Strategic Advantage and the Microsoft Application Platform (1)

Strategic Advantage and the
Microsoft Application Platform
Olivia Jones
Assistant Vice President at
Microsoft
March 2015

Strategic Advantage and the Microsoft Application Platform
2
Contents
The Power of Dynamic Software .................................................................................................................... 3
Executive Overview........................................................................................................................................ 4
Strategic Advantage from Dynamic Software ................................................................................................ 5
How IT Drives Business Performance ......................................................................................................... 6
Creating Dynamic Solutions with the Microsoft Application Platform ....................................................... 7
Application Platform Scenarios ...................................................................................................................... 8
APPLICATION PLATFORM SCENARIO: Business Integration and SOA ....................................................... 10
Using the Microsoft .NET Framework .................................................................................................. 10
Integrating Disparate Systems ............................................................................................................. 10
Real-World Success .............................................................................................................................. 11
Getting Started: MSDN Industry Centers ............................................................................................. 12
APPLICATION PLATFORM SCENARIO: Business Web Applications ........................................................... 13
Providing a Dynamic, Secure, Reliable, and Manageable Web Infrastructure .................................... 13
Delivering Web 2.0 Experiences with Silverlight .................................................................................. 13
Getting Started with Silverlight Rich Interactive Applications .............................................................. 15
APPLICATION PLATFORM SCENARIO: Business Intelligence..................................................................... 15
Business Intelligence Ranked as Top CIO Priority ................................................................................. 16
Support for Reporting, Analytics, and Data Mining .............................................................................. 16
Positioned for Continued Growth ........................................................................................................ 17
APPLICATION PLATFORM SCENARIO: APPLICATION LIFECYCLE MANAGEMENT ...................................... 18
Support for Distributed Team Development ........................................................................................ 18
Examples of Real-World Success .......................................................................................................... 19
Software Plus Services ................................................................................................................................. 20
Getting Started with the Microsoft Application Platform ............................................................................ 22
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................... 23
Copyright ................................................................................................................................................. 25

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The Power of Dynamic Software
Bill Gates established the vision for the Microsoft® Application Platform in
an article appearing in the October 2004 issue of InformationWeek:
“In the workplace, we're already moving from personally focused software,
such as word processors and spreadsheets, to truly collaborative tools that
bring teams together and drive a quantum leap in business productivity.
Today's productivity software does a good job helping people collaborate,
with shared workspaces and management software that helps teams and
projects work efficiently. But a coming generation of software will take
collaboration a step further, capturing the knowledge and experience of an
entire organization, enabling individuals and teams to draw on that
information to make better, more strategic decisions.
“In the back office, software standards are driving a more model-based
approach to developing applications. With the growth of XML and Web
services, we're getting closer to being able to visualize any kind of business
process and quickly develop software that can adapt to companies' changing
needs. For example, today when a firm makes an acquisition or changes a
key business process, the IT department often must embark on the
timeconsuming and expensive task of rewriting and testing the underlying
software. But as we move toward a world of rich Web services and
development tools that instinctively understand business processes,
businesses can simply make the changes they want and the code will take
care of itself.”
In 2008 this vision has become a reality. This white paper describes how
organizations around the world are benefiting from building and deploying
enterprise solutions using the Microsoft Application Platform. The whitepaper is
intended to help CIOs, CTOs, Enterprise Architects, and other IT leaders
understand how Microsoft’s unique set of integrated platform capabilities can
help organizations achieve sustainable strategic advantage.
This whitepaper can be found online at:
http://www.microsoft.com/applicationplatform
Executive Overview
Surveys of organizations of all sizes and across industries show IT leaders seeking
effective strategies for:

4
• Improving the ability for people to innovate and improve their
organization.
• Developing business intelligence, including reporting, analytics, and data
mining of data from disparate sources to enhance decision making.
• Mitigating risk and maintaining IT governance—policy, standards,
compliance and security.
• Integrating new IT technologies with existing investments.
• Getting the most from a portfolio of packaged and custom-developed
applications.
• Gaining the agility to rapidly respond to market needs and opportunities.
The Microsoft Application Platform provides the integrated set of operating
systems, servers, applications, and development tools to enable organizations
to achieve all of these strategies in developing and deploying world-class
enterprise solutions.
With the Microsoft Application Platform, IT decision makers benefit from
integration between applications, including their existing systems, enabling a
flexible environment and business agility. The application platform supports a
Dynamic IT environment with development and management tools to keep
the mission-critical solutions running as needed.
To help IT leaders deliver on the promise of Dynamic IT, the Microsoft Application
platform provides a reliable, secure, manageable, and economical software
platform to help organizations amplify the impact of their people, increase
business agility and achieve strategic advantage.
The Microsoft Application Platform is different from other solutions in the market
because it delivers such complete integration, providing the highest levels of
interoperability and security. The integrated capabilities of the Microsoft
Application Platform result in a more dynamic IT environment, improving
business agility and increasing sustainable strategic advantage.
The broad acceptance of the Microsoft Application Platform is evidenced by:
• Microsoft is the primary vendor for SOA implementations, according to IDC
research.
• Microsoft powers the majority of the Fortune 1000 Web sites, according to
software company, Port 80.
• Microsoft is currently the fastest growing database and BI vendor—
shipping more units than Oracle and IBM combined.
• Microsoft is the primary development platform for mission critical
applications in organizations with a median size of 10,000 employees,
according to IDC research.
• Microsoft is positioned in the Leaders quadrant of Gartner’s Magic
Quadrant for Application Infrastructure, 2Q07.*

