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08:00 PM Thursday, July 10, 2008
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Enterprises are constantly looking for ways to be more efficient — managing everything from plastic pallets, to servers, to automobile parts, to retail garments, to temperature-sensitive pharmaceuticals. Xterprise, leveraging its deep expertise around Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology, supply chain and lean enterprise best practices, and a range of Microsoft® technologies, is all about making that process far more efficient and utilizing assets more effectively. See. Understand. Execute.
 According to Dean Frew, CEO and Founder, Xterprise believes maintaining competitive advantage today requires companies to have a precise, current, and insightful understanding of their business environment and the ability to leverage that knowledge to better collaborate, respond faster, and exert stronger control over their enterprise activities. The companies that are adopting this approach to business define what Xterprise calls the “High-Definition Enterprise” — process focused and executing in real time. A High-Definition Enterprise captures and uses granular, up to-the-moment data. It leverages advanced automation and analytic systems to translate that information into performance efficiencies, continual improvement, and measurable business value. Xterprise offers a suite of solutions for just this purpose that combines its advancements in RFID-enabled enterprise applications built on Microsoft BizTalk® 2006 R2 with the BizTalk RFID Framework.
The company was started because, as Frew says, “The world is driving toward everything having an identity in an enterprise, and moving toward doing data collection at any process point rather than wherever you can afford to have a person.” He cites Wal-Mart today as an example. Wal-Mart’s shipments today are full of cases of product that each have an electronic serial number and get unloaded off trucks, and rolled immediately into inventory, rather than waiting for an operator to barcode scan the product.
Explains Frew, “So identity and process-driven data collection are going to drive business applications moving forward. And we believe that the market definer is what we call this High-Definition Enterprise. We want to be the enterprise application and solution provider, and application provider for this enterprise. Customers are no longer satisfied with the status quo, they want things better, faster, cheaper, and the only way to do that is to get more granularity in real-time. Our motto is to ‘see, understand, and execute’ — helping enterprises do that at a whole different level of fidelity than they have ever done before.”
With this in mind, Frew says the company had to build its technology on the best platform available. In 2005, it evaluated platforms to build the next generation of its applications, looking at Oracle, Microsoft, Oat Systems, and IBM. Xterprise decided on Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2 because it provided the best combination of industry-leading support of EPC Software infrastructure, mobility application support, SAP, and other ERP integration capabilities at the lowest total cost of ownership. Perhaps most important were the Services-Oriented Architecture/Business Process Management (SOA/BPM) capabilities that would enable Xterprise to effectively build its line of business applications and convert its intellectual property into business solutions.
In 2007, Xterprise was selected to participate in the Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Technology Adoption Program (TAP), where ISVs can use Microsoft products before they are commercially released. Xterprise says its TAP project went beyond proof of concept to an actual enterprise deployment for iGPS (intelligent Global Pooling Systems) — currently the second largest UHF RFID solution deployment in North America.
Frew explains that iGPS was formed by a group of pallet pool industry veterans. Many manufacturers and shippers today rent pallets from pooling companies as an attractive alternative to buying and managing pallet fleets, and pallet pooling is now a $14-billion global industry. To leverage the benefits of pooling and the power of automating tracking, iGPS created plastic pallets featuring embedded RFID tags. Using Xterprise’s Microsoft-based solution, these RFID-tagged pallets can be closely tracked as they flow through the supply chain — from pooling companies to product manufacturers to distribution centers, retail stores, and back.
When iGPS introduced its all-plastic pallet pool to the transportation industry, it needed a way to track and manage millions of valuable pallet assets in real time across its global supply chain. For this solution, iGPS is using Xterprise’s Clarity RTI (Re-Usable Transport Items) application, and Clarity Analytics, which is built using Micrsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2, Windows Server® 2003, Windows Mobile®, SQL Server® 2005, and the .NET Framework 2.0. The solution will scale to hundreds of locations, millions of pallets, and tens of millions of transactions by late 2008.
As a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and member of the Startup Accelerator Program, Frew says, “We have been embraced positively by the field teams at Microsoft because we actually have a tool that can help them sell their application stacks.” Jim Caudill, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Strategy at Xterprise, agrees, saying that they see the relationship with Microsoft as both a technology and channel-to-market partnership.
Explains Caudill, “The BizTalk product was released in September (2007) in Taipei, where Dean joined the Microsoft team in the launch. We then participated in the North American worldwide launch and the European launches, as well as numerous regional launches. In the first 6 months after the launch, we pulled through a little more than $700,000 of Microsoft product licenses — just Microsoft software.”
Adds Frew, “Clarity has been a huge success for Xterprise, Microsoft, and other mutual eco-system partners. We made an all-out bet that this Microsoft technology was going to work, essentially betting our company on it. It is a very ambitious project, and we felt that the interaction with the product team in Redmond and the team in Hyderabad, we were on the right track, and it proved to be a very good bet.”
For the last several years, Xterprise’s revenue has grown well over 50 percent year-over-year. It says it is on-track to achieve almost 100 percent year-overyear growth in fiscal 2009.
Download Xterprise’s success story in PDF format.
© 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Microsoft, Visual C#, SQL Server, and Windows Server are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
Document published July 2008.
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06:10 PM Thursday, July 10, 2008
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Me.dium is the online medium, or hopes to be that someday very soon. This social browsing company has developed a novel solution that it says is better than chat, beyond your usual news feeds, and a first-ever way to surf together with friends, share pictures and videos, and experience the interaction one is used to in the real world, in the online world for the first time. Since its launch less than a year ago, it has attracted more than 2 million users and is pumping more than 20 million URLs through its system every day.  Founded in 2006, Me.dium set out to create a new kind of social browsing experience.
