Irish Life, based in Dublin, Ireland, offers life insurance and pension products to individuals and businesses throughout the country. To respond to a difficult economy, the company sought a more cost-effective environment to support its critical insurance administration application. Irish Life migrated the application to a new solution based on Microsoft database technology. As a result, the company will save US$2.5 million in annual operating costs and will be able to increase its business. The solution also lowers system runtimes by 75 percent, boosts application availability, and increases developer productivity.

To deliver competitive services that balance risks and returns, Union Bank of Israel needed greater operational insight. To achieve this, the bank replaced a third-party reporting solution with one based on the Microsoft platform. With it, the bank speeds efficiency by over 50 percent, increases insight and accuracy, minimizes risk, improves collaboration, and facilitates agility.

The Halo franchise is an award-winning collection of properties that has grown into a global entertainment phenomenon. To date, more than 50 million copies of Halo video games have been sold worldwide. As developers prepared to launch Halo 4, they were tasked with analyzing data to gain insights into player preferences and support an online tournament. To handle those requests, the team used a powerful Microsoft technology called Windows Azure HDInsight Service, based on the Apache Hadoop big data framework. Using HDInsight Service to process and analyze raw data from Windows Azure, the team was able to feed game statistics to the tournament’s operator, which used the data to rank players based on game play. The team also used HDInsight Service to update Halo 4 every week and support a daily email campaign designed to increase player retention.

Microsoft wanted to provide mission-critical support for its original equipment manufacturer (OEM) customers starting with the launch of Windows 8 and potentially expanding to include other products. To provide high levels of availability worldwide, it implemented a supply-chain solution based on Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 that includes active/active peer-to-peer transactional replication between remote data centers. As a result, Microsoft has experienced zero downtime, enhanced customer service, and enabled mission-critical support for its OEM supply chain.

In 2011, Australian retailer Harvey Norman wanted to launch an online daily-deals business rapidly. However, executives faced a dilemma: if they over-estimated web site traffic, they could waste millions of dollars buying web site-hosting servers they did not need; if they underestimated traffic, the site would crash as soon as the business launched. Executives deployed their custom-built BiG BUYS retail site on the Microsoft cloud computing platform, Windows Azure. After just eight weeks of development, the launch proved straightforward, with executives managing web site infrastructure through an easy-to-use portal. The strategy has been swiftly vindicated, with executives able to accommodate site traffic peaking at 23 times normal levels at less than one hour’s notice. The company only pays for servers used, ensuring the business’s costs of sale are directly related to purchases.

Software developer K2 wanted to help customers increase system availability, speed disaster recovery, and collect more in-depth business intelligence (BI) without engaging IT personnel. To address these challenges, K2 updated its products to support Microsoft SQL Server 2012. As a result, K2 helps clients boost availability, automate disaster recovery, improve insight and control, and minimize IT complexity and costs.

A subsidiary of Western Digital, WD wanted to improve the mission-critical system it used to monitor manufacturing processes for hard drives and solid-state drives. To ensure continuous operations, the company is implementing a high-availability solution with the Microsoft SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn feature. As a result, the company expects to improve uptime and gain better oversight of manufacturing operations. Benefits include lower costs, easier maintenance, and better support for future growth.

The California Strawberry Commission (CSC) needs to deliver IT services to employees and several hundred member growers, shippers, and processors—despite an IT department made up of only one technical employee. To address this challenge, the CSC deployed Microsoft Office 365, offering highly scalable, enterprise-class IT capabilities for a minimal investment. IT staff are now more productive and can focus on projects that provide strategic value.

As part of the Commonwealth Local Government Forum’s Good Practice Scheme, the District Council of Mt Barker partnered with Kokopo Council, Papua New Guinea, to assist with administration and fund management. Mt Barker realised IT was a big issue, and Kokopo faced huge technological challenges: equipment was basic, IT support expensive and equipment often stolen. There was no way to maintain servers on site, and locals relied on wireless connectivity. The answer was Microsoft cloud technologies. As well as familiar Microsoft Office software like Word, Excel and Outlook, the two councils employed Microsoft Lync for voice and video calls, remote desktop management and easy file sharing – meaning huge savings on travel while allowing the councils to work closely together. Mt Barker now use Microsoft cloud technologies internally, saying, “It should be the foundation of every future project.”

Rackspace® Hosting, a hosting and cloud computing company, serves many customers that need business intelligence (BI) tools and database business continuity. Rackspace introduced a Microsoft database solution that customers can deploy in multiple data centers. With this new solution, Rackspace customers gain BI tools to turn their data streams into insights, acquire access to high-availability and disaster-recovery features, and minimize capital expenses thanks to the hosted model.