5
Strategic Advantage from Dynamic Software
The more complex and competitive an organization’s market becomes, the
more critical it is for IT to provide an integrated application platform to
support a range of capabilities and resources including business intelligence
(BI), business process management, service-oriented architecture (SOA),
application servers, portal infrastructure, integration capabilities, and
development tools to unite these elements into dynamic software solutions.
Organizations need to converge what were once disparate, stand-alone
applications and systems into an integrated, unified, application platform. In
fact, according to Forrester Consulting, 75 percent of IT leaders across 412
companies in North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America anticipate
a shift towards application platforms, with 41 percent of respondents saying
their application platform strategy is currently underway.1
Application platform “building block” capabilities include:
• Business process management services for connecting and orchestrating
processes and integrating systems.
• Data management services for storing, managing, integrating, and
accessing data.
• Business intelligence services for analyzing, reporting and sharing
information with familiar, easy to use tools.
• Services for improving the usability of applications with the goal of
increasing user productivity and satisfaction.
1 “Many Organizations Embrace Converged Application Platforms, But Adoption Barriers Remain”, a commissioned study conducted by Forrester
Consulting on behalf of Microsoft, October 2007; http://download.microsoft.com/download/b/3/5/b3561c68-e641-4137-abdddf09ac51742c/Forrester
Consulting - Application Platform Optimization Study 10-2007 - 2.pdf
* Gartner, Inc. "Magic Quadrant for Application Infrastructure, 2Q07" by Simon Hayward et al, June 1, 2007.
Application Lifecycle Management including development tools, processes,
and services for the team-based design, development and management
of applications.
Application platforms deliver integrated software capabilities for building,
customizing, running and managing applications. These integrated software
capabilities provides organizations with the benefit of focusing limited IT

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resources on innovation that delivers strategic advantage rather than on
commodity services.
How IT Drives Business Performance
Organizations that have already moved to a well-integrated application
platform readily see benefits. According to a 2006 Keystone Strategy Inc. study,
IT Drives Growth, firms using dynamic software gain a quantifiable, positive
difference on business performance--including faster growth and higher
worker productivity.1
The report was based on substantial research, involving interviews with IT
executives from 161 large manufacturing companies in the United States, Japan,
and Western Europe.
How IT Drives Business Performance
Information
Superior information technology Business
Technology drives growth Performance
Capability
Enterprises with better IT
have: Productivity Productivity and
• More productive Insight & Control employees Insight &
foster growth
• More insight into and
control over their Control business
IT infrastructure and Key IT Insight and control employee empowerment Functional
depends on strong
are key elements to Drivers operations and business
employee productivity systems and good IT management practices
The study found that:
• Organizations with superior IT grew faster and realized better business
performance than their peers.
• Organizations with superior IT benefit from enabling more productive
employees and gain more insight into and control over their business, all of
which fosters growth
• IT infrastructure and employee empowerment are key elements to
employee productivity
1 http://www.microsoft.com/business/enterprise/itdrivesgrowth.mspx

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• Measuring IT in terms of how it supports executives, managers, employees,
and key business processes results in an unprecedented view into the
positive impact IT has on the organization.
• A stable and robust IT infrastructure, with well-implemented software to
support operations and excellent IT management practices, is important to
achieving superior results.
Creating Dynamic Solutions with the Microsoft Application Platform
“Microsoft is a Leader
in our evaluation of
application server
platforms, due to the
strong and mature
development,
deployment,
management, and
interoperability
features of its
Windows Server
platform, which is
based on .NET.”
“Microsoft is a
Leader in
Application Server
Platforms”,
Forrester Research,
Inc., July 2007
The Microsoft
Application
Platform has
steadily evolved
over the years to
provide the best
integrated, most
complete, robust,
secure, and scalable
platform for
organizations to use
in creating and deploying enterprise-class solutions.
The company has worked closely with its customers in creating and
continually enhancing the Microsoft Application Platform. Listening to
organizations, the company saw the need for providing a dynamic application
platform that would help organizations meet a common set of business
challenges, including the ability to:
• Attract and retain customers
• Quickly develop new applications to provide the agility required to be
a market leader
• Create, deploy, and improve critical business management processes
• Help organizations meet growing needs for auditing and compliance
reporting
• Integrate data from disparate systems into multi-terabyte data
warehouses for reporting and analytics, and to generate BI to provide
insights to provide better decision making
• Push BI to the edge of an organization to maximize the value of BI
across all levels of an organization
• Use SOA architecture to create integrated services across disparate
systems, applications, and data stores
• Simplify IT management and provide the tools to analyze and
enhance operations across complex infrastructure
• Manage product lifecycle management
The Microsoft Application Platform meets all of these needs and more, giving
organizations the flexibility of IT infrastructure, operations and processes to
create an agile infrastructure for mission-critical applications that work with
whatever platform is currently in place. This powerful combination yields
something Microsoft refers to as Dynamic IT.
Having a Dynamic IT environment helps reduce delivery costs, helps
organizations innovate and evolve with the needs of their respective business
environments, and enables people to do their best work. With Dynamic IT,
organizations IT and application development teams can work together to
become strategic partners to the business.

