discussUC

Authors: Nadee Gunasena

Authors: Julia White

Almost everyone knows the Toshiba brand, but you might not know that they recently switched from Lotus Notes to Exchange and SharePoint.   Toshiba has 130,000 employees worldwide and is a global leader in electronics manufacturing.  Their story is very typical of large, global companies that have switched from...

Today at our annual Financial Analyst's Meeting (FAM) we announced that The Dow Chemical Co., Hyatt Hotels Corporation and the University of Georgia have each selected Microsoft cloud solutions. If you'd like to watch any of Executive keynotes, please visit the digital site dedicated to this event.

Three Different Customers, One Common Strategy

These three customers are certainly a diverse set of businesses but they do share a common strategic direction to leverage Microsoft's cloud for the next generation of their computing needs. Ina Fried from CNET has a great summary of the customer stories in her post from today's announcement.

Momentum

These customers join over 40 million paid users' who leverage Microsoft Online services today including 500 government entities, 13 of top 20 global telecom firms, 15 of the Top 20 global banks, and 16 of the top 20 global pharmaceutical companies. As I previously posted, Windows Azure also has recently announced the addition of over 10,000 customers in nine months since full scale production.

Hyatt Hotels & Resorts – Check's In to BPOS

This win is another great example of a customer leaving an on premises competitive solution for Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Suite. Just like Codelco, Hyatt will take advantage of the full suite for "information workers" while offering a more cost effective option for 40,000 associates who do not have a need for fully dedicated suite. This is a great way to unify the entire workforce with one platform and enable a common user experience for everyone.

University of Georgia – UGA is All In

For those not familiar, the University's mascot is 'the bulldogs'. In fact, there is a real bulldog affectionately named "UGA" pictured below. His Bio is here. With teeth like that, you better believe we are excited to have them on our side!

(courtesy: georgiabulldogs.com)

Over 85,000 students, faculty and staff will take advantage of Live@Edu. The university joins other great educational institutions such as the University of Arizona, Kentucky Department of Education and New York City public school district who have recently selected Microsoft as their vendor for cloud based solutions.

Dow Chemicals – The Right Formula is Microsoft Online

Dow Chemical is moving their enterprise workforce to BPOS. Global companies such as Dow have expansive business units and a need to remain reliable and highly secure while taking advantage of the flexibility the cloud can enable. We are very excited about welcoming them to the BPOS family.

For more information on any of Microsoft's cloud solutions, please visit this website.

Authors: IBM

Authors: IBM

Authors: IBM

Authors: IBM

ORLANDO, Fla., - 15 Feb 2011: PARTNERWORLD LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE -- At IBM PartnerWorld 2011, IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced that Music Mastermind, a mid-sized independent entertainment and technology company, will deploy SoundBetter, the audio processing suite behind its create-and-share music platform, on IBM's Smart Business cloud service.  

Music Mastermind's SoundBetter is a groundbreaking technology that eliminates the traditional effort required to master music, breaking down barriers to creativity and allowing anyone to instantly become a recording artist. Faced with the need to expand globally while balancing development and distribution costs, the three-year-old startup chose IBM's Smart Business cloud services to increase scalability, reduce power requirements, and eliminate the need for an on-site network environment.  

"To meet their business goals, growing companies such as Music Mastermind need to have access to data quickly and easily," said Bob Hoey, General Manager, IBM General Business, Global Technology Services.  "In an industry where cloud is emerging as a core business transformation tool, IBM is leading the way with our Development and Test Cloud solution to improve business processes and better serve customers."

Music Mastermind worked with Micro Strategies, an IBM Premier Business Partner, to deploy SoundBetter on IBM's Smart Business cloud service.  IBM's dynamic cloud solution will help Music Mastermind deliver the optimal music experience by decreasing latency and lessening the cost of the service.  IBM's channel enablement program for partners reselling the IBM Smart Business Development and Test on the IBM Cloud has provided partners such as Micro Strategies with an enterprise class, cost effective infrastructure as a service solution to innovative customers like Music Mastermind.

"Music Mastermind empowers everyone to make great music.  We're at the forefront of a game-changing movement in global entertainment," said Bo Bazylevsky, co-Founder and President/COO, Music Mastermind.  "IBM and Micro Strategies provide us a world-class cloud solution at a fraction of the cost of building our own data center."

"We were able to provide a public cloud solution for Music Mastermind that offered more security, better performance, and easier management and storage configuration than what they had before – all necessary factors for their rapid growth," said Anthony Bongiovanni, President, Micro Strategies.  

