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REDMOND, Wash. — Ju ly 3 , 2012 — In an effort to drive new revenue, EmpireCLS Worldwide Chauffeured Services’ Chief Information Officer, Alan Bourassa, adopted a bold strategy of offering his company’s innovative dispatch and reservation system to its competitors. The cloud service offering, called BeTransported.com, is powered by Microsoft private cloud technologies: Microsoft System Center 2012 and Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V.

More than 13,000 ground transportation companies around the world could benefit from EmpireCLS’ dispatching service. Bourassa believes the software as a service (SaaS) model offered through a public cloud could grow to represent and support 40 percent of the company’s revenues within the next three years.

“Anything we can do to streamline and automate IT tasks and eliminate human effort speeds up our service to the business and makes us more successful,” Bourassa said. “With Windows Server and System Center our IT staff has more time to sit down with the business and strategize new products and services. When the business asks, ‘Do we have capacity for a new business like BeTransported.com?’ we can unequivocally say ‘Yes!’”

EmpireCLS’ proprietary dispatch and reservation system enables dispatchers to assign the right car and driver, monitor their progress using GPS and real-time traffic updates, and deliver an invoice when the assignment is complete.

EmpireCLS first used System Center 2012 to transform its virtualized data center into a private cloud environment, dedicated to its core chauffer service business. Once its private cloud environment was in place, EmpireCLS used a portion of it to launch a public cloud environment, which spawned the creation of BeTransported.com.

“These new services are enabling us to grow our business and would not have been possible without a cloud environment,” Bourassa said. “Microsoft did a very good job of creating one integrated toolset to help companies deploy a private cloud infrastructure with automated, orchestrated processes.”

Read more about EmpireCLS’s strategy for driving revenue with the assistance of System Center 2012 in the Microsoft case study.

More information about how organizations are turning to Microsoft technology is available 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.

REDMOND, Wash. — July 2 , 20 12 — Microsoft Corp. today announced that it will take a non-cash, non-tax-deductible income statement charge for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2012 for the impairment of goodwill in its Online Services Division segment, mostly related to its 2007 aQuantive, Inc., acquisition.

Under accounting guidelines, companies are required to conduct an annual goodwill impairment test for each business unit. Goodwill arises in an acquisition when the fair value paid for a business exceeds the value of the identifiable net assets. The goodwill in the Online Services Division was substantially the result of the 2007 acquisition of aQuantive. As a result of its 2012 impairment review, Microsoft has determined that a write down of its Online Services Division goodwill of approximately $6.2 billion is required.

Bing search share in the U.S. has been increasing, revenue per search (RPS) has been growing, MSN is the No. 1 portal in 29 markets worldwide and the company’s partnership with Yahoo! has continued to expand geographically. While the Online Services Division business has been improving, the company’s expectations for future growth and profitability are lower than previous estimates.

Microsoft completed its acquisition of aQuantive on Aug. 13, 2007, in an all-cash transaction valued at just over $6.3 billion. While the aQuantive acquisition continues to provide tools for Microsoft’s online advertising efforts, the acquisition did not accelerate growth to the degree anticipated, contributing to the write down.

Microsoft does not expect this accounting write down to affect its ongoing business or financial performance.

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

For more information, press only:

Supriya Venkat, Waggener Edstrom Worldwide, (503) 443-7000, svenkat@waggeneredstrom.com

Rapid Response Team, Waggener Edstrom Worldwide, (503) 443-7070, rrt@waggeneredstrom.com

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.

Statements in this release that are “forward-looking statements” are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially. For further information regarding risks and uncertainties associated with Microsoft’s business, please refer to the “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and “Risk Factors” sections of Microsoft’s SEC filings, including, but not limited to, its annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, copies of which may be obtained by contacting Microsoft’s Investor Relations department at (800) 285-7772 or at Microsoft’s Investor Relations Web site.

All information in this release is as of July 2, 2012. The company undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statement to conform the statement to actual results or changes in the company’s expectations.