8
“Microsoft is a Leader in our evaluation of application server platforms, due
to the strong and mature development, deployment, management, and
interoperability features of its Windows Server® platform, which is based on
.NET,”2
from “Microsoft is a Leader in Application Server Platforms”,
Forrester Research, Inc., July 2007.
To enhance Dynamic IT, the Microsoft Application Platform provides
industryleading user-facing software supported by business logic and
processes— presented through a familiar range of user interfaces including
Web-based solutions, and client applications—with the data expected to get
the job done.
While Microsoft long ago set the high-water mark for providing easy-
tounderstand user interfaces that provided consistency across applications,
the Microsoft Application Platform provides the applications, development
tools, and server infrastructure to provide a dynamic user experience across
the organization.
This includes providing SOA solutions for the next generation of web-centric
software + services applications. The company’s SOA strategy was initiated in
1999 with the introduction of the Microsoft .NET Framework, which
continues to set the industry bar as the first native Web services-based
platform built for that purpose from the ground up.
The Microsoft Application Platform provides a unique, reliable, secure,
manageable, and economical platform to help organizations amplify the
impact of their people, increase business agility and achieve strategic
advantage. This platform is designed to maximize efficiency, facilitate
innovation, and help organizations respond quickly to change.
Application Platform Scenarios
The Microsoft Application Platform provides the set of integrated,
missioncritical platform technologies and development tools – across the user
experience, portal, service orchestration and business process management,
business intelligence and the data platform – that enables organizations to
develop applications that integrate with existing systems.
With a deep level of integration of the Microsoft Application Platform with
the security, identity, governance, design/development and management of
the Windows Server infrastructure, customers can realize a faster time to
solution, reduced costs and greater business agility for strategic advantage.
2 http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/itanalyst/docs/07-12-07MicrosoftisaLeaderinApplicationServerPlatforms.pdf

9
Organizations using the Microsoft Application Platform enjoy a number of
benefits including:
• User-Focused Experience. By connecting from the operating
environment to developer tools, Web portals, collaboration tools,
business intelligence, process management, through to the desktop,
the Microsoft Application Platform provides a user-centric
experience, helping amplify the impact of your employees and
improve the customer experience. Microsoft products are
interoperable by design. They address these requirements by
enabling interoperability out-of-the-box with software and hardware
from other vendors.
• Flexible Integrated System. Through fast and easy integration across
existing software and new web-based applications, the Microsoft
Application Platform helps increase business agility and strategic
advantage, enabling IT to deliver continuous alignment with business
goals.
• Proven Platform. The Microsoft Application Platform is proven to
help develop and connect business-critical applications while
providing internet-class scalability, security, and robust performance.
Technology areas include the Microsoft .NET Framework, Microsoft
Office SharePoint® Server, Microsoft SQL Server®, Windows Server,
Organizations also benefit from Microsoft’s deep commitment to research
and development, which totaled U.S.$7 billion in fiscal year 2007. Microsoft’s
investments in innovation provide organizations with an ever better platform
to improve their businesses while reducing implementation and operational
costs.

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To provide a better real-world view into how organizations are benefitting
from the Dynamic IT solutions they can create using the Microsoft Application
Platform, this white paper will look at four types of deployment scenarios:
• Business integration and SOA
• Business Web applications
• Business intelligence
• Application lifecycle management
APPLICATION PLATFORM SCENARIO: Business Integration and SOA
Services-oriented architecture is a popular strategy for designing solutions
that may require integration across operating systems, applications, and
databases. A service-oriented approach can unlock the value of existing
systems and improve cost efficiency and overall business agility.
SOA can be used to support and accelerate projects such as service-enabling
existing mainframes, enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications, or other
line-of-business systems. SOA can be used to develop integrated hubs that
enable applications to communicate and share information, and composite
applications that reuse multiple existing functions into a new application.
Using the Microsoft .NET Framework
Using the Microsoft .NET Framework and industry-standard Web services,
organizations can quickly develop applications that interoperate with other
systems. The efficiency of the .NET Framework, including its tight integrations
with Microsoft development tools and the rest of the Microsoft Application
Platform greatly simplified creation and deployment of services-enabled
solutions that deliver rapidly on business goals. This contrasts with alternative
platforms that can require risky, top-down, mega-scale efforts at across-
theboard business process reengineering.
An effective SOA strategy provides services that support both structured and
unstructured processes. The goal of a structured process, such as opening a
bank account or making an airline reservation, is a standard, predictable,
transparent, and efficient transaction. An unstructured process, such as
executing a marketing event or preparing a custom proposal for a customer,
needs services which foster collaboration and productivity by supporting
interactions between people.
Integrating Disparate Systems
Microsoft’s unique approach provides integrated, service-enabled workflow,
business rules, business process orchestration, and collaboration technologies
for supporting both unstructured and structured business processes. These