According to David Mandell, Founder and Vice President, “We started this company because of the dilemma in the real world vs. the online world. In the real world, the people and activity around you constantly affect your behaviors and decisions. Let’s say you walk down the street looking for restaurants, you might see one that is empty, one with friends in it, one full of music, etc. In this way, you’re getting the contextual and social value of your environment and it affects your decisions. Online you are completely alone. You can be going to the same web sites as your friends, but you have no way to get the social and contextual value that you do in the real world. Our goal is create a solution that reveals those people to you in a social browsing experience and changes how you think about finding and interacting with both people and information online.” Mandell says Me.dium is building what he calls a ‘real-time index layer’ over the web and creating a shared world. Explains Mandell, “So wherever you are online, you are getting information based on the real time activity of people around you, whether it’s browsing information about what others are browsing, or where your friends are surfing, and more. This capability did not exist before Me.dium.” While the solution was initially developed within the Mozilla-based browser, Firefox, it was quickly migrated to the Microsoft® Internet Explorer® to establish credibility, distribution, and mass-market appeal. Says Mandell, “That migration was the goal from the start. We took something developed on another platform and were able to flip it into the Microsoft Internet Explorer platform quickly and easily because Microsoft was able to get us access to the right people at the right time.” While Mandell says the solution was available before its formal launch in August of 2007, as far as the company was concerned, “We couldn’t consider it a true public launch until we could support Internet Explorer.” Me.dium makes it very clear why it chose Microsoft technologies, says Mandell, “We chose to offer an add-on for Internet Explorer because Internet Explorer is the most widely used browser on the planet.” Mandell also says that getting access to the right people within Microsoft was key for the company from a strategic and tactical perspective, and having access to the user base was critical as well. “By working with EBT and technical teams within Microsoft, we could quickly code something on the Internet Explorer platform. And that gave us access to 80 to 90 percent of the users in the world that use Explorer as opposed to Firefox. If we had attempted this without Microsoft, it would have taken 10 times longer and in the startup world — time is everything.” Says Mandell, “We were amazed at the amount of attention and insight we were able to get as a result of working with the Emerging Business Team. They kept us connected with the right people at Microsoft who helped us increase our development speed and reach an entirely larger market than we could have on our own.” Me.dium has created a browser add-on that shows you where your friends are online right now and makes it easy to share the experience. For instance, you can share a funny YouTube video, gossip about last night’s photos on Facebook, or even research stuff together for class. Me.dium allows you to effortlessly share by linking your friends to exactly what you’re seeing. Every time you send a friend a chat in Me.dium, your location online automatically comes along with it. Me.dium combines the functionality of chat with the ability to hang out together online in real time. So, when you communicate using Me.dium, your friends can see exactly what web page, picture, or video you’re talking about. In this way, Me.dium makes your online world feel more like the real world by helping you create shared experiences between you and your friends. Creating Shared Experiences The company believes that its solution is destined to change the way people interact, or the way people think about being online. Explains Mandell, “You can now start to think of being online as an environment, as opposed to being just a web page.” Since launching its product, it has attracted more than 1 million users. Its initial target audience is the 18- to 24-year-old college market — the people who live and breathe on text messaging, and on Facebook, and other social networking sites — although Me.dium sees tremendous application for corporate applications as well. The company’s business model focuses on aggregating several layers of data that users are sharing with Me.dium. Explains Mandell, “We all know how valuable activity data is, so why don’t we ask the consumer if they want to share it, and give them a reason to share it with us. We think of your activity as your asset. And you as a consumer, should be able to control who you share it with, when, and where. And we give you value to do so, and if it’s not enough, then you don’t have to use it. By giving users value, we’re aggregating tremendous amounts of real-time activity data. This is what is missing right now from the online experience, and we’ve built an infrastructure based on Microsoft technologies that allows us to leverage this information on three levels.” First, says Mandell, the company gives users value for sharing information in the form of incentives or other benefits. At the second level is the impact this real time information will have on search. While Google and other search vehicles provide data that is very broad and indexed really well for specific things, you don’t get an understanding of what is going on right now — the real-time layer. And third is contextual advertising enabled by understanding what a person’s actual task is while online. Explains Mandell, “Based on the real-time layer we are creating, we start to see patterns, and that data is very contextual, very specific, and very targeted. So our ad-based business model goes way beyond the cookie-based advertising system.” Building the Right Foundation With IE Me.dium uses the Internet Explorer platform to enable its users to surf the Internet with each other, creating a shared experience around related pages and helping people find information together. In particular, the Me.dium Internet Explorer add-on uses the Internet Explorer 7 COM interfaces, the Windows ® XP API, and Windows Installer. The company says that development was done using Windows Visual Studio® 2005 and Windows Installer XML (WiX) toolset was used to create the Installer. Mandell says, “While the Internet Explorer has been fundamental to Me.dium’s browser-based product, it is the Windows API that enables the Me.dium add-on to achieve the level of integration required to prove the Me.dium experience. The Me.dium add-on hooks and manipulates the IE command bar in order to provide sensor status indication, dynamic tool tips, and a drop-down menu from the Me.dium command bar button. The add-on also uses COM to enable inter-thread and inter-process communication, allowing a continuous experience of the Me.dium shared world even as the user switches between tabs or browser windows.” As part of the Microsoft Start-up Accelerator Program, Me.dium has benefited from broad access to technology. Just two weeks before Internet Explorer 8.0 was launched in the developer community, Me.dium was asked if they could build something “cool” for the launch. Mandell says they worked for two weeks to build the applications that supported the value proposition on the Internet Explorer side and built two applications. One was a web discovery tool that uses its real-time add-on to provide a view into pages around you that have web slices so you can discover them without actually being on the pages, and navigate to them. The second product was an activity menu. With the Me.dium social discovery activity you can click the page or highlight text or a hyperlink, and Me.dium will show you what and who else is around that link based on the actual activity of the crowds. Joshua Allen, Senior Technical Evangelist for Internet Explorer, says Me.dium supported web slices and activities right out of the gate with IE 8.0 beta 1.0, what he refers to as a “significant step beyond just porting to IE. This is pretty innovative.” Internet Explorer 8 takes the web experience beyond the page. It introduces a new way to seamlessly experience the best of the web whether you are a web developer writing to standards or a user discovering a new online service. Me.dium created products for two new IE features, Web Activities and WebSlices. Allen says these features in IE 8.0 allow users to extend the browser using pure web standards without having to write C++ code. Says Allen, “You can right click anywhere in a web page and see who is browsing that page with Me.dium.” WebSlices is a new feature for websites that enables users to subscribe to content directly within a web page. WebSlices behave just like feeds in that users can subscribe to them and receive update notifications when the content changes. Says Allen, “Me.dium implemented a WebSlice and went a step further. If you have Me.dium installed and you land on pages with WebSlices, it will give you additional information about other WebSlices that might exist around you. It even does this with FireFox, so we might get some users interested in trying out IE.” Says Allen, “The whole social browsing area is a very cool scenario and we need startups that can be nimble and try out new things, so it’s exciting to see companies like Me.dium depending on Microsoft technologies.” Says Mandell, “Being part of the Explorer 8.0 launch was a huge, huge deal for us.” The company doesn’t see itself as a traditional partnership story with Microsoft, but more of a story focused on Microsoft goals and user value. According to Mandell, “We’re enhancing the value of Microsoft products and creating completely new ways to interact online.” From Social Browsing to Social Search In addition to the innovative Social Toolbar that enables Social Browsing in real time, Me.dium is getting set to launch another great way to leverage the real time activity of the crowds: Social Search. Shortly, Me.dium’s Social Search product will be the first time that you will be able to leverage the actual activity of crowds to get relevant search-based information: Crowd-Powered search. Me.dium’s Social Search delivers results based completely on the actual activity of real people, it lets you see what other people have actually been looking at in relation to your search term. More than just what other people are searching, you’ll see what they are actually surfing! Instead of relying on automated computer programs like spiders to crawl the Web and bring back information that may or may not be relevant, Me.dium’s Shared World technology platform lets you, the user, act as a web crawler, without having to do anything differently. Me.dium’s users show us what’s “hot” or most active on the Web right now. As a result, when you enter a search term, the Me.dium Search results are sorted and presented based on what people have actually been looking at in relation to your search term – in essence, where the crowds are online and what they’ve found relevant and useful. Currently in Alpha phase, Social Search is a brand new, entirely different way to think about search and Me.dium looks forward to testing how it impacts how people think about finding information together. Download Me.dium’s success story in PDF format. © 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Microsoft, Visual C#, SQL Server, and Windows Server are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners. Document published July 2008.
