REDMOND, Wash. — May 22 , 2012 — iLUKA, a U.K.-based events and hospitality firm providing services for sponsors of the 2012 Olympic Games in London, has addressed the IT challenges of a tenfold increase in staff while saving tens of thousands of pounds by adopting Microsoft Office 365. The company has markedly decreased its software licensing expenses, reduced its IT workload by decommissioning redundant email servers, and is benefiting from the enterprise levels of security and availability that Microsoft offers.

“Our objectives were to lessen risk within the business, cut costs during the Olympic Games and meet our clients’ IT standards,” said Tim Chapman, iLUKA’s IT director. “Office 365 provides everything we expected. It’s been a significant win for our company.”

iLUKA develops and delivers coordinated strategic activations for sponsors, including the world’s largest banking, oil and pharmaceutical companies at global sporting events such as the Olympic Games and FIFA World Cups. Providing hospitality services for sponsors of the Olympics requires iLUKA to increase its staff from about 116 to over 1,000, with all employees needing access to email and productivity software such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint. With Office 365, iLUKA has the ability to add hundreds of users and pay for the software on a per-user, per-month basis. The company has the flexibility to add and delete employee accounts for the duration of the Olympic Games, paying for employees’ email and software only while they are employed.

Supporting the big events also creates significantly greater levels of email traffic, which would have required iLUKA to scale its email servers quickly. Office 365 took care of this issue, allowing iLUKA to decommission rather than upgrade its email servers.

In addition, the firm’s large clients expect it to have enterprise-level IT systems, with high standards of security, privacy, reliability and resilience. “Maximizing data security and minimizing risk are among our top priorities,” Chapman said.

More information on Microsoft’s customer success stories can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/presskits/customerspotlight. More information on Office 365 can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/office.

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. — May 21, 2012 — Cablemás, a Mexico City-based provider of cable, telephone and broadband Internet services, has used the Microsoft Exchange Online cloud service to extend email messaging to its 2,500 offsite employees, enabling them to better serve customers and making the company more competitive — without adding IT infrastructure.

“As a result of using Exchange Online, employees are enjoying improved access to information and enhanced productivity,” said Jorge Gonzales Ortega, IT Operations and Support manager at Cablemás. “The company is delivering faster, higher-quality service to our customers.”

Providing superior customer satisfaction had helped Cablemás gain a leadership position in Mexico’s telecommunications market, but competitors are moving too quickly close the gap. To further raise the bar of customer service, the company knew it needed to tighten communication between the 2,000 employees at its Mexico City central offices and its widely dispersed offsite staff of field service, customer service and sales representatives.

At headquarters, employees used an on-premises corporate messaging system deployed on Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. However, offsite staff had no access and would typically use their personal email accounts to check in with supervisors. The lack of standardized email communication decreased their productivity. “Company news did not reach offsite employees in a timely manner, and it often was incomplete or received too late to be useful,” Ortega said. “Our offsite employees felt disconnected from the decisions made in our central offices.”

The IT team first considered expanding the company’s Exchange Server 2007 environment, but storage limitations and the demands of managing additional infrastructure discouraged them. They consulted Microsoft advisors, who suggested using the kiosk version of Exchange Online to extend their email environment to a cloud service. “The kiosk version is designed for ‘deskless’ workers, so we felt it would be a good fit for our offsite employees, many of whom cover a lot of territory,” Ortega said.

Cablemás leaders also liked the idea of using a hybrid environment made up of its existing servers combined with cloud services. After comparing the offerings of Google and other vendors, they selected Exchange Online because they could build on their established relationship with Microsoft, whose products and services they trusted. Employees already knew how to use Microsoft technologies, and the IT staff knew how to manage them.

To expedite the deployment, Cablemás turned to UNIKA, a member of the Microsoft Partner Network that knew the process. UNIKA used a software connector to link the company’s Exchange Server 2007 with its cloud service. Since it already used Microsoft Forefront Security for Exchange Server to help protect its corporate messaging environment against malware and viruses, the company selected Microsoft Forefront Online Protection for Exchange.

Through its new hybrid messaging environment, the company can now inform all offsite employees of corporate decisions, educate them about marketing strategies and provide them with tools to respond more quickly to customers. “Today, customer-facing employees usually have the answers in front of them, and when the need does arise, they have a more efficient way to reach out,” Ortega said.

By subscribing to Exchange Online at a fixed monthly rate, Cablemás avoided both a substantial hardware investment and the need to hire additional IT staff. “I’m supporting both our on-premises and online messaging environments with the same staff as before, which is pretty impressive,” Ortega said. “We receive an excellent level of service from Microsoft, so we don’t have to worry about maintenance, software updates or upgrades.”

Cablemás leaders recognize that streamlining communication inside the company is key to sustaining both its competitive edge and its “esprit de corps.” “Our supervisors can now send email updates about product features and pricing to support our sales reps throughout the sales process,” Ortega said. “Plus, offsite employees have a greater sense of belonging because they can now communicate directly with their colleagues at our central offices.”

More information on Cablemás’ move to Exchange Online is available in the Microsoft Case Study and 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.

We are very happy to announce the release of TeamPostgreSQL, a web interface for the PostgreSQL database, completely free for the community.

TeamPostgreSQL is a web application that can be used to access an organization's databases over the intranet (or internet). It can also simply be used locally on a single machine as a regular database client. Just run the installer or unpack the archive and the service is be ready.

TeamPostgreSQL particularly shines in browsing and navigating the data in your databases. You can click through foreign key references, jumping straight to referenced rows in other tables, you can even click a row primary key field and get all rows in other tables that reference this one, all in a full featured row view with edit controls for the data. When adding a row, fields with foreign key references have dropdowns with values from the referenced table/column. Binary fields can be populated by simply picking a file using a file chooser control, and can be downloaded from the rows view straight to a file. Date fields have a proper date chooser. Store and load common SQL snippets and share them with your team. One click search for a value across all tables. There's also a handy graphical interface to pgdump to create SQL scripts.

Those are just a few examples of the many features in this product that we personally find indispensable and we hope will be useful to others too.

More info and download at the website: [HTML_REMOVED]http://www.teampostgresql.com[HTML_REMOVED]

Enjoy!

REDMOND, W ash. — May 18, 2012 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the return of its successful student offer that allows students buying a qualifying Windows 7-based PC to also get a free Xbox 360 4GB console. The offer is available for current students while supplies last, starting May 20 at participating retailers in the U.S.; a similar offer will be available starting May 18 at participating retailers in Canada. Terms and conditions will vary by participating retailer.

Together, a Windows 7-based PC and an Xbox 360 console provide students the functionality they need for school while also helping them stay connected to friends and family far away. To take advantage of this offer, students or their parents must provide valid student identification as defined by the participating retailer. Participating retailers may change over the course of the promotion, but will include Best Buy, Fry’s Electronics, Dell.com, HPDirect.com, Microsoft Stores and NewEgg.com in the U.S., and Best Buy, Dell.ca, Future Shop, Staples and The Source in Canada.

Windows 7-based PCs come in a wide variety of styles, sizes and colors; many new thin and light options such as the Dell XPS 13, HP ENVY15 and Samsung Series 5 ULTRA boast high-definition displays and fast boot-up times, and are super lightweight for great mobility. With an Xbox 360 console, students can have fun gaming while also enjoying a range of entertainment options, including streaming videos, sports, music and more.

Customers can check with participating retailers for more information about this offer.

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.