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How an Intelligent Infrastructure Supports Business Productivity in the Intelligent Enterprise

White Paper

Published: July 2007

Contents
Executive Summary ............................................................................................................................ 1 The CIO Situation: Increase Performance While Decreasing Cost ........................................................ 3 The Business Situation: Productivity as Strategic Need and Indirect Benefit ........................................ 5 The IT Value Framework: Four Pillars ................................................................................................ 7 Reduce the Cost of Procurement and Deployment ........................................................................... 7 Improve Security and Management............................................................................................... 10 Extend Legacy Assets to the Enterprise ........................................................................................ 12 Reposition IT Resources for Strategic Business Initiatives ............................................................ 13 A Comparative Assessment............................................................................................................... 15 Procurement Cost Comparison ..................................................................................................... 15 Implementation Comparison......................................................................................................... 16 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 19

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Executive Summary
Todays CIOs and information technology (IT) directors face many increasing challenges. For years, their focus has been on keeping down the cost of operations. While this remains an expectation, complex and often competing requirements are emerging that are making their jobs more difficult: regulatory and compliance needs, systems security, development of new systems for business operations, reduced spending budgets, maintenance and enhancement of legacy systems, and retaining a mix of expensive staff operations. IT must expand upon its traditional foundation to be able to support these requirements. Based on both research and experience, Capgemini has identified three top objectives for the CIO and IT: y y y Align IT and business strategy. Match IT resources and investment to overall corporate direction. Manage IT costs. Maximize the value of IT department resources and adhere to budget. Provide for business agility. Enable all levels of the business to react quickly and nimbly to both internal and external events.

In reviewing these priorities, a conflict becomes evident. Namely, the goals of aligning IT with business strategy and supporting business agility are complicated by the requirement to optimize costs. The IT budget is growing very slowly, new expectations are growing exponentially, and the legacy environment continues to consume almost 80 percent of the budget, leaving only 20 percent to address the critical growth that the business demands.1 IT needs a strategy for using that 20 percent effectively, while developing tactical solutions that support the strategy of gaining control and improving alignment and agility between business and IT. Improving business productivity is a top priority, especially for the information worker. Here businesses can fully realize the benefits of business and IT working together. Controlling costs and increasing responsiveness are often mutually exclusive tasks, so IT should break down its imperatives to specific undertakings. The first imperative can be termed "cost and risk," which involves two components: purchasing cost-effective business-enabling capabilities; and managing a secure, unified infrastructure that reduces risk and lowers operational costs. The contrasting imperative, responsiveness, also has two components: expanding the value of existing assets to allow extended use of line-of-business applications; and expanding user self-service in an IT-controlled environment to allow IT to spend time responding to higher impact needs. One further imperative is business alignment: aligning IT goals with business goals to implement the new capabilities that are required to support business-driven value propositions. (See Figure 1.) In order to make business more agile and to align IT with business, the CIO must address the strategy of business productivity without losing productivity within the IT department. This is a discouraging task, given the CIOs situation of having to do more (increasing security and management needs, increasing requirements to extend legacy systems, deliver on strategic business initiatives and simplify growingly complex infrastructure systems) with less (reduced IT budgets). But by enabling business productivity properly, IT productivity can actually increase.

"Companies expect to spend 80% up from 2005s 76% of their overall IT spending to keep existing operations and maintenance in play, leaving only 20% for new development activity and project work." ("CIOs Must Target Legacy Applications With A Maintenance Renaissance," Phil Murphy, Forrester, June 22, 2006)

Figure 1. CIO Imperatives.

Finally, acting together the CIO and IT must architect a business productivity solution that will address their top objectives. The four actions below represent the pillars for achieving improvements: y y y y Reduce the cost of procurement and deployment. Improve security and management. Extend legacy assets to the enterprise. Reposition IT resources for strategic business initiatives.

These four pillars directly address the top three objectives of the CIO and IT managers. These actions should therefore be on the critical path for near-term consideration. The need for an IT infrastructure that enables business growth and innovationthe ability to help envision and create new business products and serviceshas become a critical IT priority.2 This paper addresses the highly complex environment that IT must deal with, focusing on the top objectives of the CIO and the business situation concerning IT productivity: y y y Guidance on business productivity improvements to increase IT value A framework for evaluating potential solutions Several approaches to the challenges that CIOs and IT departments face

Capgemini has written this paper to stimulate discussion about these challenges and potential solutions. Of course there are no absolutes: each business has its own unique needs and must prioritize its activities and expenditures to meet those requirements, determining its own blend for viable technology alternatives or combinations. But we hope this paper triggers new thinking toward how IT can improve its partnership in achieving business value while addressing its ongoing requirements for operational cost management.

