Currently, endangered species in Latin America are insufficiently studied compared to those in North America and Europe. Researchers at Microsoft Research, LACCIR Virtual Institute, and Pontifical Catholic University of Chile are collaborating to develop better tools that provide a fresh approach for researchers and citizen scientists to map the distribution of endangered wildlife.

Currently, the complexity of the design process makes it difficult to determine, precisely, a building’s future energy use—but this won’t always be the case. Microsoft Research and the Royal Danish Academy are collaborating with Green Prefab, a small startup in northern Italy, to develop civil engineering tools that take advantage of the power of cloud computing on Windows Azure. These virtual tools have the potential to reduce the time and cost of “green” building by allowing in-depth simulations of a building’s performance and appearance during the design phase.

Upgrade of a Fault-Resistance Virtual Cluster at the Medical Information Analysis Center of the Kirov Region

Natuurmonumenten wanted to reduce the operating costs for its aging infrastructure and share them with eight more partner organizations—two other partners joined later. Virtualization seemed a logical and environmentally sustainable path, and the society initially favored deploying VMware virtualization software. But the HP/Microsoft Frontline Partnership offered a more complete solution using the Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter operating system with Hyper-V technology, and the Microsoft System Center suite of products for infrastructure management. Microsoft Gold Partner Avanade took responsibility for project management, systems integration, and technical support. Natuurmonumenten will now pay 40 per cent less in operating costs for its IT infrastructure and benefit from a disaster recovery site for the first time. It can also expect further savings as additional partners join.

The Kingdom of Bahrain Ministry of Education (MOE) needed to cut the costs of computer implementations in schools, which were draining resources and using up limited budgets. With Windows MultiPoint Server 2011 and HP MultiSeat technology, a single computer can support multiple users simultaneously without compromising the individual user’s experience. The MOE is deploying this solution to all 210 schools across the kingdom.

Scottish Borders Council faced severe budget pressures and wanted to cut costs by minimising travel and giving its employees tools for flexible and remote working. The council replaced its telephony system with Microsoft Lync 2010 and now plans to extend the solution to 10,000 users. The Lync 2010 deployment to the entire corporate staff is expected to save the authority £1 million (U.S.$1.6 million) over the next three years.

Effective communication is a challenge for Argyll and Bute Council in Scotland, which needed to improve workforce productivity through unified communications. It introduced flexible working and replaced its Cisco phones with Microsoft Lync 2010. With each user expected to gain 20 minutes of working time a day through greater efficiency, the Council expects a significant contribution towards the savings required to meet budgetary pressures.

Hampshire County Council in the United Kingdom has teamed up with Dorset County Council in a collaboration initiative in information and communications technology to save up to £5 million over three years. Hampshire County Council decided to reduce the operating costs of its SAP ERP system in an Oracle/Unix environment, which is also the same enterprise resource planning (ERP) system as Dorset. The authority migrated its SAP ERP application to Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise data management software. Hampshire estimates that this will save the authority tens of thousands of pounds a year through more cost-effective licensing for SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise. The council is satisfied that the features in SQL Server 2008 R2 are scalable and resilient enough to support its business-critical application needs.

Staffordshire County Council is the eighth-largest council in England and a leader in shared IT services. It wanted to benefit from management and virtualisation to save money and ensure continuity of critical applications, while creating a private cloud environment to extend shared services. Working with Risual, the authority carried out a proof of concept and a production deployment solution using the Microsoft System Center suite and Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2. Over the next 12 months, significant savings and productivity gains are expected, with server build times cut by around 90 per cent and scope to reduce human resource demands. Staffordshire can now enter more shared services partnerships and can accurately bill for underlying services. New server provisioning now takes seconds and only five to 10 minutes to be fully on the domain, with no disruption to the organisation.

Saudi Post Corporation wanted to transform its infrastructure and reduce operating costs by implementing an Infrastructure as a Service Private Cloud—the first in the Saudi public sector. Working with Netways, Saudi Post upgraded to Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V and deployed the Microsoft System Center suite of products. Operating costs have been cut by more than 50 per cent and physical servers reduced from around 150 to 32.