REDMOND, Wash. — July 2, 2012 — Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. is announcing its decision to adopt Windows Azure to manage its Smart TV infrastructure. By choosing Windows Azure cloud technology, Samsung achieved significant reduction in costs, and an increased capacity to meet its growing customer base and higher productivity.

Samsung provides Smart TV service in 120 countries around the world, and more growth is planned. Samsung needed a solution that could support ongoing, reliable service and its continual increase in traffic. In addition, Samsung did not want to be dependent on specific suppliers. The company tested other products but ultimately chose the Windows Azure as the service infrastructure because it offered the required reliability to meet its mission-critical needs and its planned expansion of service.

“After extensive testing, Windows Azure is the only cloud offering that met our exacting conditions,” said an official at Samsung Electronics’ Visual Display Business Division.

Compared with the cost of expanding its in-house IT services, Samsung achieved a tenfold cost reduction by choosing to manage its infrastructure in the cloud. In addition, Windows Azure gives Samsung the ability to help secure the server and storage resources it needs quickly, giving Samsung the time to focus on providing high-quality software and services to its customers.

Samsung attributes this success to the scalability of its IT infrastructure, including Windows Azure, which consistently provides smooth, fast service. The company also observed greater speed of service in Asia, where it sees most of its Smart TV traffic.

“Samsung Electronics’ Smart TV is taking advantage of the unique capabilities of Windows Azure,” said Bob Kelly, corporate vice president of Windows Azure at Microsoft. “Windows Azure gives Samsung the ability to focus on its business rather than having its technical team deal with problem-solving and troubleshooting issues.”

More information about Samsung Electronics is available at the Samsung website. More information about how organizations are turning to Microsoft technology is available on 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.

BANGALORE, India — July 2, 2012 — Microsoft Corp. today announced that Wipro Technologies (NYSE:WIT), the Global Information Technology, Consulting and Outsourcing business of Wipro Limited, has migrated to Microsoft Lync Server 2010 for its ease of use and its single, simple-to-use user interface for real-time communication and collaboration needs. Lync Server 2010 is being rolled out to all employees in phases across all worldwide locations.

Since Wipro has a presence across multiple geographies, the company was keen to adopt a more optimal and seamless solution to enable better collaboration among users. In fewer than three months, Lync Server 2010 was deployed with go-live in November 2011.

“Lync Server 2010 provides us with a single solution for all modes of real-time communications,” said Ramesh Nagarajan, chief information officer, Wipro. “We also wanted the same solution to cater to our dial-in conferencing needs for users across the globe in different regions. This has been rapidly achieved for certain users in the U.S. and now is being planned for other regions, including India.”

Because Wipro’s employees work in many different time zones, the benefits of Lync Server 2010 were immediately apparent. With it they can do the following:

• Collaborate with co-workers anytime, anywhere using the Internet

• Potentially optimize costs using webconferencing and videoconferencing for interactive training

• Manage and finish projects efficiently with desktop sharing and real-time communications within project teams

“People really like Lync Server 2010,” Nagarajan said. “The seamless integration with Microsoft Office 2010 products, such as Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and Microsoft Outlook 2010, makes it much easier to use. In fact, the integration with SharePoint 2010 is so seamless that people don’t even realize that it’s happening, but they use it all the time. It’s natural.”

Lync Server 2010 facilitates better communication between stakeholders internally and externally. Employees are also finding time savings using Lync Server 2010. They can solve issues immediately instead of waiting to set up a call or meeting. “It’s convenient to reach out to people, especially with Outlook integration,” Nagarajan said. “I can see who is available on Lync instantly. I recently shared a screenshot with the security team; they wanted to determine how to find out where employees were in the event of an emergency. Lync Server can help with that.”

“This deployment has been one of the fastest large-scale rollouts of Microsoft Lync Server 2010 in India, and we are delighted with our association with Wipro for this solution,” said Karan Bajwa, general manager, Enterprise and Partner Group for Microsoft India.

More information about how organizations are turning to Microsoft technology is available on 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.