STOCKHOLM — May 9, 2012 — Electronics manufacturer Note unified its communication infrastructure and reduced its IT costs by switching from Google Mail to Microsoft Office 365, which delivered greater value and offered a familiar work environment for its employees.

In late 2010, Note adopted the Google service, but the IT team at Note soon determined that the collaboration features Google provided were not meeting business needs. By the end of 2011, Note had switched from Google to Office 365.

“Office 365 is much more integrated and advanced than Google and offers more of the functionality our employees need,” said Mikael Johansson, IT and process development manager at Note. “Our employees can use Office 365 without additional training. Combined with the extended functionality in Microsoft SharePoint Online and Microsoft Lync Online, we think Office 365 offers much more enterprise value than Google.”

Based near Stockholm, Note is one of the largest contract manufacturers of electronics equipment in Scandinavia, with nine factories and 1,000 employees in six countries. Since Note centralized its communications with Office 365, the company is now able to better manage information and provide its employees with new opportunities to collaborate easily and productively.

“Office 365 is a better fit with our overall IT strategy,” Johansson said. “Now we have a single environment we can use to help organize and share information between business teams and across multiple facilities and devices. Google offers no equivalent to the deep integration between Office 365, Microsoft Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Lync Online.”

Instead of managing multiple solutions from Google and other providers, Note has reduced costs by consolidating its collaboration environment with Office 365. The company can manage its Office 365 subscriptions under a single agreement and avoid the cost of third-party solutions. “We are a manufacturing company,” Johansson said. “Whenever we can effectively outsource our IT burden like we can with Office 365, we build competitive advantages for our business.”

More information on Microsoft’s customer success stories is available at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/presskits/customerspotlight. More information on Office 365 is available at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/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.

RED HOOK, N.Y. — May 8, 2012 — Facing an unprecedented demand for limited services for special needs children affected with autism and other severe disabilities and disorders, Devereux New York, a nonprofit healthcare organization, has implemented TeachMe from Operant Systems, which uses Microsoft technologies Microsoft SQL Server and Windows Phone, to improve its strategy for collecting behavioral data and clinical analysis.

Devereux New York, like many healthcare providers, sought to increase the efficiency of its programs. With the number of children diagnosed with autism doubling in the past decade, services have become more expensive to provide and funding for them has become increasingly scarce. In addition, the applied behavioral analysis required for individual treatment programs depends upon a massive, virtually continuous collection of behavioral data for clinicians to analyze, which comes from staff who both work with the children and lug around binders and clipboards to record their behaviors.

In 2010, executive director John O’Keefe discovered TeachMe from Operant Systems and quickly found it more efficient and flexible than previous electronic systems for collection and analysis of behavioral data, which had typically been confined to client-server systems. With TeachMe and its integrated Microsoft technologies, Devereux staff is now able to use Windows Phones to record behavioral data in the field as it happens with an intuitive TeachMe app. The data is then seamlessly uploaded to SQL Server databases hosted by Operant at its datacenter via cloud technology. Clinicians can quickly analyze that data using a TeachMe Web interface from virtually anywhere at any time.

The implementation of TeachMe into Devereux’s business practices has been declared a success within the first year, especially for the children under their care. A 60 percent increase in the volume of data collection has resulted in faster and better analyses of behaviors and better refinements in treatment plans by clinicians. More in-depth analyses and closer tracking of progress has since allowed staff to successfully treat children with issues that are “more intense, more problematic” than before. For the first time Devereux New York was able to assemble comprehensive reports and analyses that cover a child’s experience across various environments, including as campus residents, day-program clients, intensive care facility (ICF) participants, or any combination.

“We know we can depend on Operant TeachMe for data collection and analysis because it’s built on Microsoft, from the front-end smartphones to the back-end database,” O’Keefe said.

Devereux has also opened four ICFs within the past year because it is better able to identify children who are likely to thrive in small-scale community settings, and better monitor and assess their progress.

More information on Devereux New York’s implantation of TeachMe, which uses SQL Server and Windows Phone technologies, is available in the Microsoft case study. Additional information can be found on the Microsoft Customer News Center.

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.