11
technologies include the .NET Framework, Windows® Communication
Foundation (WCF), Microsoft BizTalk® Server, SQL Server, Microsoft Live
Communications Server and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server.
One example of cross-platform interoperability using WCF is the .NET Stock
Trader sample application,3
which demonstrates robust interoperability
between service-oriented .NET applications and JEE applications. The .NET
Stock Trader is available for free from the Microsoft Developer Network
(MSDN)—the largest developer community in the world.
In addition to platform-level interoperability technologies, Microsoft provides
a complete set of adapters for interoperability between SAP, PeopleSoft, JD
Edwards, Oracle, Siebel, TIBCO, IBM, popular industry EDI standards4
and
others. Gartner positioned Microsoft in the leaders quadrant for Application
Infrastructure for Back-End Integration Projects, 2Q07.5
3 NET StockTrader sample application
4
http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/evaluation/adapter/default.mspx
5 http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/microsoft/vol1/article1/article1.html , Gartner, Inc. "Magic Quadrant for Application Infrastructure
for Back-End Integration Projects, 2Q07" by Jess Thompson et al, June 7, 2007.

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Real-World Success
Organizations, large and small, around the world are benefitting from the
Dynamic IT they can deploy using the Microsoft Application Platform to
support SOA-based solutions.
T-Com, a division of Deutche Telecom, reduced time to market for new
services by 40 percent6
and Siemens, Europe’s largest engineering
conglomerate, cut project development time by 50 per cent using Microsoft
for their SOA implementation.78
According to IDC research of 129 companies with a median size of 10,000
employees, Microsoft is the primary vendor used for SOA implementations.9
With over 7000 BizTalk installations, Microsoft is the largest and fastest
growing SOA vendor.
Getting Started: MSDN Industry Centers
MSDN Industry Centers provide architecture guidance for CIOs, CTOs and
Architects looking to address industry challenges with Microsoft technologies.
This site provides prescriptive architecture guidance for addressing current
and emerging challenges that the industry faces.
• Financial Services Industry Center
Microsoft can help financial services companies drive new opportunities
for strategic advantage by empowering the people within companies to
develop more profitable relationships, create innovative products and
services, improve operations and reduce costs, and build connections
with partners. For more information on Microsoft in financial services,
please visit:
http://www.microsoft.com/industry/financialservices/default.mspx
• Manufacturing Industry Center
Microsoft, through a combination of technology and industry partners,
provides a technology framework that helps manufacturing companies
drive innovation, streamline operations, and makes it easier to do
business with customers, vendors, and partners. For more information on
Microsoft in manufacturing please visit:
6
http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=201470
7 http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000000338
8
IDC. “Mission Critical North American Application Platform Study” (Research on behalf of Microsoft, 2007). p 51.
http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/b/b/ebb6ec6a-d362-4884-
9e1c3fa19837362d/2007_IDC_Mission_Critical_App_Platform_Adoption_Study.pdf

13
http://www.microsoft.com/industry/manufacturing/default.mspx
• Retail Industry Center
The MSDN Retail Industry Center offers retail technologists the guidance
they need to create, deploy, and support solutions built on the Microsoft
platform. The Center includes information on industry trends, retail
business scenarios, and guidance aligned by roles and responsibilities. For
more information on Microsoft in retail please visit:
http://www.microsoft.com/industry/retail/default.mspx
For more information, please visit: www.microsoft.com/soa
APPLICATION PLATFORM SCENARIO: Business Web Applications
For Web
Applications,
Microsoft delivers:
- Rich media
experiences to excite
and engage
customers on the
Web.
- Secure and
reliable Web sites
that scale with the
growth of the
business.
- Social
computing for the
business to enable
people to connect
and collaborate with
their customers.
- Experience
operating the most
popular destinations
on the Web.
Organizations need
a secure, reliable
and manageable Web infrastructure that scales with the growth of the
business, integrates with existing IT investments, and provides rich, dynamic
Web applications that facilitate e-commerce, increase productivity and excite
and engage customers and partners.
In addition to providing capabilities for delivering dynamic, scalable, secure
and reliable Web applications, the Microsoft Application Platforms supports
and accelerates projects such as delivering rich, responsive interactive
experiences, as well as providing an interactive channel for communication
and collaboration via Web 2.0-style social networking.
Providing a Dynamic, Secure, Reliable, and Manageable
Web Infrastructure
The Web has evolved into a powerful channel for delivering dynamic
applications with rich media experiences. As a result, organizations are
investing significantly in Web site redesigns—often because of previous
failures to provide positive user experiences or differentiate against their
competition.
Supporting both Microsoft .NET-enabled and JEE application servers,
Microsoft’s unique platform approach provides a dynamic, secure, reliable
and manageable Web infrastructure. It delivers rich user experiences,
SOAbased interoperability with existing IT investments, and communication
and collaboration all via a secure, reliable, and manageable Web
infrastructure that scales with the growth of your business.
Delivering Web 2.0 Experiences with Silverlight
To deliver rich “Web 2.0” media experiences and interactive applications on
the Web, Microsoft offers Silverlight™, a cross-browser, cross-platform plugin.
Sliverlight enables developers and designers to use existing Microsoft .NET