This is described at www.cio.com/article/107150/CIOs_Need_to_Look_Beyond_IT_to_Lead_Business_Innovation.

The CIO Situation: Increase Performance While Decreasing Cost


The current trend in IT procurement and deployment costs is not sustainable if the CIO must keep cost below the typical 2 percent of revenue guidelines while changing the IT financial positioning from cost optimizer to revenue generator. The IT department is expected to contribute to competitive business positioning, while at the same time reducing cost. The business expects that IT will make the users of the technology more productive and more responsive to the customersa critical component in growing company sales. Deployment costs continue to rise due to a proliferation of new business needs: as the market becomes more global, businesses react with richer, broader, and more integrated technology requirements to stay competitive. The last ten years have seen some cost improvement due to enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and other packaged systems that provide an integrated suite of functionality. However, for desktop computers, laptops, e-mail, and operational and control systems, there are ever-increasing technology requirements such as document management, Web-based content management, Web and application servers, servers and applications for search and index functions, and collaborative tools such as portals, wikis, blogs, discussion boards, and instant messaging. IT environments grow more complex, requiring more expensive staffing options and longer lead time to investigate future technology choices, all of which create higher procurement costs. As deployment costs increase, this adds the need to upgrade computers, networks, communications, distributed systems, and mobile systems. And overarching everything, there is the need to integrate all of these components optimally in a seamless fashion. Although new architecture paradigms such as service-oriented architecture and application virtualization will help, they must first be implemented. Organizations build server silos to prevent conflicts between applications and set up multiple servers to provide scalability and to avoid having a single point of failure. However, this approach increases the management burden on IT staff, resulting in increased labor costs. It also creates a ballooning IT budget with increased capital expenditures for the procurement and deployment of the new hardware.
"Microsoft SoftGrid Application Virtualization - Application Virtualization: The Next Frontier Second Edition" Omer Qureshi, Microsoft, February 2007

Security and compliance continue to be a major concern enterprise-wide, and one of the CIOs highest priorities. At a time when technology enables us to more easily share information and increase the flow of information to knowledge workers, most corporate legal departments are requiring the business and the CIO to clamp down on the influx of additional information. Why? Because of the ballooning cost of electronic discovery: identifying relevant content to prepare for and defend in litigation. The trend toward regulated compliance is not likely to change. Corporate policy for legal defense can be enforced using technologies discussed in this paper. Because corporate and individual identity fraud continue to grow at a significant rate, often aided by easy access to personal data, regulators are not likely to relax their efforts for some time to come. Enterprises, therefore, remain awash in a sea of expanding regulations, with little hope the situation will improve.
"Using Security Compliance Software to Improve Business Efficiency and Reduce Costs" Charles Kolodgy, Gerry Pintal, and Rose Ryan, Symantec Corporation, June 2006

Any CIO should know how much of their total resources are spent managing their current IT environment. Whatever the amount, its probably too much. We suspect that much of the increase in maintenance (from 76 percent in 2005 to 80 percent in 2006) is due to compliance and regulatory requirements. If they continue to get worse, then eventually there will be no resources available for strategic IT initiatives. In fact, this may already be happening in your company. Status quo isnt good enough anymore; the way in which organizations perform application maintenance is too inefficient and costly to continue. Without a more efficient process, IT will stifle, rather than support, strategic business goals.