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07:58 PM Friday, June 13, 2008
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What if anyone could do live broadcasting? Better still, what if you could do it from a device that fits in the palm of your hand, and that you carry with you everywhere? Forget having to lug around large laptop cases and bulky video cameras. Simply pull out your lightweight, pocket-sized camera phone and start ‘livecasting’ right away. And don’t worry about how to share video clips left on your phone, your video is automatically stored on a server ready for later viewing, all thanks to Livecast.  Founded in 2005, Livecast enables what it calls “right now” broadcasting. You not only know what is happening in real time, but you know exactly where it’s happening. Explains Jennifer Blome, Livecast’s Vice President of Marketing, “This is broadcasting live from your mobile phone. It’s not capture first, save the file second, and post third. This is: Press the start icon and you are live, on the Web.”
This Vancouver-based startup enables anyone to simply stream live video from their mobile device to the Internet. Coupled with today’s 3G mobile devices, the company provides an end-to-end solution for live broadcasting of entertainment, social events, amateur sports, breaking news and emergencies in the field. The company built its technology on the Microsoft® .NET Framework and a range of other core Microsoft technologies including Windows Media®, Windows Mobile®, Virtual Earth™, and more recently Silverlight™. Livecast knew that having Microsoft technology behind it would give it the scalability and reliability it required to build a mainstream application. And that, in combination with a core team of executives who had all worked together before, seemed to be a winning combination. While at other companies, the Livecast team gained a decade of experience providing ‘livecast’ services for the industry’s largest events, including: Grammy, Emmy and Tony Awards, U2 World Tour, Cannes Film Festival, World Extreme Ski Championships and Olympics. According to Blome, “We went from events to developing automated streaming media technology for global telecom companies. But what we were really waiting for was the ability for ‘anyone’ to do live Webcasting. To make this a mass market phenomena, we knew it would require a device that everybody had with them and that was very simple to use.” The timing came together when the right devices — a Windows® CE and soon after that the Windows Mobile — and high-speed networks began to take off. Livecast was able to offer streaming right from mobile phones as early as 2005, when the first Windows Mobile phones became available in the market. The onboard support of Windows Media, the standardization of camera controls and application user interface, meant that Livecast could decrease time to market on mobile phone applications by eight to 12 months over other mobile operating systems. Says Blome, “And because Windows Mobile represented some of the most popular higher-end phones in North America, it gave us access to well-marketed and supported phone models by leading carriers.” According to Blome, “Windows Media allowed our development team to focus on building innovative applications and services, while counting on the mature and robust Windows Media technologies.” Today, Livecast’s software enables live video streaming — anywhere, anytime — all at the touch of a button on an ‘always-on-you’ camera phone or other portable device. This results in ‘live’ broadcasts of events viewable by anyone with a mobile phone or PC. PocketCaster is offered direct to consumers as an ASP service, or as a licensed solution to TV broadcasters and media companies, enterprises and government organizations. The company’s solution has already won numerous awards, including the grand-prize winner of the NAVTEQ LBS Global Challenge. At the Microsoft MIX08 conference, the company announced and previewed its upcoming Microsoft Silverlight-based consumer portal, Livecast.com. The Livecast. com portal is designed as an interactive live video and mapping “mashup” that displays each mobile livecaster’s location as a colored pinpoint on a map. Viewers simply roll over (mouse over) the pinpoint to preview video information and click to launch the corresponding live stream. With an expected launch date of June ‘08, the Silverlight-based site will offer customers an easy and convenient way to share entertainment, breaking news, amateur sporting activities and memorable events with family, friends and fans. With the market ready for an explosion in mobile user-generated content, personal video communications and location-based services, Livecast is positioned to take the lead in enabling livecasting from a wide variety of mobile phones and incorporating mapping of GPS locations in its Silverlight-based portal. Part of the Microsoft Startup Accelerator Program, Livecast has spend the last 18 months working with teams within Microsoft, and partners, from operators to handset manufacturers to chip makers, to OEMs. “We’re ensuring that we have optimized performance on major handsets available in the market, while working with global media companies and operator partners to get the solution into the field. Our next step is the roll-out of a community portal designed for consumers,” says Blome. And the momentum is building. Nokia and Reuters have teamed up to transform how journalists file stores in the field using Livecast’s software for video streaming trials. Download Livecast’s success story in PDF format. © 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Microsoft, Visual C#, SQL Server, and Windows Server are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners. Document published June 2008.
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04:30 PM Friday, May 30, 2008
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For the first time, advertisers can target, monitor, and optimize online video advertising in real-time through channels of content across any Internet-enabled platform—broadband, mobile, IPTV, or download, or even peer-to-peer. And it’s all possible through YuMe’s full suite of interactive ad products.  Founded in 2004, YuMe set out to monetize the distribution of video—answering an industry-wide demand for more clarity in targeting, flexibility in format, and overall efficiency in managing video ad campaigns. It also wanted to tap into the video ad sales market, expected to reach $3.1 billion by 2010, according to eMarketer’s July 2007 report.
