nearly U.S.$2 million annually. Hostway was also able to cut 60 to 90 days from its product introduction cycle and get to market sooner with a cost-effective offering that boasts 100 percent uptime.

Based in Portugal, Multivector is a professional services business that provides software for advertisers, publishers, and content providers. Since 1998, the company has specialised in real estate and car dealerships, helping these advertisers manage their businesses while reaching a large audience through dozens of Internet portals. Now it has launched AdClip, an online service where advertisers can post classified listings that have the potential to reach hundreds of publishers and many thousands of customers worldwide.

Belgium-based Combell provides hosted Web and application services for a growing number of European customers. The company deployed Windows Server® 2008 to help improve efficiency, but it was interested in additional virtualization and management enhancements. To meet its needs, Combell chose to deploy Windows Server 2008 R2. As a result, the company has reduced its server management time by 20 percent and anticipates major cost savings in its data centers. Additionally, Combell can offer more flexible solutions to its customers.

For many years, Munich-based infoWAN Datenkommunikation GmbH has wanted to provide a true enterprise-class online messaging and collaboration option to clients. It first explored such an offering 10 years ago, but the costs were too high. Today, though, the cost of an online solution can be lower than the cost of an on-premises solution, and this change has renewed interest in online messaging and collaboration services. Because of its considerable experience with Microsoft® Exchange Server, Microsoft Office Communications Server, and Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server, infoWAN has chosen to offer its clients an online messaging and collaboration option based on the Business Productivity Online Suite from Microsoft Online Services. As a result, infoWAN anticipates a significant expansion of business over the next several years.

French IT service provider Exakis wanted to bolster its service offerings with an enterprise-class messaging and collaboration solution that it could offer to clients who did not want to build out new infrastructure or who needed to deploy a solution rapidly. In the Business Productivity Online Suite from Microsoft® Online Services, Exakis found a solution that could meet client needs and open doors for the delivery of additional value-added services. And clients have been embracing it enthusiastically: For Crédit Immobilier de France—which had looked at Google Apps to meet its branch office messaging needs before deciding that it did not want to risk its business on a service that was not enterprise-ready—Exakis is deploying the Business Productivity Online Suite to more than 3500 users in 300 offices around France.

Hostway Korea, a leading hosting provider, wanted to improve remote access to its network and increase server capacity without adding data center space. To meet those needs, Hostway is deploying Windows Server® 2008 R2 with DirectAccess and Hyper-V™. Remote users can now access corporate resources without a virtual private network, and server virtualization is projected to reduce server hardware by 83 percent and power costs by 75 percent.

Intelecom wanted to take advantage of new business opportunities provided by unified communications to expand its service offering and increase revenues. It worked with Microsoft to develop a hosted unified communications solution—called Always Unified—based on Microsoft® technologies. The competitive solution saves Intelecom customers, such as retail giant Coop, millions of dollars a year.