"CIOs Must Target Legacy Applications With A Maintenance Renaissance" Phil Murphy, June 22, 2006, Forrester

A big part of the challenge that IT departments face is the legacy environment that they must deal withinfrastructure and applications that have been in place for so long that they are almost impossible to replace cost-effectively, except over the course of a long-term migration effort (one measured in years). One additional aspect of the legacy environment presents a critical problem: most components of this asset class have reached the end of their productive scalable livesor in many cases have far surpassed it, and are now unreliable. Unfortunately, IT departments generally do not have the budget or staff to address strategic needs without a plan for changing the way strategies are determined. Almost all current IT resources are associated with procurement and maintenancevery few are allocated to new development of innovative solutions aligned to help the business grow. All too often the business users are left to their own devices, so they work as nimbly as they can to New system development projects are develop their own solutions based on common tools that foremost on the minds of businesspeople are already available to them, such as databases and who want to automate business functions to spreadsheets. Although we may applaud the be more competitive. entrepreneurial spirit embodied in such activities, these June 22, 2006 Forrester homegrown solutions can cause significant problems, such as undocumented and unreliable systems that are being used to operate the business. This leads to downtime, which in turn directly affects the bottom line and further represents a high compliance risk. Figure 2 illustrates the IT costs that make up the total cost of ownership (TCO):

Figure 2. Factors that comprise IT total cost of ownership (TCO).

Note that user productivity loss due to downtime is the second highest cost. This is not always because the server is down in the data center; it can result from a number of situations. For example, what happens if a homegrown "server" (a user's modified desktop computer) goes down? This can easily occur when the server is disrupted, because it is not under the direct control nor even monitored by IT. And why do such situations arise? Because the business users often feel compelled to build workable solutions that they can directly access to help them perform their jobs more effectively. It would be much better if IT were able to manage these situations in a controlled manner. In summary, the situations that CIOs and their IT departments are facing are quite complex and challenging. Capgemini believes there is a solution that can springboard past the immediate barriers: Build a new infrastructure capability based on current state technologies and provide a productivity platform for the business, thus increasing ITs value to the organization.

The Business Situation: Productivity as Strategic Need and Indirect IT Benefit


Capgemini believes that business productivity should be a strategic requirement for any business. An organization employing 1,000 knowledge workers loses $5.7 million annually just in the time wasted by employees having to reformat information as they move among applications. Not finding information costs that same organization an additional $5.3 million a year.
The Hidden Costs of Information Work IDC, March 2005

Business productivity can be increased in three core areas: y Enabling and improving effective multitasking. Workflow and process management, portals, and communication tools enable a person to increase productivity through better collaboration. Because increased modes of communication also allow more noise to interrupt focus and diffuse productivity gains, solutions must also incorporate a means of presence on the tasks at hand with limited interruptions.

Improving collaboration for accelerated learning and responsiveness. Collaborative workspaces, content management, mobility, and accessibilitythese factors are aimed at both internal enhancements and external responsiveness and competitive positioning. Collaboration and teamwork 28% of workers surveyed said that using the right collaboration tools at work would drive creativity and improve overall strategy by helping save them up to five hours each week. people consider everyone involved in a situation or Survey by Harris Interactive, 2004 process. Collaborative workspaces and content management reduce the complexity involved when information is coming from everywhere, by making information available and structured across enterprises.

Improving analytical and decision-making capabilities on a large scale. Making business intelligence (BI) and integration services available to all information workers gives a critical boost to productivity. It not only enables each person to take action sooner, but also improves the quality of From a business productivity perspective, the single largest common human resource all decisions, thereby reducing re-work and waste. group is information workersthey make Most companies have limited their BI capability to a up an average of 70% of the work force. limited number of staff analysts. The more analysis Size, structure and growth of the U.S. economy, that all information workers can do for themselves, the Apte, U. and Nath, H., Center for Management in more productive and independent they become, the Information Economy, Business and without the need to rely on IT to provide ad hoc Information Technologies Project (BIT) Working Paper, 2004 reports. y The derivative benefactor of implementing business productivity is the IT department. IT can reduce its own cost, improve security, extend legacy assets, and reposition IT resources by giving the business a platform that empowers the information worker to take on tasks in a secure, compliant, reliable, and standard way. Basically, an enterprise cannot achieve its improvement objectives for business productivity without addressing and incorporating fundamental technology advancements in their infrastructure. Status quo will not suffice.