Jayant Kadambi, CEO and Co-founder of YuMe explains: "We looked around at existing ad models, platforms, and technologies and found they were all primarily built for Web sites. We knew video was very different, so we built our ad platform to distribute ads (really videos) over any broadband connection—DSL lines, set-top boxes, mobile devices to PCs sitting in your home, and traditional Web sites as well." Today, YuMe’s suite of products is revolutionizing the way advertisers buy video advertising and improving the relevancy of video advertising for every viewer, regardless of device or platform. It is all built on the Microsoft® .NET Framework and other core Microsoft technologies including Microsoft Metadirectory Services Server (MMS), Windows Media® Player, Silverlight™, and more. The company says that by leveraging Microsoft technologies it has built and delivered a superior online video ad management system. And by partnering early with the Emerging Business Team, it has had access to top-tier products, resources, and insights from product teams with the online domain expertise it required—and access to Microsoft’s partnership ecosystem as well. YuMe is now part of the Microsoft Startup Accelerator Program. By using the scalable .NET Framework, YuMe says development process times are faster and simpler, and it has made the entire platform more stable and secure. It enabled the company to develop the first dedicated broadband video advertising network built exclusively for the new world of Web video. Soon after the video ad management platform launched in March 2007, YuMe was recognized as “Best In Show” at Under the Radar 2007. Unlike other solutions on the market, YuMe is both a Video Ad Management System and a Video Advertising Network. The Ad Management System provides video monetization tools for publishers and content producers, and provides a single platform called ACE (Adaptive Campaign Engine) for all ads whether from third-party networks, syndication feeds, publishers or YuMe sales. The Video Advertising Network provides what the company calls a ‘new kind of video advertising buy.’ Its ad network is organized into brand safe, ad-ready channels of content, from entertainment to lifestyle, news, music, sports, animation and gaming. Advertisers can buy across audiences and channels, improving the relevancy of the video advertising for the viewer. It also provides real-time targeting (dynamic ad insertion), measurement, and optimization that ensures an ad campaign performs, as it should. Explains Kadambi, “We’re an ad network and an ad management platform, and the only company that can do this across many platforms—a Web site that’s streaming, on a download as we do for NBC, on a Windows PC, or an Xbox®. When advertisers want to target a TV show like Lost or Heroes, they are advertising on content. They don’t want to think about the technical details of where that content is being watched. We take care of that for them—and offer a solution that spans any platform that these TV shows are being watched on.” “And the cool thing is we’ll also tell them that 400 people watched on their mobile, 300 watched on the Xbox, and 1,000 on a PC. This ‘campaign measurement’ feature is the major differentiation of our solution, and Microsoft tools were critical,” says Kadambi. YuMe used the MMS Servers for the data center portion of its business, used Silverlight and Windows Media Player for the Windows browser, and .NET Framework for the Windows Vista® business. The company is more convinced now than ever before that as video moves online, there will be a need for a sophisticated system to monetize it. Since the company announced its ad platform in March 2007, it has become one of the largest independent video ad networks in the U.S. Says Kadambi, “We’re almost as big as YouTube now in terms of the amount of content that we’re representing on our network.” Says Kadambi, “We are the only advertising network that offers premium and transparent video advertising with quality reach—we’re providing advertisers with access to some 400+ Web sites, more than 150 million premium video streams (and just under 1 billion page views), and 46.7 million unique visitors per month.” Already, the company is gaining customer interest as well. It is providing the ad platform and ad serving technology for the streaming video content on Microsoft Media Center Internet TV. And in January 2008, YuMe was selected by NBC to provide ad management, campaign management, trafficking, and reporting for the new NBC Direct service. YuMe has also announced that it will serve InVideo overlay ads as part of Google’s AdSense for its video beta advertising program. Download YuMe’s success story in PDF format. © 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Microsoft, Visual C#, SQL Server, and Windows Server are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners. Document published May 2008.
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04:00 PM Friday, May 30, 2008
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What if you could always find the product you wanted while actually shopping? No more roaming the aisles, or wandering aimlessly through different departments. And what if the whole experience could be simplified, with more relevant information at your fingertips? And better still, what if you received the personal assistance you secretly desired—all from the privacy of your mobile device? This is the EasyShopping experience provided by StoreXperience, an on-demand service for consumers, stores, and brands.
 Founded in 2007 by a team of executives with strong expertise in enterprise applications, CRM and retail, the company set out to find the next big opportunity in the world of commerce. According to President Herve Pluche, “About two years ago, I got together with a group of friends to find that next big opportunity, and after looking at more than 10 different ideas, StoreXperience came out on top, meaning this was the one that got everyone all fired up. It started from the basic observation that new technologies, mostly associated with the Internet, and telecommunications, had had a massive impact on enabling eCommerce, but had very little impact on traditional retail.” Why, asked the company? It reasoned it was because of a missing element — mobility. And the company set out to change this by enabling traditional retail to benefit from the same new technologies. With smart phones getting more and more popular by the day, the timing was perfect.
The company set out to develop and sell its business services on-demand via a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model that retail stores and brands could use to interact with the consumer in the field, using his or her mobile phone. StoreXperience’s innovative service is based on a wide range of Microsoft® technologies that include: Windows Server™, .NET Framework, SQL Server® 2005, PerformancePoint ™ Server 2007, Dynamics™ CRM 3.0, Visual Earth™, Silverlight™, Windows Mobile® 5 and 6 to name a few.
The company chose Microsoft as its primary technology partner for two reasons: technology and business development. On the technology front, it wanted a partner that would provide as many of the fundamental building block technologies it would need. And on the business side the company’s founders already had experience with the IDEE program, born within Microsoft France, and were convinced that the business dimension was an important element that had to be factored into its partnership decision. So when StoreXperience was asked by Microsoft to join the new Microsoft Startup Accelerator Program, it jumped at the opportunity.
In fact, even before that, the Emerging Business Team (EBT) made an early introduction for StoreXperience that had a big payoff. The team introduced them to Kevin Kerr, Industry Technology Strategist in the Microsoft Worldwide Industry group. Explains Kerr, “I evaluated what they were doing, and thought it was a great match for what we were trying to bring to Worldwide Industry. Our job is to enable and create solutions that our sales force can then go to market with. We’re more of a strategy creation and developmental arm.”
Kerr introduced StoreXperience to key partners, one that proved critical was to an Austrian company (Imagination Computer Services GesmbH) focused on data matrix imaging technology. It has since become an integral part of the company’s offering.
In the technology area, Kerr says that Microsoft played a key role early on as well. StoreXperience had a business model built around using consumer devices to capture shopping experiences with data matrix, yet they didn’t have a way to analyze those interactions to provide real value to brands and businesses. Kerr designed the integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM as a foundation product to collect all the interactions of the consumers, and then came up with a ‘dashboard’ that would display the rich data using Microsoft Performance Point Server. Microsoft’s EBT incubation team funded most of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM integration.
According to Kerr, “The big picture is that we took a partner that had a good business model, we used our scope and vision across the industry in general to help them build relationships that would make the product better, and we used our own technologies and investments to build an architecture that would leave them with an end-to-end solution — rather than just a good idea. We embraced that by having them participate in massive ways at the National Retail Federation (NRF) tradeshow, that is the largest industry trade show.”