14
skills and
development tools
to deliver rich Web
2.0 media
experiences and
interactive
applications across different browsers and operating systems including Linux
and Firefox.
Entertainment Tonight, the Home Shopping Network, and MLB.com are just a
few sites that have adopted Microsoft Silverlight to attract and engage
customers as part of their digital marketing strategy.
To enable developers to use a service-oriented approach to connect Web
applications such as Silverlight and ASP.NET to data and processes hosted
across a variety of heterogeneous systems, Microsoft provides
servicesenabled technologies including the .NET Framework, BizTalk Server,
SQL Server and SharePoint Server.
Internet retailer Newegg is a good example of a successful service-oriented
approach in which an Enterprise Service Bus—a popular service-oriented
integration approach, was deployed to integrate their e-commerce Web
storefront applications with their back-office applications.9
In addition to e-commerce and other customer self-service applications, social
networking is emerging as a popular Web application for allowing
communities of people, both inside and outside the organization, who share
interests and activities, to communicate, collaborate and share documents
and ideas.
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server delivers a familiar portal interface that
provides document management, indexed search functionality, navigation
features, RSS support, as well as social networking capabilities such as wikis

15
and blogs for helping people to connect and collaborate. Microsoft Office
SharePoint Server has more than 85 million licenses worldwide.
Microsoft has long led the way in building security features into its platform.
Analysis shows that when compared with popular alternatives, Microsoft has
fewer critical security vulnerabilities.10
Coupled with Microsoft’s Identity
management solutions and a comprehensive line of security products—
Microsoft Forefront, Microsoft provides greater protection and control of
Web infrastructure.
Microsoft has extensive experience operating some of the most popular
destinations on the Web including MSN, with more than 465 million unique
users worldwide per month.
Organizations around the world use the Microsoft Application Platform to
host their Web sites, including 55 percent of the top 1000 corporations11
.
Getting Started with Silverlight Rich Interactive Applications
The best way to start learning about Silverlight is to see what you can do with
it. In the following video, Silverlight team members demonstrate sample
applications, talk about what you can do with Silverlight, and show how you
can start designing and developing your own applications.
To see Silverlight samples, please see the Silverlight Showcase. In addition, you
can download working code for other samples from the Silverlight Gallery.
Resources for getting started include:
• Silverlight Overview: Briefly describes Silverlight features.
• Silverlight Architecture: Overview of the architecture of Silverlight.
• Silverlight 1.0 - Development with JavaScript: If you are targeting your
development at the 1.0 version of Silverlight, this is the place for you.
In addition, much of the conceptual material contained in here (e.g.
animations, graphics, XAML, etc) is useful to 1.1 developers as well.
• Silverlight 1.1 Alpha - Development with the .NET Framework: For
developers targeting the 1.1 Alpha version of Silverlight.
• Silverlight Technical Articles: Additional MSDN articles that cover
subjects in Silverlight.
10 Vulnerability Report: Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) 6: http://secunia.com/product/1438/ . Internet Explorer and Firefox
Vulnerability Analysis http://blogs.technet.com/security/attachment/2594822.ashx
11 http://www.port80software.com/surveys/top1000webservers/