A consolidated infrastructure for business productivity can improve the effectiveness of information workerswhich means that overall productivity can be dramatically affected. Such an infrastructure is made up of tools that address communications and collaboration, content and knowledge management, and business intelligence. These types of systems have been around for some time, but only in the last few years have they reached a level of maturity and interoperability that makes them a significant driver of business productivity. Even more recently, the integration of these systems into a single consolidated infrastructure has created the next generation of workspace for the information worker. This infrastructure has created a more effective, simple, efficient, and compliant workspace for the information worker. A reliable IT infrastructure directly equates to business success. The Center for Information Systems Research (CISR) at the MIT Sloan School of Management found that a reliable infrastructure can lower costs of goods sold, increase profit and innovation, and help [boost] market value.
"Evaluating IT Reliability - Prerequisite to CIO Success" CIO2CIO Perspectives

It is important to note that the decision to adopt a consolidated platform does not mean replacing the entire infrastructure and replacing it with a single vendors software. In this context, our definition of a single platform is a broad system to address a broad need. Consideration needs to be given to how practical and realistic it is to move toward a more unified infrastructure, and what components can more readily integrate with one another. The CIO can think of the software that is routinely integrated, and can then research whether a platform exists that addresses most or all of these needs as a suite of functionalities. For example, rather than creating a platform for document management that uses one vendor for workflow, another for document creation, another for storage, and a fourth vendor for publishing, why not find a single system that consolidates most of these functions into one unified infrastructure? By doing so, organizations can help save potential user training costs as well as management and deployment costs.

IT cannot provide value in isolationit must be in the context of the business. Conversely, we must recognize that business value is not exclusive to the businessit also resides in the IT departments. Together, business and IT can help advance each others goals.

The IT Value Framework: Four Pillars


This section of the paper discusses actions that the CIO can take to increase value; methods and criteria to be considered to advance their IT operations; and questions that can guide the search for improvement. As stated earlier, Capgemini believes that there are four pillars by which a CIO and IT can add value to the enterprise: y y y y Reduce the cost of procurement and deployment of IT assets. Improve security and management. Extend legacy assets to the enterprise. Reposition IT resources to focus on strategic business initiatives.

We believe that these four pillars drive to the heart of the capabilities that IT is pursuing, while providing productivity improvements to the IT organization itself. How can IT advance to the next level of effectiveness? Lets start by looking at each pillar and considering how we should search for and evaluate effective technology solutions.

Reduce the Cost of Procurement and Deployment


To reduce the cost of procurement and deployment (from analysis and design to the point of turning on a production system), businesses need to take a holistic view of their IT infrastructure as a collection of capabilities. The vast majority of users need expansive and easy-to-use application functionality. Certain specialized products, however, may be necessary to perform critical business functions with deep functionality, even though these products are often beneficial only to power users. It is also important to have an interoperable infrastructure, so that if a pure play system is needed to drive depth in a specifically identified capability, the pure play system or point solution can be integrated into the larger system in a coherent way, avoiding a random Companies continue to look for ways to drive mix of independent applications. (Mixing multiple down their spending on infrastructure, with 2006 pure play systems together actually increases cost, infrastructure spending accounting for 41% of IT because the implementation costs skyrocket when budget, down from 50% in 2005. disparate new applications must be connected for 2006-2007 IT Spending and Staffing Report: North an integrated flow of information.)
America, Gartner, March 2007

Although it would be unrealistic and potentially inefficient for an enterprise to plan on a single vendor for all their software, functional areas (such as business productivity) often lend themselves to related software applications that support a unified solution. By moving toward a more unified and extensive infrastructure from a single vendor, license costs and implementation costs will decrease. At the same time users will be provided with a more complete set of business capabilities and functionality that requires less learning and shorter adjustment time, thereby driving increased adoption to more rapidly realize the return on investment.