Explains President Herve Pluche, “On the technical front, we were able to develop, test and launch our new service in just four months — other solutions would have taken us two to three times as long. The launch of our new product called EasyShopping was announced at the annual NRF tradeshow in January 2008. This rapid development cycle demonstrates both the breadth and interoperability of the different technologies provided by Microsoft.”
Further, the company says that having all of these technologies under one roof, and more importantly, compatible, was crucial.
On the business front, Pluche says the Microsoft partnership gave StoreXperience a “fantastic opportunity” to demonstrate its product to the 13,000+ attendees at the National Retail Federation Big Show and increase its exposure to the market. Says Pluche, “The outcome of this event exceeded our expectations. We not only demonstrated the technical capabilities of the team by offering a live deployment of our solution through a treasure hunt, but also validated the market opportunity and timing through the generation of a significant deal flow with over 200 sales leads with the top brands and specialty retailers.”
StoreXperience offers a service to consumers, stores and brands that promises to redefine the consumer instore shopping experience and allow stores and brands to drive traffic and increase sales. Using mobile phones, EasyShopping creates interactivity by giving stores and brands a platform to send targeted information to the consumer before they make a buying decision.
For the consumer, EasyShopping acts like a Virtual Shopping Assistant, offering product expertise, comparisons, and ‘sweet deals’ while consumers are actually shopping. Consumers get special deals based on shopping context — who they are, what they’re looking for, what time of day it is, even their location. Say a consumer is shopping on Union Square in San Francisco. The service can push a contextual advertisement for a sushi bar just blocks off Union Square and offer a 20 percent discount just for that day.
The solution leverages 2D Datamatrix technology – interactive bar codelike symbols that can be placed next to product information cards, on posters, on signage or on websites. By downloading a simple software application via a text message to their mobile phones, consumers can then “scan” 2D Datamatrix tags with their phones’ cameras while they shop, receiving rich, in-depth product information supplied by participating retailers and brands.
For the store/brand, this solution serves as a marketing and consumer management solution that allows stores and brands to inform, influence, and engage consumers in the field by sending rich information to them via mobile phone, before a purchasing decision is made. As an example, it provides product information, contextual offers, and even non-intrusive mobile advertising. And the connection to the mobile user allows stores/brands to collect rich information on the consumer’s spending habits and store traffic for continuous improvement.
According to Pluche, “StoreXperience is breaking new ground by helping traditional stores and brands transform the consumer in-store experience. The consumer gets the best of both worlds: the power of information with the satisfaction of in-store shopping. The store/ brand is able to inform and influence the consumer at the point of sales for increased revenue.”
The company’s business model is based on monthly on-demand fees for the enterprise solution, combined with revenue for delivery of contextualized mobile advertising. For a minimal capital expenditure and reasonable set-up and monthly recurring fee, stores and brands see an immediate impact on their bottom lines. For consumers, the service is free.
Explains Pluche, “StoreXperience went from a company operating in stealth mode, to a company recognized by the retail industry as a high potential player in just 5 months. The partnership with Microsoft was key to rapid implementation and a broad exposure to the market.”
StoreXperience is now negotiating pilots of its service with several key companies in two different vertical markets: cosmetics and the food and beverage industry.
Download StoreXperience’s success story in PDF format.
© 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Microsoft, Visual C#, SQL Server, and Windows Server are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
Document published May 2008.
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02:50 PM Saturday, May 10, 2008
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What if you could better comply with regulatory requirements, strengthen your security, and improve efficiency and productivity? Delivering centralized identity and access management is one of the top compliance and security challenges facing IT departments today. Increasingly, corporate officers require IT managers to meet a growing number of compliance requirements—including managing and auditing who has access to key systems and policies, and the reports to prove it. Yet today’s heterogeneous computing environments make this task difficult. Centrify set out to change this.
 Founded in 2004 by Tom Kemp, a former co-founder of NetIQ, and senior executives from industry leaders such as Microsoft, Computer Associates,Novell, Netscape and others, Centrify has quickly become a leading provider of Microsoft Active Directory®-based auditing, access control, and identity management solutions for non-Microsoft platforms. The company tag line says it all: Simplify, Identify, Centrify.
With Centrify, customers can fully leverage their existing investment in Active Directory by comprehensively extending Active Directory’s access control and identity management capabilities to heterogeneous systems, web applications, databases and storage platforms.
As an example, Centrify DirectControl secures a company’s non-Microsoft platforms using the same authentication, authorization and Group Policy services deployed for the Microsoft Windows® environment. And Centrify DirectAudit complements DirectControl by delivering auditing, logging and real-time monitoring of user activity on non-Microsoft systems. Together, these products help its customers improve IT efficiency, better comply with regulatory requirements, and centrally audit and control access to heterogeneous computing environments.
The reality of today’s heterogeneous computing infrastructure is that different applications and systems have different identity stores. This means that IT staff have to use multiple tools to set up a user to access multiple systems—and end users have to grapple with remembering multiple usernames and passwords. Yet with Centrify DirectControl, organizations now have a single tool in Active Directory that manages user accounts, provisions users, and configures systems.
Explains CEO Kemp, “With our solution, helpdesk requests for password resets go way down, freeing IT resources for higher-value tasks. With DirectAudit, IT staff can also perform immediate, in-depth troubleshooting by replaying and reporting on user activity that may have contributed to system failures. We’ve taken a unique approach to solving our customers’ identity management challenges, delivering a powerful but elegantly simple solution that ‘does the right thing’ for their Windows, UNIX, Linux, Mac, Java/J2EE and Oracle/DB2/SAP platforms.”
While existing solutions can help these organizations consolidate and centralize their identity and access management, Centrify says they are highly proprietary, very costly to deploy, lack comprehensive auditing capabilities and require painful changes to a company’s existing IT infrastructure. Centrify’s vision is to tie these disparate systems and applications into a secure, connected computing infrastructure with Active Directory at its center.
Active Directory is a standards-based, enterprise-class directory that most companies already own. In fact, the Gartner Group projects that by the end of 2010, at least 90 percent of midsize and large enterprises will have deployed Active Directory in their internal infrastructure.
“We chose Microsoft Active Directory because of its support for standards such as LDAP and Kerberos and its wide-scale deployment in customer environments. We selected Microsoft SQL Server 2005 as our underlying database for our DirectAudit solution because of its scalability and price/performance,” says Kemp.
The company’s vision is to integrate non-Microsoft systems such as UNIX, Linux and Mac into Active Directory. It also integrates non-Microsoft applications such as Apache, DB2, WebLogic, WebSphere, JBoss and SAP into Active Directory. Centrify builds software that is installed on those systems and applications, but then ties them into the Microsoft Active Directory backend.
