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When you were a child, did you ever visit a science museum that offered lots of hands-on activities? I always liked the exhibit that let me try to lift my own weight. When I stood on the platform that had only a rope, I hauled with all my might to get just an inch off the ground. When I moved to the platform where the rope drove a bunch of gears, though, a light tug lifted me several feet. The lesson was clear: The gears worked together to move me much farther, with much less effort.
Microsoft Corporation and its partners are a lot like those gears. Every year we invest billions of dollars in research and development, but it’s our partners that help turn our technologies into tailored solutions for our customers’ business challenges. About 14 million people around the world work at companies that help bring Microsoft® technology to customers in some way—by developing software, delivering services or distributing hardware. They’re critical to Microsoft’s ability to extend our platform to serve your needs.
On the following pages, we’re highlighting 16 Microsoft partners that are creating best-of-breed solutions built on the Microsoft platform. One case study looks at giving mobile managers realtime access to employee information when they’re on the go. Another discusses how to supercharge the cycle of taking, filling and delivering orders. Each one suggests innovative ways to mesh all your systems into a powerful infrastructure that shapes terabytes of data into strategic advantage.
You’ll discover some of the ways Microsoft helps you get more value from your enterprise applications, from the shop floor to the top floor. First, you can extend your enterprise applications using the .NET Framework to support new business opportunities and more efficient
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business processes. Many partner solutions are built using the .NET Framework and provide a straightforward approach to deriving additional value from existing enterprise applications from
vendors such as SAP® and Oracle®.
Second, increase the efficiency and reduce the cost of your infrastructure with Windows® and Microsoft SQL Server®. These are flexible, extensible, highly secure and above all affordable additions to your existing environment.
And finally, you can use familiar and powerful tools to unleash business data trapped in diverse back-end systems, and deliver the results to users through Office Business Applications (OBAs). OBAs build on Microsoft Office to deliver business processes and information so that employees can gain greater business insights, form better relationships with customers and partners, and develop new products and services.
We hope you’ll come away inspired to learn more about how you can get the extra power to lift
your company higher—with a little support from a Microsoft partner.
Eddie Amos
General Manager
Global ISVs
Microsoft Corporation
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