The concept of a unified infrastructure for products that typically need to be integrated is not new; Gartner began discussing the Smart Enterprise Suite (SES) in 2002.3 The belief then was that enterprises would shift their buying strategy away from individual products and toward suites that In a study of 240 business and IT decision makers, Forrester Consulting found that 78% of contained a collection of core capabilities that respondents anticipate the convergence of ECM, addressed communications and collaboration, enterprise communication and collaboration, and content management, and search functionality. BI in their organizations with 28% saying this However, this procurement trend didnt take hold as convergence is already underway. As additional quickly as expected, primarily because enterprises compelling evidence of progress toward the were not in a position to replace significant portions development of Information Workplaces, 68% of of their IT infrastructure at one time. Now, given decision makers have considered the idea of a new solutions, standards, and technologies that unified information management and business have been brought to market since 2003, we are productivity infrastructure that provides users with broad access to information. seeing a trend toward a convergence of capabilities from platform vendors. This trend makes the "IT Decision Makers 'Get' Information Workplace Platforms - But Strategies And Implementations Are Just enterprise infrastructure solution desirable in two Beginning To Break Silos," ways: more benefits can be realized, and more Forrester, Dec 1, 2006 affordable and attractive pricing strategies become feasible. For example, in the past, some IT departments sought multiple products and custom integration to create a Web portal that contained search, content management, and analytics. Software vendors have since realized that these capabilities are almost never found in isolation, so they have started to create unified software suites that package these capabilities as one solution. In all cases, companies must consider what is necessary for them to fulfill their business obligations; this includes usability, customer support, and regulatory requirements. Because only a small number of power users have the expertise and training to use some of the more complex programs, not all company-supported programs will be available to all users. Most employees require a simpler subset of the available applications that is easy to use and relevant to their duties. Supporting these employees to better do their daily tasks is a primary IT responsibility. Business requirements and expected system usage drive the buying decision. Companies must make choices as to the value of their business needs and then justify the per-user cost of licensing and support, as well as balancing the system integration costs against these business needs. Questions to Consider If you are looking toward reducing your license and deployment costs for new assets, here are some critical factors to consider: y y What sort of capability demands are you facing, and how can you most cost-effectively meet these demands? What sorts of solutions are available today, and how do they compare to your current infrastructure capabilities? How do they integrate with one another, compared to your current infrastructure? Do you need to add features to your existing platform, or do you need to replace what you have in order to satisfy longer-term requirements? What segment of the employee population are you trying to address: a small set of specialists or a broad array of information workers? What is the impact on your costs for communications, collaboration, business intelligence (BI), search, content management, and vendor management if you move to a new platform?

y y y

"The Smart Enterprise Suite is Coming: Do We Need It?" Gartner Group, May, 2002

Reducing the cost of procurement and deployment can be achieved by purchasing to economies of scale, standardization, and automation. For procurement, better buying power is achieved through centralized and strategic procurement. This is Forrester found that 28% of respondents see a possible through production economies of scale, convergence of ECM, enterprise communication where the vendor company bundles more for less. and collaboration, and BI already occurring Thus, cost of procurement is reduced by within their organizations. An additional 50% purchasing software for a broad user base. Of view this convergence as inevitable. Not course, this requires software that is driven by surprisingly, this convergence is more likely to broad-based user functionality. Each enterprise already be underway in larger organizations, must find a balance of solutions for unique where IT consolidation, cost savings benefits and business process improvements can be business processes versus solutions that will handle substantial. the majority of scenarios. A consolidated platform is more cost-effective and beneficial than buying multiple products to achieve the same objective, for both IT and the end users. In addition, license negotiations and renegotiations become simpler when the number of vendors is reduced. The value of a system is also increased as the system is exposed to more users, so a company can take better advantage of its asset base. Human resources represent the highest costs of deployment, and of those the greatest cost is typically for specialists. If a company has multiple vendors (best-of-breed strategy for each deployment component, or single-vendor components that are not harmonious), then the cost of human resources will also go up. The comparison in Figures 3and 4 below illustrates this principal.
BI Legacy System Search

"IT Decision Makers 'Get' Information Workplace Platforms - But Strategies And Implementations Are Just Beginning To Break Silos," Forrester, Dec 1, 2006

Collab

ECM Data Warehousing Messaging

Figure 3. A multi-vendor environment requires duplication of roles: multiple project managers, developers, and installation and configuration experts.

Collab

ECM ECM

Search BI Data Warehousing Messaging Em ail

Critical Legacy System s Necessary Pure -Play Applications

Figure 4. Simplifying the application stack requires some human intervention but requires less overhead.

Simplification is the key to success. In an increasingly complex world of infrastructure, simplification and the ability to take advantage of out-of-the-box functionality is essential. The most efficient way to reduce human involvement in deployment is through automation. A higher degree of automation in deployment lowers the cost of human capital to deploy the technology, and therefore the overall cost. This also reduces the chance for error, redundancy, or rework. There is always some fixed cost at the beginning to develop or configure the automation. However, IT should closely consider products that can help to automate the deployment process and reduce the necessity for specialized skills.