As an example, the company’s Direct-Control solution extends Microsoft Active Directory to more than 100+versions of UNIX, Linux, and Mac.
Centrify claims to be one of the only companies to deliver the complete ‘3As’ of identity management—authentication, access control and auditing—leveraging Active Directory across the enterprise.
So far, the strategy seems to be working. Centrify boasts more than 300 customers, including 30 percent of the Fortune 50, more than 40 resellers worldwide, and $36 million in venture funding from investors including the Mayfield Fund, Accel Partners, Sigma Partners and INVESCO Private Capital. A Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, they are also a member of Microsoft’s SecureIT Alliance and the Interop Vendor Alliance.
And recently, the company reported year-over-year revenue growth of more than 400 percent, and a doubling of its customer base.
According to Kemp, the Microsoft Emerging Business Team was instrumental in Centrify’s early stages of development—introducing them to key Microsoft product personnel and confirming its product synergy with related Microsoft offerings.
Says Kemp, “While I was at NetIQ, I got a great appreciation for what it is to partner with Microsoft. If you have the right story and message, even a small company, can leverage the size and presence of Microsoft and go far.”
Clearly, Centrify is on its way.
Download Centrify’s success story in PDF format.
© 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Microsoft, Visual C#, SQL Server, and Windows Server are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
Document published February 2008.
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04:40 PM Thursday, April 17, 2008
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What if you could buy the exact vehicle you wanted, by model, color and trim? No traveling dealer-to-dealer, or haggling on pricing. Simply push a button or two, make an offer, and see if it is accepted. And all of this can be done in the privacy of your own home. This is what Skoots is all about. It offers a unique web-based service for both auto dealers and their customers — based on the Microsoft®.NET Framework and other technologies, including Silverlight™.  Founded in 2005 by automotive and IT industry veterans, Skoots provides unique patent pending, web-based solutions for automotive dealers via a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering. Using the Skoots hosted LIVEoffer automated platform, consumers can find the new or used vehicle they want, eNegotiate with a dealer in real time, and lock in a deal without having to ever leave their home or office. According to Ken Lees, President of Skoots, “With our solution, the only time you step into the showroom is when you go to pick up your car. And customers have told us that it takes them less than an hour to sign the papers and get the keys.”
Clearly, Skoots is capitalizing on a growing industry trend. According to a JD Powers & Associates and Jupiter Research, 90 percent of all car buyers first turn to the Internet for features and pricing before buying a car. Yet 56 percent of all automotive shoppers want price negotiations completed online before setting foot in the dealership, according to the same research. Explains Glen Gulyas, Skoots CEO and a longtime user of Microsoft technology, “Until recently, the only solution auto dealers could offer a consumer was a ‘request a quote’ service — real-time 24-by-7 negotiation-based interaction was not an option. We set out to change that.” Skoots LIVEoffer provides dealers with the tools they need to electronically publish actionable and transactional inventory anywhere on the Web so they can engage with consumers searching for automotive solutions. LIVEoffer, built on the Microsoft .NET Framework, is a business-to-consumer Web Services Platform that leverages patent-pending user aggregated database management tools and automated virtual storefronts that allow customers to eNegotiate dealer direct new and used car prices online in real time. Through the Accelerator product, the Skoots’ enterprise platform also provides for the creation of online advertising and the monitoring of keyword and targeted search terms so dealers can control these costs. According to Lees, “Our solutions provide the foundation for dealers to offer a richer, more compelling user experience on the web — whether a consumer is researching a car or ready to purchase one.” And unlike paying a third party or major auto site such as cars.com or autotrader.com to generate semi-qualified leads, automotive dealers using Skoots’ solution achieve more effective search results through actionable interactive media that is created and managed by them. This saves time and money. Adds Gulyas, “Skoots Accelerator is an interactive media solution that combines Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing software tools and features. With this, dealers can quickly create a Web campaign based on the inventory the dealer has available. They can indicate a set of VINs, purchase ad words that are highly localized to the dealer (by zip code, city name, etc.), and set the minimum offer or ‘buy now’ pricing.” Prospective buyers searching for an auto can use a local dealer using the Skoots solution, and use it to make an offer with LIVEoffer and eNegotiate — all while remaining anonymous until the offer is at or above the dealer’s minimum price. Once the offer is accepted, buyers use a credit card to lock in the price for $150 fee, similar to renting a car. The buyer then receives a written Dealer Guarantee and arranges with the dealer for delivery of the vehicle. The Skoot’s solution is built entirely on Microsoft technology including Windows® Enterprise Server 2003, SQL Server® 2005, Internet Information Server 6.0 and above, and Web Services. Explains Lees, “We’re now in beta with a Silverlight™ solution that we hope to have available within the next 60 days. It will emphasize Silverlight and Silverlight Live Streaming Service for rich content on advertising campaigns to thousands of dealers supporting early adoption of this new technology. And down the line, we’re looking at using Microsoft Dynamics™, and delivering a comprehensive customer relationship management solution for dealers. “ With MSN CarPoint generating millions in auto sales each month, and eBay Motors selling a car every 60 seconds, according to Skoots’ corporate research, the company knows that cars are selling on the Internet. And its solution is catching on. It already has more than 224 dealerships using its SaaS solution. Says Gulyas, “Because the web services and enterprise platforms are hosted by Skoots, additional expenditures on IT equipment by dealers is not required to take advantage of the solution.” In February 2008, Skoots was named ‘one of the top 10 cool technologies’ at the National Auto Dealers Association in San Francisco. The company was also named one of the first U.S. participants in the Microsoft Startup Accelerator Program, aimed at helping high potential software startups around the globe. According to Skoots, the relationship with Microsoft has provided the company with access to the latest technology to enhance and expand its offering. Through Silverlight technology and Visual Studio® 2008, Skoots plans to deliver a rich online shopping experience — one that incorporates video, animation, interactivity, and stunning user interfaces. Download Skoots' success story in PDF format. © 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Microsoft, Visual C#, SQL Server, and Windows Server are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners. Document published April 2008.
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02:51 PM Thursday, April 17, 2008
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Digital identity. We all have one today, many in fact, perhaps even too many. For businesses faced with ever-present security concerns, simplifying the way these digital identities are used and managed has become a strategic imperative. And one that Ping Identity set out to address—developing the world’s first rapidly deployable identity federation software, PingFederate. It provides users throughout an organization with safe access to Internet applications without the need to re-login.