The company's global business partner channel has helped IBM capture the growing cloud market, and to-date there are more than 30 cloud-based offerings enabled for IBM Business Partners to sell to their customers.  With more than 900 global IT service management practitioners and 18 cloud computing centers worldwide, IBM is dedicated to optimizing IT environments for successful deployment of enterprise-wide business initiatives.

IBM's infrastructure, along with Micro Strategies' dedicated experience in managed services and cloud infrastructure capabilities, provides Music Mastermind with a strong platform to expand internationally through numerous channels.

Music Mastermind has a target launch date for the consumer market in the second half of 2011.

About IBM

http://www.ibm.com/services/us/igs/cloud-development/

About Micro Strategies, Denville, NJ:  

Micro Strategies Inc. extends the value of business information and intellectual assets through innovative technology solutions. We combine intimate knowledge of business processes and applications with sophisticated skills in mission-critical information technology infrastructure solutions. . Core to this mission are our 2 IBM-authorized Business Partner Innovation Centers, located in Denville, NJ, and Malvern, PA. These BPICs offer great places for our clients to "test-drive" new technologies, run proof-of-concept tests against their unique requirements, get trained on newly implemented solutions, and demonstrate disaster recovery capabilities between 2 locations more than 100 miles apart.  Established in 1983, many of our clients have been with the company for our entire existence, and our customer satisfaction rating exceeds 96 per cent.  For more information please visit www.microstrat.com.

About Music Mastermind, Inc.

Based in Calabasas, CA, Music Mastermind was founded by Grammy Award-winning producer/songwriter Matt Serletic and top Wall Street bond trader Bo Bazylevsky. Formed in 2007, the venture-backed start-up is dedicated to developing technologies that break down the barriers to music creation. For more information please visit www.musicmastermind.com.

Authors: Avaya Insights

Readers of this blog have seen the excellent coverage of the International Avaya Users Group (IAUG) conference taking place this week in Las Vegas. For example, my colleague Jay Barta summarizes the conference so far thusly:

IAUG - Avaya's official global user's group - serves as the primary resource for education,...

Today, Avaya and CSRware, Inc. are pleased to announce a software agreement for Avaya to utilize the CSRware Sustainable Supply Chain product. CSRware will work together with Avaya to bring forward a market leading Sustainability Resource Management solution for the global enterprise, focusing on its large, diverse and global supply chain.

The rationale for our decision? “We at Avaya chose to work with CSRware on this important initiative because of the depth of their software platform that focuses on supply chain performance. We are pleased to be able to deploy this software tool within our large and global supply chain, an important dimension of our corporate sustainability program. We were drawn to this solution so that we would be able to benchmark and compare suppliers’ sustainability performance with a robust platform and index.” Wilson Korol, Sustainability Business Leader at Avaya.

A SaaS-based (software-as-a-service)-based, flexible and configurable solution for sustainability resource management automates the organization’s ability to measure, analyze and report on all sustainability initiatives. Rich, interactive dashboards and reporting provide stakeholders with a real-time view into supplier environmental sustainability activities using key performance indicators to quantify and achieve reduction goals for energy, water, waste and GHG emissions.

“At CSRware, we are working with the most innovative enterprises that recognize the strategic merit of investing in sustainability and resource management” said Karen Alonardo, Founder & CEO of CSRware. “CSRware is working with Avaya to verify metrics, develop a standard scorecard with a comprehensive index using a software solution to leverage existing Avaya systems to achieve increased profitability and on-going competitive advantage”.

About Avaya
Avaya is a global leader in enterprise communications systems. The company provides unified communications, contact centers, and related services directly and through its channel partners to leading businesses and organizations around the world. Enterprises of all sizes depend on Avaya for state-of-the-art communications that improve efficiency, collaboration, customer service and competitiveness. For more information, please visit http://www.avaya.com.

About CSRware
CSRware is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) software platform designed to address sustainability resource management across the value chain. The CSRware “Sustainability as a Service” Sustainable Supply Chain (SSC) module leverages the power of the CSRware Platform to measure and manage environmental sustainability and costs to address growing global demand. CSRware offers a comprehensive measurement and reporting tool to prioritize clean technology investments and open up financial visibility across the supply chain. The CSRware centralized repository reconciles data inputs, data ownership, determining what standards to use and finding a common repository to generate real-time results through an easy-to-use role-based dashboard to analyze ROI, energy efficient efforts and carbon compliance using industry protocols and standards. For more information please visit our website http://www.csrware.com/.