Improve Security and Management


When looking at improving security and management, there are a number of factors to consider, including vulnerability to system threats and how easily products in an infrastructure work together. Given all these factors, a more unified infrastructure is inherently easier to secure and manage than a collection of individual products. Security and management concerns typically involve such components as event correlation, compliance, security updates, upgrades, identity management, policy management, backups, deployment, health monitoring, and firewall mitigations for clients and servers. With a unified infrastructure, these components can be developed to work together, which keeps them less vulnerable to system threats. System administrators can use a common programming language and view the system through the single management console. Companies can thus reduce the number of distinct In one breach-of-contract claim, a plaintiff sought e-mails sent by more than 700 of the application experts, and train their IT professionals to defendants employees stored on 93 manage larger portions of the system. A more integrated backup tapes. Restoring the e-mail took an set of components cuts training overhead, leaving IT estimated 6 months, at a cost of more than departments more time to focus on enhancing $6.2 million. capabilities. By utilizing virtualization as well, Murphy Oil USA v. Flour Daniel Inc., 202 WL companies can also reduce hardware costs while also 246439, *3 (E.D. La. 2002) improving service levels. No single solution fulfills all management requirements immediately. In many cases, this can only be pursued with a well thoughtout transformation process and roadmap. Each CIO will need to prioritize the introduction of new capabilities, and plan for a training and adoption period for users. Likewise, the IT department will need to determine the best methods to maintain its new infrastructure.

Questions to Consider A consolidated infrastructure can be secured and maintained at a lower ongoing cost. As you plan improvements in security and management, here are some questions to consider: y y y y y y Do your current systems have the built-in security and compliance features that you will need now and in the near future? What are the associated costs of administrating and maintaining your current infrastructure, versus other options available in the market today? What impact does your infrastructure architecture have on your training costs? Does your IT department understand where and when system delays occur, and can it roll out solutions to address such delays? Would a consolidated view over your systems change the way your IT department would handle, monitor, and prevent failures? Can you automate your existing security and maintenance processes? Do you already have the tools necessary to do this?

Improving security compliance can be achieved through enforceable policy management and standards. However, making such improvements often runs into usability issues, so the solution must be carefully designed to address ease of use for end users as well as IT security administration. As with deployment, the highest cost in developing security The current cost to process 1 gigabyte of compliance is the cost of human resources, so IT and data for eDiscovery is $1,800. Legal departments should strive to automate their security functions through integrated workflows and "Believe it eDiscovery Spending to Top 4.8 Billion by 2011," Forester, Dec 11, 2006 technology. Improving manageability of the IT environment has improvement drivers that are similar to those for security compliance and deployment costs. Standards and reduction in overhead, reductions in premium and specialty resources, and process or operational improvements through automationthese actions all result in savings to IT operations. Through the utilization of good IT control architecture, strong policies, and a technology solution capable of managing, maintaining, and reporting on the status of enterprise compliance, enterprises could significantly reduce the number of man-days required for supporting the compliance system.
IDC, June 2006

The average corporate user generates and receives about 84 e-mails per day which require about 10 MB of storage on a daily basis. And by 2008, e-mails will require about 15.8 MB of space daily.
Radicati Group, 2006

In spite of the restrictions on e-mail archives, file-share storage, and even local hard disk storage, the overall cost of storage continues to rise. Without a strategy for managing redundant files, data, and information, this problem will get worse at an exponential rate. IT can take advantage of management tools that are built to manage multiple systems that run on a more unified infrastructure.

Managing the costs will be driven by multiple factors, including many of the following: y y y y y Multiple-vendor management, which requires updates, purchasing agreements, and product training IT staff trained to manage unique systems with a variety of different tools Developers capable of custom development in multiple programming languages and environments Dedicated servers to host unique applications Numerous user directories with multiple passwords

y y y y

Increased vulnerability arising from multiple security policies Server and application sprawl Multiple user provisioning Challenges in performing application and software patches efficiently

Managing systems from multiple vendors can be quite costly and time-consuming: it often requires a variety of IT skills, and it typically results in delays in processing new requests. An IT operation that runs multiple platforms within its infrastructure tends to deal with increased complexity, which therefore incurs increased operational costs. It is impractical to use only software from a single vendor. However, reducing the number of redundant software packages and replacing narrowly focused software with platform capabilities will almost invariably improve manageability and security, as well as costs. In fact this is one major advantage of a consolidated or more unified infrastructure: it can be maintained at a lower ongoing cost.