 Founded in 2002, Ping Identity has a singular focus, says CEO Andre Durand, “We’re looking to be the ubiquitous choice for standards-based, secure single sign-on (SSO) over the Internet. We want to be the choice for federation. And we’re particularly focused on the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) providers because we see that as a huge growth potential—every SaaS provider needs to implement this technology.”
According to Durand, “Companies now view Secure Internet SSO as a strategic initiative that needs to be applied across all applications and external partner relationships.” Several years ago it became clear that all enterprises were operating on different security architectures—and continually having to reset passwords for employees, partners, acquisitions, affiliations, joint ventures, and more. Something had to change, and it did. Vendors including Microsoft® and large enterprises collaborated on writing federated identity standards—specifically WS-Federation and SAML—that would enable companies and their employees and partners to have secure SSO over the Internet. The problem? The first federated identity software products were incomplete and difficult to use, resulting in deployment projects that consumed months of time and ate up valuable resources. Explains Durand, “Single sign-on that works over the Internet is perceived to be difficult and expensive. This notion is proliferated by vendors such as IBM, Oracle, and Computer Associates that provide expensive, all-or-nothing, tightly coupled enterprise identity management solutions. We wanted to make the whole identity federation process much easier and faster.” More than four years ago, the company started working with Microsoft to help create the WS-Federation standard—an add-on to Microsoft’s Active Directory® Federation Services (ADFS). Durand says Ping Identity was one of the first Microsoft partners to implement the WS-Federation protocol. And since many of its customers also demand access to Microsoft platforms via SAML, Ping set out to develop a product that would provide ‘identity middleware’ to enable user access to and from Microsoft technologies that are widely deployed across the enterprise. Today, PingFederate, Ping’s flagship product, is rapidly becoming the industry benchmark for standards-based federated Identity Management to secure, connect, and control a company’s identity interactions with other organizations. SignOn.com is bringing these same capabilities to consumers. With PingFederate’s easy-to-use software, deployments that used to take six months now take days, or even less. With its comprehensive administrative console, external partner connections can be configured without extensive knowledge of SAML or WS-Federation. And its out-of-the-box integration kits provide easy first-mile integration, leveraging existing identity infrastructure, and last mile integration, providing scalable target application connections. Explains Durand, “Providing secure user sign-on to externally hosted SaaS providers is the fundamental driver for Internet SSO use cases. Due to this demand, we developed a specialized SaaS program that rapidly enables any SaaS provider to expose access to their services through standards-based methods like SAML or WS-Federation. On the other side of the equation, we offer over 14 ways to integrate and enable Microsoft technologies for Secure SSO to SaaS providers.” Ping’s strong partnership with Microsoft has resulted in comprehensive interoperability between the two companies’ products. The company has leveraged a number of core Microsoft technologies, such as Microsoft Active Directory and ADFS, as well as Microsoft SharePoint® 2003 and 2007, the .NET Framework, and Internet Information Server (IIS). As an example, PingFederate’s integration kit for Microsoft SharePoint 2003 and 2007 provides a critical tool to service providers that wish to expose collaborative content to partners or external users. For custom-built applications, PingFederate provides out of the box .NET Framework and Internet Integration Service (IIS) application integration capability. For emerging user-centric SSO, PingFederate provides ready support for Open ID and Microsoft’s CardSpace technologies. PingFederate uses the WS-Federation protocol that enables interoperability with Microsoft’s ADFS. According to Durand, “We offer a cross-platform approach that enables both .NET and Java applications to participate in WS-Federation and/or SAML-based federations. This is a key requirement for service providers that run a heterogeneous application environment and wish to accommodate all SSO standards demanded by their partner base. In addition, large enterprise customers have a need to provide Secure Internet SSO for Java and .NET applications.” As a member of the Microsoft Start-Up Accelerator Program, Ping says it is looking forward to increasing its visibility across Microsoft teams and channels. The company is also part of the TAP Program for Active Directory Federation Services, and has worked closely with Microsoft on co-authoring new revisions of standards. Ping has more than 150 customers worldwide, including big names such as Aetna, Cisco ystems, Comcast, Expedia, Siebel, Sungard, and the Department of Homeland Security to name a few. It also claims to have 30 of the top Fortune 100 companies as its customers, and PingFederate manages more than 500 federated partner connections. Download Ping Identity's success story in PDF format. © 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Microsoft, Visual C#, SQL Server, and Windows Server are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners. Document published March 2008.
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01:59 PM Thursday, April 17, 2008
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Most companies today recognize the productivity advantages of mobilizing the workforce, and have equipped their road warriors with cell phones, smart phones, laptops and pagers. But what about the ‘corridor warriors’—those who may not leave the building or campus, but are rarely at their desks? With the DiVitas mobile-to-mobile convergence (MMC) solution, organizations can now costeffectively extend the productivity gains of mobile communication to the entire workforce.
 Developed using a range of Microsoft® technologies, including Microsoft Visual Studio®, Live Communications Server 2005 and providing support for Microsoft Windows XP Professional and Microsoft Windows Mobile®, DiVitas has created a mobile voice-and-data solution that runs ubiquitously across the enterprise. This advanced, open, enterprise solution lets mobile devices automatically roam seamlessly—back and forth—across disparate cellular and WiFi networks for the first time. This means users no longer have to manually switch modes,and drop calls, when changing network environments.
According to Vivek Khuller, President and CEO of DiVitas Networks, “We’ve created a network-agnostic seamless application delivery platform for unwiring the enterprise workforce. We unify and extend voice, IM, presence and other applications on a single handset equally, securely and seamlessly over any mobile network – WiFi or cellular. Moreover, we enable enterprises to retain complete management control over mobile communications.” DiVitas believes that its solution enables enterprises to make the fullest use of their existing wireless LAN and PBX investments. “Cellular costs can be up to 10x the landline costs, which forces companies to mobilize only a small fraction of their workforce called the road warriors. Meanwhile, the corridor warriors are left to using their desk phones as the primary official communication device. By leveraging WiFi and dual-mode phones, the DiVitas solution can significantly cut the cost of mobilizing road warriors—by up to 60 percent—and minimize the cost of mobilizing corridor warriors,” says
Khuller. According to Khuller, “The technology required to make MMC work is just now becoming part of the enterprise ecosystem: WiFi, SIP and dual-mode smart phones have recently gained traction. What is needed now is a solution that brings all of these technologies together and enables people to work seamlessly from anywhere.” By partnering with Microsoft, the company knew it could bring additional value-add to the mobile-convergence field. And in particular, with its support for Microsoft Windows Mobile—one of the flagship operating systems for its MMC solution—and using Microsoft Live Communications Server 2005 as the key platform for Microsoft technology integration, DiVitas believes it can reach its goal of ‘unwiring the enterprise’ by mobilizing the corporate desk phone. “Through this integration with Microsoft, DiVitas is directly extending the benefits of Office Live Communications Server 2005 and Office Communications Server 2007 beyond the desktop,” explains Khuller. “End users will be able to place and receive calls and/or messages, whether they are in range of a cellular network or WiFi. They are no longer limited to cellular-only environments or a desktop connection.” A pioneer in the converged mobile market, DiVitas chose to support Microsoft technologies because of the ubiquity of the Microsoft Windows Mobile platform for dual-mode pocket PCs and smart phones. In addition, the company says that solutions from Microsoft offer key development tools, and are supported by the leading handset manufacturers around the world. Khuller says that the roadmap for Windows Mobile is in line with DiVitas’ longterm vision toward providing ‘seamless mobility for enterprises.’ Further, it believes that its solution is perfect for enterprises that have a huge installed base of Microsoft products such as Active Directory and Live Communications Server.