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APPLICATION PLATFORM SCENARIO: Business Intelligence
Information is at the core of an organization’s ability to make strategic
decisions. Organizations require a scalable and robust data platform that can
provide tools for uniting and analyzing data from a variety of different
sources and empower people to make better and more timely product,
service and customer decisions.
The Microsoft Application Platform provides capabilities for uniting disparate
sources of information into data warehouses, data marts, and other
repositories for rendering reports from across diverse systems and databases,
For Business
Intelligence
Microsoft delivers:
- Powerful
integration
capabilities for
accessing diverse
organizational data.
- Data
warehousing for the
world’s largest and
most heavily used
databases.
- Analytics
capabilities that
enable individuals
and teams to make
better informed
strategic decisions.
adding
interpretation
and insight to
data through data
mining and online
analytical
processing, and
12 http://members.microsoft.com/CustomerEvidence/Search/EvidenceDetails.aspx?EvidenceID=13793&LanguageID=1 14
http://www.microsoft.com/uk/getthefacts/lse.mspx
supporting tools for running the business with scorecards, dashboards and
key performance indicators.
Business Intelligence Ranked as Top CIO Priority
Providing tools to make better and timelier product and service decisions is at
the core of creating strategic advantage. Microsoft is currently the fastest
growing database and Business Intelligence vendor--shipping more units than
Oracle and IBM combined.
Microsoft enables an integrated view of data spread across multiple
databases and operational systems including SAP, Siebel, Oracle, IBM and
other systems. Microsoft provides complex integration, transformation and
synthesis at high speeds for very large data volumes.
Helping organizations manage the massive increase of data within and
outside the datacenter, Microsoft is emerging as the data management
platform of the world’s largest and most heavily used databases. Prominent
financial institutions such as NASDAQ12
and the London Stock Exchange14
rely
on Microsoft SQL Server for its enterprise-ready availability and performance
to manage their intensive OLTP workloads, and gain additional data
management benefits from the product’s rich set of integrated features.
Support for Reporting, Analytics, and Data Mining
SQL Server 2008 provides deep analytics capabilities which take data from
multiple data sources and reorganizes it into a multidimensional structure
that makes navigating and analyzing data more intuitive and faster. Complex
calculations, key performance indicators (KPIs), and data mining algorithms
can be developed to identify trends, patterns, and predictive models in your
data.

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As Microsoft’s data warehousing and business intelligence capabilities are
service-enabled, enterprise developers can more easily introduce data from
back-end systems to their service-oriented Web, desktop and mobile
applications. This improves access, reach and impact of data without the
need to build complicated connections.
Microsoft’s unique approach to empowering people to easily interact with
information through interfaces such as scorecards and dashboards and with
familiar tools such as Office Excel®, ProClarity® Analytics, and SharePoint
Server gives organizations tools to help achieve greater business intelligence
resulting in strategic advantage.
Microsoft’s data platform is used for some of the world’s most intensive OLTP
workloads including financial institutions like NASDAQ13
and the London Stock
Exchange. 16
Positioned for Continued Growth
Microsoft is positioned in the Leaders Quadrant for:
 Gartner, Inc. “Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms, 2008”
by James Richardson, Kurt Schlegel, Bill Hostmann, Neil McMurchy, 1 February
2008
 Gartner, Inc. “Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database
13 http://members.microsoft.com/CustomerEvidence/Search/EvidenceDetails.aspx?EvidenceID=13793&LanguageID=1 16
http://www.microsoft.com/uk/getthefacts/lse.mspx

18
Management Systems, 2007” by Donald Feinberg, Mark A. Beyer, 10 October
2007
 Gartner, Inc. “Magic Quadrant for CPM Suites, 2007” by Nigel Rayner, Neil
Chandler, John E. VanDecker, 19 December 2007
With over 630,000 SQL Server trained IT professionals, and better security
than Oracle14,
, Microsoft is quickly emerging as the leading platform for
providing business intelligence and analytics using familiar, easy-to-use tools.
For more information, please visit: www.microsoft.com/bi
APPLICATION PLATFORM SCENARIO: APPLICATION LIFECYCLE
MANAGEMENT
For Application
Lifecycle
Management,
Microsoft delivers:
- Powerful
tools to maximize
individuals’ and
teams’ productivity.
- Rich
reporting that
improves insight and
control into the
software
development process.
- Faster time
to value for custom-
developed
applications.
- A common
toolset for developing
14 http://www.microsoft.com/sql/prodinfo/compare/oracle/default.mspx
diverse types of applications.
With the world’s largest ISV ecosystem and over one million professional
developers using Visual Studio, Microsoft provides organizations with the
widest choice for both packaged and custom-developed applications, and the
ideal platform for application lifecycle management.
Microsoft Visual Studio and the .NET Framework provide a common toolset
that maximizes developer skills and enables development teams to better
and more quickly deliver custom applications to the organization. Visual
Studio and .NET Framework provide tools for delivering diverse applications
across a wide range of scenarios that include Web services, SOA and
composite applications, Web applications, rich Internet applications, desktop,
mobile, and server applications.
Support for Distributed Team Development
Microsoft Visual Studio Team System provides a collection of
tightlyintegrated software development tools that improve the way that
software architects, software developers, database developers, designers,
testers, and project managers collaborate to deliver robust, secure and
scalable applications.
Globally distributed development can provide advantages in term of cost and
speed for developing custom applications. However, tying global teams
together can be complex. To be successful, a global process framework that