Extend Legacy Assets to the Enterprise


Companies have invested heavily in back-end systems. One common side effect is that valuable corporate information is not easily accessible to users. Siebel, SAP, and Oracle back-end systems control information that can drive better business decisions at all levels of an organization. However, due to per-user licensing requirements, economic concerns can end up restricting many users in an organization from access to this data. An organization needs to be able to extend access to this critical data to help drive operational improvements and more enlightened decision-making. When an organization makes this back-end information easily available to users, it will be putting its back-end systems to better use without paying extensive license fees. To make this a reality, companies need to capitalize on their infrastructure investments to open up the potential for user accessibility. By simply integrating existing applications through common data pathways, companies can reduce data entry points and repositories, and they can rely on their systems to provide a single, accurate version of the truth. The more simplified and interoperable a solution is, the broader the base of benefits will become, to a majority of business users. While the business user base will be reaping benefits through improved productivity, IT will also realize benefits. IT will be able to drive improvements in their operations by deploying a consistent, easily managed set of applications and requirements capabilities that can grow and extend with business needs. The requirements for using structured (or back-end information) and unstructured data are quite different. Structured data can be thought of as the type of data Electro Scientific Industries was in an ERP or CRM database. This type of data has specific able to extend the value of its rules for storing, modifying, updating, and distributing. existing SAP system Using Unstructured data can be thought of as discrete documents that SharePoint Server 2007, we are get passed around an enterprise with no specific updates or getting the functionality we need in formal distribution procedure. A common example of a short timeframe, and we may be unstructured data would be a spreadsheet that has been able to avoid spending the budgeted $500,000 on the SAP business distributed through e-mail to capture updated information, warehouse add-on, says Ian Corr, often being modified by multiple partieswhich can easily Vice President of Customer Service. result in multiple versions of "the truth." The structured world "Electro Scientific Industries (ESI)" case has very defined and traceable actions; in the unstructured study, Microsoft, Jan 2007 world, creativity and human interaction lead to value creation. The intersection of these two types of data is where collaboration and teamwork drive new ideas and improve overall strategy. A primary objective for IT is to bridge these two worlds: to expand on the traceability and reliability of data in the structured world while staying within the familiar environment and collaborative process of the unstructured world. When these two worlds are combined, information workers are able to avoid many of the manual tasks that are typically performed today, for example updating data, routing reports, forwarding permission requests, and transferring information from one format to another.

Providing management of controlled access to this combination of structured and unstructured data elements can lead to significant gains in IT efficiency. Standardization alone provides considerable efficiency. The productivity of users also increases, because they gain increased access to accurate data that they can interpret. Questions to Consider When you evaluate a business productivity infrastructure, here are some key questions to consider as you examine the need for an extensible platform: y y y y y Can your users currently utilize your legacy systems through their standard desktop tools (email, word processors, or spreadsheets)? Can your users get the right data to make decisions? Is enterprise information siloed, disparate, outdated, or simply wrong? What percentage of your information worker user base could potentially gain access to more enterprise information? How can IT help users gain access to your legacy systems or data (such as license fees, more investment, development, or a new platform or portal), and make further use of existing assets? How easy is it to integrate out-of-box functionality into your current infrastructure? Do you foresee a change in the way that your existing systems (such as SAP, Siebel, or Oracle) are used for communications, collaboration, BI, search, and content management in your environment?

y y

Extending legacy assets to the enterprise may be one of the biggest improvement opportunities for the business. Exposing existing assets such as back-end systems through the workers existing desktop arsenal (such as the ubiquitous Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office Outlook, and Microsoft Office Excel) generates more value for legacy assets. It also supports adoption by providing users with the familiar look and feel of their existing applications. Utilizing platforms that have built-in integration with legacy systems lets IT reduce the cost of integration while extending the usability of the legacy asset.

