Shell depends on teams of employees and partners who work together effectively from any location. The company wanted to deploy a flexible communications solution that would maximize collaboration by enabling employees to quickly find colleagues virtually and then select a method of communication. Shell found this solution in Microsoft Lync. Lync provides instant messaging, presence information, voice, and conferencing all from a single, intuitive user interface. Employees can reach one another by using the same methods of communication independent of their location and are able to use Lync via an Internet connection, available either on their computers or from their mobile devices. By deploying Lync, Shell has increased collaboration by facilitating communications among dispersed team members.

The days when educator/student communication was limited to the classroom are long gone. Today at Alentejo Regional Vocational Training School much information is shared online and virtually when convenient thanks to Office 365. Educators and students feel that communication has been simplified and sharing and exchanging information has become much easier. Students can work with any assignment anywhere, which also means that even when sick at home students can participate virtually in class and group work and hand in assignments online. Implementation of Office 365 has also helped reduce costs for the school as educators now communicate and conduct meetings online, which reduces travel expenses, paper expenses, etc.

With help from Mobile Access, the Karel de Grote-Hogeschool switched to Unified Communications with Microsoft Lync, thereby enhancing efficiency and flexibility for users. For the college, the project means introducing the “New Way to Study” in the world of education and reconfirms the institution’s progressive nature. After the pilot group, internal staff, faculty and students were gradually granted access to Lync, thereby enabling the faculty and staff to communicate and cooperate with greater efficiency and flexibility, including remotely. Students will work with Lync via the cloud, after the migration from Live@edu to Office 365 in the course of the 2012-2013 academic year, and will thus be able to get feedback from their teachers much easier. Mobile Access established a redundant infrastructure so that users can count on optimal availability.

PT Astra Honda Motor (AHM) manufactures and distributes motorcycles in Indonesia. It deployed Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 at two data centers and used a database availability group to provide failover capabilities in case of a server failure or data center outage. AHM used only two servers to achieve high availability and disaster recovery, but it can simply add more servers as the solution grows. Exchange Server 2013 provides encryption during email transport and built-in antimalware scanning. Administration from the web-based Exchange Administration Center is much easier for AHM because there is no software to install and administration functions can be accessed using a browser.

Founded in 1980, MedcoEnergi Internasional (MedcoEnergi) was the first national oil company in Indonesia. With remote sites around the world, email messaging is critical for MedcoEnergi employees to collaborate on complex projects. Recently, it joined the Rapid Deployment Program for Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 to understand how the enhanced architecture reduces storage costs.

Headquartered in Beijing, China, Sohu.com provides Internet services such as search, advertising, and online gaming. Employees use email for business-critical communication, so the company’s messaging solution must be highly available and secure. Recently, Sohu decided to evaluate upgrading to Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 to help improve messaging compliance, ensure high availability, and reduce hardware costs and administration.

With 82 sites across Australia, New Zealand, and New Caledonia, Komatsu Australia has employees who work in many locations. Because its employees rely heavily on its messaging solution to communicate with each other and with customers, Komatsu must ensure that it has a highly available, efficient system in place to support them. Employees at Komatsu save their email messages for future reference and mailbox sizes were growing rapidly. Komatsu was using Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 for email and voice mail and wanted to implement an archiving solution to help employees better manage their email. Komatsu upgraded to Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 to take advantage of the built-in archiving capabilities and enhanced high-availability configurations to reduce administration requirements while improving availability and providing new capabilities to employees.

Axept Webcall is a division of Swisscom, the largest telecommunications company in Switzerland. It provides engineering and operation services and specializes in Microsoft unified communications and collaboration solutions. Axept Webcall recently deployed Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 on-premises to provide updated messaging capabilities to its employees. As a result, it improved its high availability configuration and enhanced communications.

KU Leuven is migrating its administrative and academic staff to Microsoft Lync. This means a central user interface for chatting, e-mail, telephony and videoconferencing via IP network. The software supports their current way of working because users are already very mobile and meet frequently. They can now do so far more efficiently, in the multi-building KUL campus but also from home or abroad. Switching from chat to telephony, sharing documents and starting a video conference is now very rapidly done as and when required. Nextel provides guidance and support to KUL for this extensive migration which is carried out faculty by faculty. All users are expected to be able to communicate via Lync by the end of 2014. Nextel provides advice, technical adaptation and support for the migration.

First Technology is one of South Africa’s leading single-source providers of IT products and solutions. Because email is a business critical tool internally and for its customers, First Technology deployed Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 in its own production environment to understand and experience the latest architecture and capabilities. The deployment will instil confidence in its customers that First Technology can replicate and manage this latest technology.