19
orchestrates the
process without
sacrificing the
flexibility necessary
for agile
development is
needed.
With customizable development process templates and guidance from
Microsoft and industry partners, Microsoft Visual Studio Team System can be
customized to support existing development processes. In addition, given
that workflow, work items, test results and code quality are tracked in a
common database, an unprecedented level of transparency and visibility into
the
application lifecycle is available to ensure development projects are delivered
on time and under budget.
Examples of Real-World Success
• EDS, a global business and technology services company, realized a
286% ROI in four months by using Visual Team System to support a
more efficient global development strategy and to realign its internal
software development assets.15
• Over six months, Dell, a leading manufacturer of personal computers
and technology-related products realized a 225% ROI by deploying a
centralized global source code management platform to provide
developers with source code on a just-in-time basis regardless of
their location. Improved source code management has also enabled
Dell to consolidate its source code onto fewer servers, redeploy 100
system administrators, and improve the productivity of its
developers.1617
Used by 90 percent of the Fortune 100, the
16 ROI Case Study Microsoft Visual Studio Team System Dell
17
IDC. “Mission Critical North American Application Platform Study” (Research on behalf of Microsoft, 2007). p 21.
http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/b/b/ebb6ec6a-d362-4884-
9e1c3fa19837362d/2007_IDC_Mission_Critical_App_Platform_Adoption_Study.pdf

20
Microsoft .NET Framework provides fundamental application
development services and runtime. It is the primary platform for
developing mission-critical applications in a survey by IDC of 500
companies with a median size of 10,000 employees.20
For more information, please visit: www.microsoft.com/visualstudio
Software Plus Services
Online services using the distributed and ubiquitous nature of the Internet
(often referred to as “the cloud”) are becoming increasingly available. As a
result, organizations are seeking ways to combine on-premises software,
hosted services and online services into configurations that provide strategic
advantage.
Microsoft calls this hybrid computing model, which combines desktop,
datacenter and Internet-scale services, “Software + Services” (S+S).
Examples of a Software + Services model:
• An Organization with global sales, service and support operations
might shift email infrastructure to an online hosted service in order to
focus IT resources on optimizing core customer data and processes.
Sales organizations with limited IT budgets might shift Customer
Relationship Management functions to Software as a Service (SaaS)
providers.
• A composite application that runs on the desktop, retrieves a
customer’s address from an enterprise service and, using an online
mapping service, displays a street-level representation.

21
Software + Services provides organizations with choice and flexibility with
regard to how IT supports people and processes that improve the
organization. It allows organizations to provide differentiated IT based on:
“Running the business.” Leverage commodity services to reduce costs
and increase flexibility.
• “Changing the business.” Invest in software to maximize control and
differentiation.

22
Organizations exploring a Software + Services strategy can benefit from
Microsoft’s unique capability to deliver powerful and robust software across
desktop, datacenter and online models:
• On the desktop, Windows and Office software helps maximize
productivity, collaboration and mobility.
• In the datacenter, the Microsoft platform enables “real-world”
platform scenarios that include SOA, Business Intelligence, Business
Web and Application Lifecycle Management.
• On the Internet, Microsoft offers hosted services such as Hotmail,
Exchange Online, Office SharePoint Online and Dynamics Live CRM
• For applications, Microsoft provides online services such as Windows
Live, Silverlight Streaming, BizTalk Services and Virtual Earth.
Combining the strengths of each of these models provides organizations
increased choice and flexibility with regard to how IT capabilities can be
delivered.
Today application development platforms and tools differ between these
desktop, server and online computing models. To help organizations
maximize the benefits of S+S, Microsoft is developing a next-generation
application platform that allows applications to be seamlessly deployed on
premises or off using the same set of application platform tools and runtime.
On Premises
Software
Off Premises
Services
“Buy”
Packaged “Off-the
shelf” Applications
• Office
• ERP
• CRM
• Industry Apps
• Software as a
Service (SaaS)
• Email
• Mapping service
“Build”
Custom-Developed
Applications
• Web 2.0
• .NET
• JEE
• Gadgets, etc.
• Social
Networking
• Hosting
Software + Services
Focus:
Differentiation and Control
“Running the
Business”
Focus:
Cost
“Changing
the Business”

23
Getting Started with the Microsoft Application Platform
To enjoy the power of Dynamic IT, take advantage of the Microsoft
Application Platform for developing and deploying solutions. Microsoft
provides a number of resources to help organizations get started with the
Microsoft Application Platform, including:
• Application Platform Assessment. The Application Platform Assessment
tool is used to determine a personalized and private infrastructure
optimization score, peer comparison, and value assessment — a
comprehensive report which can serve as a roadmap and incentive for
optimizing your infrastructure. For more information on Application Platform
Assessments:
http://www.microsoft.com/business/peopleready/appplat/ac/apioassessmen
t.mspx?page=1
• Solution Accelerators. Use these tested and proven automation tools and
guides to assess your network and confidently roll out new services
employing architectures with baked-in security and manageability. For
more information on Solution Accelerators:
http://technet.microsoft.com/enus/solutionaccelerators/default.aspx
• MSDN Architecture Center. Microsoft's Architecture Center is dedicated
to providing information, ideas, and community to software architects
and business decision makers. Microsoft offers a vision into the latest
technologies and applications, providing unique insights and examples
about how these integrate into successful architectural implementations.
Visiting our industry centers, community areas, and special coverage
sections provides references to articles, videos, ARCasts, and code that
will enable organizations to make well informed architectural decisions.
For more information on Microsoft Architecture:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/enus/architecture/default.aspx
• Patterns & Practices. The Microsoft patterns & practices Enterprise
Library was created to meet the demands of architects and application
developers seeking guidance on how to apply Microsoft’s array of
products and technologies to common application development scenarios
and technical challenges. Microsoft patterns & practices are Microsoft’s
proven recommendations for how to design, develop, deploy, and
operate architecturally sound application for the Microsoft platform. For
more information on Microsoft patterns & practices:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/practices/bb190351.aspx

