BG Group, a world leader in the natural gas industry, operates on five continents. E-mail communications are critical for the company, which has more than 12,500 mailboxes—the largest of them is more than 40 gigabytes in size. To support its vision for growth, BG Group deployed a prerelease version of Microsoft® Exchange Server 2010 in a pilot environment to evaluate its capabilities. The company expects to improve disaster recovery with Exchange Server 2010 Database Availability Groups, which provide automatic failover of databases. BG Group also plans to take advantage of the ability to move mailboxes at any time without disrupting users. Based on the successful pilot, BG Group has chosen to deploy Exchange Server 2010 enterprisewide to achieve higher availability, lower storage costs, and increase security and efficiency.

The Public Power Corporation (PPC), the largest business in Greece, provides 93 percent of the country’s power. To reduce operating costs and improve user productivity, PPC is upgrading as many of its 4,200 client computers as are hardware-capable to the Windows 7 operating system. PPC expects to reduce IT costs and improve user productivity by speeding computer deployments, and to trim energy consumption with power management features.

Demand Media is a social media company based in Santa Monica, California, that provides content and social media solutions. It must ensure that the Web servers running its own business, and those of thousands of customers and partners, are up and running at peak performance. To gain the ability to cost effectively monitor the performance of thousands of Web sites, Demand Media deployed Microsoft® System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2, which the company can also use to monitor both Windows®- and Linux-based servers. With the new software, Demand Media is monitoring 1,500 URLs through a single console and has improved server uptime by 20 hours a month. The server monitoring staff has trimmed its workload by 65 hours a month and eliminated U.S.$30,000 in annual licensing costs for Linux monitoring tools. These efficiency gains give Demand Media more time to spend on innovation.

Before installation of Windows Server 2008, the City Government of Sławno used two servers: Novell Netware and SUSE Linux. Forty stationery computers functioned in the office, running different versions of Windows XP system. The diversity of software and lack of a unified platform created disadvantages in the IT structure. The IT department planned to replace the Novell Netware server and eliminate the necessity of purchasing an additional server to manage the circulation of documents. This was to be accomplished with the installation of the newest Microsoft server software. It was important to workers to unify the workstation login system with on-site server authentication. The test installation fulfilled all expectations and showed how the IT network could work after installing Microsoft server software.

The school had three computer classrooms controlled by Novell Netware 6, Microsoft Windows 2003 Serwer and Linux servers. Maintenance of the classroom served by the Linux system required lots of time to effectively manage. Installation of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 simplified network infrastructure management. The classroom also gained a stable, effective and modern IT system. This allowed the staff to concentrate on teaching IT and not on the constant servicing of the configuration and searching for solutions to server infrastructure problems.

ZETO, in Lublin, decided to totally refresh its IT infrastructure. On the main server, Windows Server 2008, .NET Framework 3 and a very important operations application, IIS7, were installed. Additionally, 50 client machines were provided with Microsoft Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007. The change improved the work environment, which is now more effective and reliable.

The virtual environment lowers IT infrastructure costs through resource consolidation and more effective use of server power. For Warsaw firm, DCS Computer Consultants Group, virtualization is the way to lower client hosting costs for those with insufficient funds to lease or rent dedicated servers. DCS used for this purpose Microsoft® Virtual Server 2005 R2 and applications' firm VMware. While testing Microsoft® Windows Server 2008 RC1 programs, it became possible to also test the beta version of the newest Microsoft virtual environment, DCS did not hesitate to accept.

Over many years, home.pl built its success using UNIX software. The market strategy of home.pl assumed constant development and always inclined the firm's owners to look for new technology, thanks to which the company could offer its clients the highest quality products. This search was directed at solutions to provide hosting services. Using the solution Microsoft® Windows® Server® 2003, the firm strengthened its position as leader, because it was the first to offer this kind of product to the segment of service suppliers for SMB.

One of the operating goals of the Olsztyn firm is designing Web network solutions based on Microsoft hosting solutions. ITM needed a complex platform to effectively create, manage and maintain portals and applications based on Web network. Because the operating purposes of the firm are to create software for different branches of the market and provide hosting services, the company acknowledged that version RC1 of Windows Server 2008 would satisfy its needs. Installing a new structure resulted in faster and more precise reaction to emergencies and problems of each working Web application.

Provincial Firefighters' Command in Białystok had a diffused IT infrastructure, each computer was equipped with Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office. The units were not connected in a local network. Because Microsoft is the basic IT system platform used in the organization, the natural way to develop was to use solutions introduced in the newest versions of Microsoft operations server system. A solution based on Windows Server 2008 platform is currently used.