According to Khuller, “Microsoft has done a brilliant job of making applications available on the desktop, and now DiVitas will enable Microsoft to extend its applications beyond corporate walls equally, securely and seamlessly over any network: enterprise WiFi, public WiFi, hotspots, or cellular.” Khuller says that the company is also hoping to extend Microsoft’s reach for Live Communications Server IM and presence beyond non-Windows Mobile handsets such as those supporting Symbian and Linux operating systems. With a subsidiary in Bangalore, India, and more than $23 million in financing from Clearstone Venture Partners and Menlo Ventures, the DiVitas MMC solution is deployed at more than 48 locations around the world in a range of industries—healthcare, education, hospitality, retail, and manufacturing. The company has won numerous awards over the past year including the Mobile Computing ‘Product of the Year’ award from TechWorld, the UK’s premiere site for IT professionals, and was named one of five hot startups for 2007 by Network World, the leading IT news publication in North America. ▪ To find out more about Microsoft’s Emerging Business Team and the Microsoft Partner
programs available for startups, go to www.MicrosoftStartupZone.com Download DiVitas' success story in PDF format. © 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Microsoft, Visual C#, SQL Server, and Windows Server are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners. Document published February 2008.
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03:53 PM Friday, February 08, 2008
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Customers seem to hate them—and corporations love them. Like it or not, call centers are a fact of life. Viewed as a necessary evil rather than an opportunity to build relationships, businesses continually seek to slash service costs—which frequently results in more disgruntled customers. So wouldn’t it be great if there were a way to cut costs and increase customer satisfaction at the same time? That’s what Howard Lee thought. Building on several Microsoft® products, and the Microsoft .NET Framework, his concept for HyperQuality, Inc., a Web-based suite of quality assurance programs, is helping companies improve their customer experience—one agent at a time.
 Back in 2003 Howard Lee, Chairman and CEO of HyperQuality, was sitting in a Seattle Starbucks with his Chief Operating Officer, Mike Mattsen, when it hit him. Lee, who had managed Disney’s call center for the entertainment giant’s catalog orders, was intimately familiar with the customer service cost vs. quality dilemma. And his experience taught him that great quality costs less than low quality. Better service means fewer contacts per issue and lower total handling times, higher overall customer retention, and increased up sells and cross sells.
But while many systems exist that theoretically improve the customer experience, no one had developed a practical way to actually measure the effectiveness of those systems, or make use of the huge volumes of data being collected. Without accurate metrics, there was no way to know how one coaching method compared to another, how an agent scored against his or her peers, or how one call center faired against another. HyperQuality set out to change that.
The company has developed a Web-based suite of tools and services, a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering that objectively evaluates the customer care experience and provides concrete feedback on how to improve that experience. HyperQuality evaluates and audits telephone, email and chat communications, and reports the scores with detailed feedback to managers, supervisors and individual agents via an easy-to-use online reporting system. High-level reports enable managers to compare services within a center or across multiple centers. Detailed reports allow supervisors to view scores, attribute by attribute, at the agent level. Individual agents can also view their own results, listen to scored calls, and review feedback to help them improve their performance.
According to Chief Technology Officer Jude Kavalam, “We’re not a software company and we’re not a consultancy. We’re in the customer experience business. HyperQuality is tightly focused on evaluating and improving call center quality. Our customers include some of the largest corporations in the world—such as Covad Communications, Alaska Airlines and Time Warner Cable—over 40 in all. These companies have a global call center presence representing millions of interactions every day. They have a huge stake in managing those contacts as efficiently as possible without sacrificing quality. Our mission is to help them take their customer interactions to the next level.”
According to Kavalam, HyperQuality originally developed a proprietary system based on Java using Jasper reports. “In many cases our reporting performance was terrible,” he laments. “It often took several minutes for reports to appear. Now, we can produce the same report in seconds and in some cases in subseconds.”
Kavalam says starting the company on open source technology provided broad functionality for its initial growth, but as the company evolved, it faced scalability issues. He was convinced that moving to the Microsoft platform would solve these problems.
Says Kavalam, “We’re now in the process of taking all the solutions developed using open source technologies and moving them to the Microsoft platform. We’re taking the MySQL database and moving to Microsoft SQL Server®, and SQL Server Reporting Services. We are moving from Linux on the server end to Windows Server. We are moving from PHP and Java to .NET and Visual C#®. Also, in that process, we are including other technologies into the mix, like Windows Workflow Foundation.”
Microsoft’s .NET Framework and supporting technologies have enabled HyperQuality to build a very flexible, scalable system that gets clients ramped up quickly and then continues to support them as they grow. Kavalam says, “Just the switch to Microsoft’s SQL Server alone has made a huge difference in performance and manageability. HyperQuality is now able to do clusters, fail over, replication, maintenance and performance monitoring—tasks that were a nightmare to set up, configure, and manage on the existing open source solution.”
HyperQuality is currently monitoring approximately 400,000 customer interactions per month. With the SQL database, the company is able to monitor client interactions and provide actionable information back to the client in multiple formats geared for individual agents, all the way up to a high-level executive snapshot. Additionally, the Windows Communications Foundation allows HyperQuality to create a much more robust infrastructure for managing systems. And according to Kavalam, Microsoft’s tools also make it easier for HyperQuality’s programmers to write better code.
“Partnering with Microsoft has allowed us to be bold and more innovative,” Kavalam says. “The Emerging Business Team has supported us with everything from resources to support to technical reviews. Because of them and the .NET Framework, we are doing much more today than we ever could have done on our own.”
Download HyperQuality's success story in PDF format.
© 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Microsoft, Visual C#, SQL Server, and Windows Server are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
Document published January 2008.
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