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Customer Evidence


Case Study Spotlight

Barclays Capital needed to ensure queries made to its trade management system (TMS) did not delay business critical information reaching its traders.

     "The built-in reliability and latency guarantees of TAPS, based on SQL Server 2005, means Barclays Capital traders have up-to-date information on which to base their decisions."
Robert Byrne, Director, TAPS Development Team, Barclays Capital

Digital music inspired specialist music retailer HMV to create its own offering. But the organisation was determined to take a different approach to its competitors. Customer service was key to HMV - the service had to be easy to use and available to customers at all times.

    "Making sure the technology works is the most important part of the whole service. We're entrusting Microsoft and our partners with the credibility that we have built up over many years."
Mark Bennett, Head of Digital, HMV

Bookseller Gains Business Insights Across Sales Channels with New Data Warehouse

Barnes & Noble wanted to extract more business intelligence from its operational systems, including sales and inventory data, to make better business decisions for greater profitability.
    "We are currently processing anywhere between 1 million and 3 million sales transaction records, and it takes no more than 10 minutes to get the records into the data warehouse. That rate was not possible before."
Eliot Gardener, Project Manager, Barnes & Noble

Mediterranean Shipping Company Processes 5 Terabytes of Data with SQL Server 2005

Mediterranean Shipping Company needed a highly scalable, enterprise-class database to help it accommodate its annual growth rate of 30 percent.
    "With SQL Server 2005 we are able to maintain a quality of service that is unsurpassed in our industry."
Fabio Catassi, Chief Technical Officer, Mediterranean Shipping Company 

Hilton Sets the Table for Increases in Catering Revenue with New Database Solution

Hilton Hotels needed to develop a forecasting system to improve its business analysis process by establishing more accurate pricing and financial planning.
    "SQL Server 2005 provides Hilton with the power and extensibility to develop custom software that delivers revenue analysis and forecasting capabilities."
Kathleen Sullivan, Vice President, Sales and Revenue Management Systems, Hilton Hotels

Xerox Develops Scalable, Hosted Solution to Optimize Global Print Fleet Management

Xerox Global Services needed to make its Office Services's "print fleet" management solution easier and more cost effective, especially for its globally dispersed customers.
    "Where we used to look at years, we're now looking at months for development cycles…. Microsoft creates that foundation for our applications, while we focus specifically on the needs of our customers."
Kirk Pothos, Software Development Manager, Xerox Global Services

Siemens Increases Productivity, Reduces Deployment Time by 83 Percent

Siemens IT Operations wanted to increase the performance of its enterprise integration servers, simplify system administration tasks, and reduce application deployment time.
    "From the management and technical perspectives, we are able to work much faster now. It no longer takes several months to deploy a new service; it takes less than a few weeks."
Tom Buse, Project Manager, Siemens IT Operations, Siemens

Citigroup Corporate and Investment Banking Develops New Digital Identity Solution

When its client wanted a straight-through, automated digital certificate management process, Citigroup sought a global technology solution to provide a single, secure conduit for digital certificates issuance and lifecycle manage­ment
    "Our technology development is focused on solving our clients' business problems in innovative, industry-leading ways. Integrated Microsoft technology helps accelerate the solutions we provide to customers."
Hilary Ward, Director, Global Information Products, Citigroup Corporate and Investment Banking

Paris Firefighters Build Emergency Management Solution and Slash Alarm Response Times

The Firefighters wanted to reduce their alarm response time, better track and evaluate responses, and make more efficient use of technology and programming skills.
    "SYNTIA 2 will be life-critical for the people we serve. Each time we respond rapidly and effectively help someone in trouble, we will validate our choice of Microsoft technology."
Lieutenant Colonel Gilles Berthelot, Director of Information Systems, Firefighters of Paris

more case studies ››


Customer Testimonials

What are people saying about Visual Studio 2005!


"I wrote similar applications in my early days, and it would have taken 15 of us to code something that just one of our developers did in a couple of months with Visual Studio 2005."
Peter Peralta, Axis Product Manager, CB Richard Ellis
 
"Maybe people will use Microsoft .NET to realize their dreams. The future holds great possibilities, and The Finalizer proves that the powerful programming framework and tools are here today."
Jonathan Goodyear, President, ASPSOFT
 
"Because the mobile software developer kit is included in Visual Studio 2005, we were able to meet a very tight deadline and deliver NetSign for mobile in half the time that it would have taken before."
Scott Roberts, Program Manager, Saflink
 
"The most dramatic result of this migration has been the five-fold increase in performance. Die-hard ASP fans need to seriously consider ASP.NET 2.0. The potential performance increase is enormous."
Raymond Schofield, Webmaster, NHS Information Authority
 

Visual Studio Team System Business Value Whitepaper

Driving Productivity and Adaptive Businesses with Intuitive Integrated Application Life-Cycle Management »

Nearly all companies struggle with communication, collaboration and cultural gaps between business users who drive the competitive need for software development, IT organizations who create that software, and operations staff that manage application deployment and maintenance.

In Their Own Words

  • "Before, a single major issue could take us days to resolve. Now with Visual Studio Team System, we can resolve it in a matter of minutes"
    Peter Jones, Software Engineer, Airways New Zealand
  • "I don’t have to worry at design time what type of device the solution will run on. I know the solution will just run. I wrote about 20 percent less code than I would have otherwise…."
    Ahmed El-Ramly, Senior System Architect, Misys Healthcare Systems