REDMOND, Wash. — March 27, 2013 — At the annual Microsoft U.S. Public Sector CIO Summit today, Microsoft Corp. announced eight government and education organizations that have chosen to adopt the Microsoft Office 365 cloud productivity platform to reduce costs, improve collaboration and modernize their technology infrastructures. Microsoft’s rapidly expanding community of public sector cloud customers now includes the City of Kansas City, Mo.; the City of Seattle; the University of Miami; California State University, Sacramento (Sacramento State); the University of Colorado Colorado Springs; the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority; Dupage County; and King County, Wash.

“Our mission is to provide the best possible services for Kansas City while maximizing taxpayer dollars,” said Mary J. Miller, chief information officer, Kansas City. “The move to Office 365 and cloud productivity will enable our staff to be more efficient while reducing both the city’s IT costs and its energy footprint.” Public sector organizations are increasingly choosing Microsoft Office 365 for cloud-based communications and collaboration to maximize information technology investments in the face of extreme budget challenges. These eight new customers represent the breadth of agencies and education institutions that now have access to the latest versions of familiar Office productivity solutions as they choose the cloud to help reduce IT management and data hosting costs. More than 1 million U.S. government workers have already made the move to Office 365 for their day-to-day productivity needs across a variety of federal, state and local organizations, including the State of California, the City and County of San Francisco, the City of Chicago, the State of Texas, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“The rapidly increasing public sector adoption rates for Microsoft Office 365 are directly tied to current budget realities and the fact that our customers need to be more productive at a lower cost,” said Curt Kolcun, vice president of U.S. Public Sector at Microsoft. “Organizations are achieving significant cost savings through the cloud delivery model while gaining access to the latest collaboration tools without sacrificing on security or privacy.”

New Microsoft Office 365 Customers

• City of Kansas City, Mo. With responsibility for delivering services to nearly half a million residents, the Kansas City government chose Office 365 to help increase operational efficiency, reduce IT management costs and shrink its energy footprint. Leveraging the latest Microsoft innovations in datacenter design, Kansas City is decreasing energy consumption while taking advantage of the productivity benefits of cloud-based collaboration, resulting in real impact for citizens.

• City of Seattle. Delivering citizen services to more than 600,000 residents requires a flexible, agile IT infrastructure, and the city of Seattle is adopting Office 365 to help boost internal efficiencies while reducing costs. The city’s workforce will be more productive on the go, with improved remote access to critical applications and files, all within a security-enhanced, reliable cloud environment.

• Dupage County, Ill. As the second most populous county in the state of Illinois, Dupage County was looking for innovative ways to improve service delivery to nearly 1 million residents while maximizing the ROI on its technology investments. The decision to move to the cloud with Microsoft Office 365 will provide personnel with access to the latest Microsoft productivity tools, while driving new collaboration opportunities and increasing efficiency across county government operations.

• King County, Wash. King County, Wash., is moving to Office 365 cloud-based communications and collaboration as part of a broader strategy to leverage existing IT resources. Through an enterprise service delivery model, employees are taking advantage of expanded opportunities for cross-agency collaboration while gaining access to the latest videoconferencing, instant messaging and productivity solutions.

• San Diego County Regional Airport Authority. After reviewing a number of cloud-based email and collaboration solutions, including Google Apps, San Diego County Regional Airport Authority made the decision to adopt Office 365 for its security features, functionality and collaboration benefits. Staff members are already taking advantage of new instant messaging and videoconferencing capabilities through Microsoft Lync, and the move is expected to save the organization US$40,000 per year on reduced IT management costs, freeing up personnel to focus on delivering essential airport services to citizens.

• University of Miami. More than 40,000 students, faculty and staff will move to the cloud, so everyone on campus will have a common platform to communicate and collaborate more effectively. The Miller School of Medicine required a cloud solution that offered a business associate agreement as mandated by the U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act because it handles sensitive health data, and Microsoft offered the capability to provide security and privacy safeguards to meet this federal law. Located in an annual hurricane zone, business continuity, fault tolerance and backups are top of mind and expensive, but by moving to Office 365 for education, the university will be able to reallocate resources, time and money to other strategic initiatives.

• University of Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS). Students at UCCS were unhappy with the old email solution the university’s IT shop provided, and they wanted the type of functionality provided by Microsoft Exchange, such as shared calendaring, common contacts, an easy-to-use Web client and mobile device support. The IT department wanted to offer this, but because of budget cuts and other costly priorities, it could not justify moving the students to campus Exchange servers. Now, 29,000 student and alumni accounts are on Office 365 for education, and the university is in the process of phasing in Microsoft SharePoint, Office Web Apps and Lync, which are expected to be popular with students because of the rise of mobile device usage, online learning. and the desire to have access to files anywhere, anytime.

• Sacramento State. Exchange and Office are already the most-used software applications on campus, so moving to Office 365 Education was a “no brainer.” By moving some 50,000 accounts to the cloud, Sacramento State will be able to greatly reduce the cost of providing email and related communications services without compromising the quality of service. Faculty, staff and students will continue to get the best-of-breed Exchange features, plus SharePoint and Lync services, that will truly expand access to anytime and anyplace availability.

More information about how these and other Public Sector organizations are turning to Microsoft technology is available for download and in the Microsoft Customer Spotlight newsroom.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/news/contactpr.mspx.

Gamers looking to play this year's hottest PC games at a highly affordable price -- with in-game settings cranked up to high -- got their wish today with the introduction of the new NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 650 Ti BOOST GPU.

Registration for PGCon 2013 is now open. Have a look at our list of speakers. Please be sure to book your accommodation right away. Some hotels will be sold out within a few weeks. We have an accommodation page which will help you find somewhere to stay.

REDMOND, Wash. — March 25, 2013 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the appointment of Judson Althoff to the role of president, North America Sales & Marketing, and corporate vice president. Althoff will manage a team of sales, marketing and services professionals across the United States and Canada, within a division that was a significant contributor to Microsoft’s US$73 billion in revenue in fiscal year 2013.

A business technology leader with more than 18 years of experience, Althoff previously served as senior vice president of worldwide alliances and channels and embedded sales at Oracle Corp., where he led worldwide indirect and embedded sales. During his 14 years at Oracle, Althoff held a number of senior positions, including group vice president for worldwide alliances, and vice president of global platform and distribution sales. Before Oracle, he held several sales leadership roles at EMC Corp.

“Judson has a track record of successfully developing, growing and leading global sales organizations with a culture of execution excellence,” said Kevin Turner, chief operating officer at Microsoft. “Judson’s proven leadership will enable us to continue to excel in delivering the best devices and services experience to our customers including businesses and consumers.”

Althoff will assume his new role at Microsoft on March 29, 2013, reporting to Turner.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/news/contactpr.mspx.