24
Conclusion
The integrated capabilities of the Microsoft Application Platform provide a
unique approach for developing applications across common business-driven
platform scenarios that include business integration and SOA, business Web
applications and business intelligence.
As a result, Microsoft is helping IT leaders address a range of challenging
choices including: 21 22 23 24
• Improving people’s ability to innovate and improve the organization.
Microsoft is committed to helping people and businesses reach their
full potential with a platform that is familiar, easy to use, secure and
manageable.
Having spent more than $7B on research and development in FY07,
Microsoft’s investments in innovation provide organizations with
tools to improve their businesses while reducing implementation and
operational costs.
• Mitigating risk and maintaining IT governance—policy, standards,
compliance and security.
Microsoft provides an integrated platform for increasing people’s
ability to improve the business while providing software and tools to
reduce risk and maintain adherence to policy, standards, compliance
and security.
• Integrating new IT technologies with existing investments.
Widely supported by technology and system integration partners
around the world, the Microsoft platform interoperates with other
platforms and applications to realize service oriented architectures
that can be managed locally and integrated globally.
• Getting the most from a portfolio of packaged and custom-developed
applications.
With the world’s largest ISV ecosystem and over one million
professional developers using Visual Studio 2005, Microsoft provides
a wealth of options for delivering both packaged and
customdeveloped applications to the organization.

25
21 2007 IDC. “Mission Critical North American Application Platform Study” (Research on behalf of Microsoft, 2007). p 51.
http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/b/b/ebb6ec6a-d362-4884-9e1c-3fa19837362d/2007_IDC_Mission_Critical_App_Platform_Adoption_Study.pdf
22
http://www.port80software.com/surveys/top1000webservers/
23
2007 IDC. “Mission Critical North American Application Platform Study” (Research on behalf of Microsoft, 2007). p 21.
http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/b/b/ebb6ec6a-d362-4884-9e1c-3fa19837362d/2007_IDC_Mission_Critical_App_Platform_Adoption_Study.pdf 24
http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/microsoft/article14a/article14a.html
Microsoft is positioned in the Leaders quadrant of Gartner, Inc., “Magic
Quadrant for Application Infrastructure, 2Q07”, by Simon Hayward, Massimo
Pezzini, Jess Thompson, Yefim V. Natis, 1 June 2007. According to this Gartner
Magic Quadrant report "Application Infrastructure includes the majority of
runtime middleware, as well as application development and management
tools that support the new generation of application styles based on
serviceoriented architecture (SOA), event-driven architecture and business
process management (BPM) technology."18
To explore opportunities for achieving strategic advantage with the Microsoft
Platform, please contact your Microsoft representative or partner about
scheduling an Architectural Design Session. More information about the
Microsoft Application Platform is available online at:
• http://www.microsoft.com/appplat/default.mspx
• http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/applicationplatform/default.aspx
18
http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/microsoft/article14a/article14a.html

26
The Gartner Magic Quadrants mentioned in this paper are copyrighted 2007 and 2008 by
Gartner, Inc., and are reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical
representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner’s
analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined
by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the
Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed
in the “Leaders” quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and
is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or
implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or
fitness for a particular purpose.

27
Copyright
The information contained in this document represents the current view of Microsoft
Corporation on the issues discussed as of the date of publication. Because Microsoft
must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a
commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of
any information presented after the date of publication.
This White Paper is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO
WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS
DOCUMENT.
Complying with all applicable copyright laws is the responsibility of the user. Without
limiting the rights under copyright, no part of this document may be reproduced, stored
in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means
(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), or for any purpose,
without the express written permission of Microsoft Corporation.
Microsoft may have patents, patent applications, trademarks, copyrights, or other
intellectual property rights covering subject matter in this document. Except as expressly
provided in any written license agreement from Microsoft, the furnishing of this
document does not give you any license to these patents, trademarks, copyrights, or
other intellectual property.
©2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Microsoft, BizTalk, Excel, ProClarity, SharePoint, Silverlight, SQL Server, Visual Studio,
Windows, 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 are the trademarks of
their respective owners.

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