Reposition IT Resources for Strategic Business Initiatives


IT must achieve two distinct goals in repositioning IT resources to meet business initiatives. First, IT must free up some of its resources to focus on high value tasks. Second, IT and the business must align to identify and deliver initiatives that are worth doing. When an IT department is no longer burdened with everyday tasks that fix legacy-related issues, it can focus on tackling a major architecture improvement or adding the next capability that helps the business to meet its larger goals and stay more competitive in the marketplace. In the past, IT has been perceived as a reactive force in an organization. But when it gains resources, IT can realign responsibilities for certain tasks to business users in a secure manner, so that both IT and the business benefit. For example, pushing responsibility for granting access rights to the users frees IT of a routine task and A Gartner case study demonstrates IT cost savings in implementing automated empowers the business password resets solution. A company experienced the following as a result of users. Otherwise a self-service password resets: supervisor must send e*10% IT staff reduction mail informing IT that *50% reduction in helpdesk call an employee has a volume for password resets business need for certain *22% reduction in average cost/reset with new tool permission. IT *Total $652,165 first-year cost savings eventually processes *Reduced call time from 4 minutes to this request, taking up less than 1 minute valuable IT labor and
"Automated Password Resets Can Cut IT Service Desk Costs," Gartner, Dec 2004

creating an unneeded bottleneck. With delegated administration, the supervisor can change the permission or reset passwords without the need for IT to be involved. IT becomes aligned with business expectations by giving business the power to do certain tasks itself, which is exactly what the business wants and needs. Another area where IT could shift responsibilities is with the implementation of a document management system. In this case IT can allow business users to archive and recover information that may otherwise be lost if saved independently or on a damaged desktop. Not only does this save IT time in attempting to recover data, it also provides business users with a collaborative workspace.

Another example in aligning business and IT while reducing ITs workload is the deployment of a business process management (BMP) tool. BPM allows business users to define complex business workflows and automatically execute these processes. This speeds up the execution of business processes while reducing dependencies on IT for creating custom solutions for business processes. Aligning IT with the business is a critical area and, in the end, drives all investment in business enabling software. No customer will be sold on features or low cost of operations if they have no need for the products capabilities. Questions to Consider As you evaluate a business productivity infrastructure, consider how well or poorly your current systems help align IT resources with business initiatives. Here are some questions to help you evaluate your current state: y y y y y With your current system, do you offer your users out-of-the-box workflows; BI tools; or project management capabilities, search, and self administration? In your organization, what are the governance and communication processes between IT and business? What percentage of your IT staff is focused on creating new products or services? Can IT effectively adapt to changes in business process? How agile does IT believe it needs to be to respond to changing business requirements? If you shift responsibility for certain tasks from IT to the business users, how would that affect alignment with the business? Would you be able to free up resources to focus on higher-value areas?

To improve IT alignment with the business, it is important to give the business the right platform, in a secure, compliant, manageable, and maintainable way. With a system that reduces the need for IT staff to perform routine low-level tasks, there can be a safe shift in these routine responsibilities from IT to business users. This shift eliminates the IT middleman, and thus improves responsiveness and alignment.
Only 1.4% of total IT costs are spent on the advanced technology group, planning and architecture.
2006-2007 IT Spending and Staffing Report: North America, Gartner, March 2007

A Comparative Assessment
We have seen the challenge faced by the CIO, explored the four pillars of action that the CIO and IT can take to increase value, and posed questions to guide the CIO in finding a tailored solution. We've noted the trend from multiple isolated software products to more consolidated infrastructure options. We have also seen that IT capabilities are correlated to business performance. The final step is to apply this information to choosing the right solution. The solution from an IT perspective should be cost-effective in both procurement and deployment; improve security, compliance, and overall systems management; extend the life of existing IT assets; and reduce the amount of maintenance and enhancement effort required to extend the solution in the future. Of course the solution should also be scalable, reliable, and performance-oriented. While no solution will be perfect when taken directly out of the box, it should provide a reliable platform with the fundamentals for a 21st-century IT infrastructure and the new core business capabilities. These new capabilities might include document management; Web content management; enhanced collaboration including integrated VoIP communication; manageable and secure instant messaging; current Web 2.0 capabilities such as blogging, wiki sites, and RSS feeds; business intelligence through data access and analytical tools, with integration to collaborative communication channels so as to improve decisionmaking; and of course the infrastructure should be secure with built-in compliance capabilities. Such a core solution platform would have the capability to improve business productivity across the enterprisewhich is a critical success factor for sustainable business growth. Capgemini built a comparison model that evaluates software solutions in alignment with the CIOs top objectives. The solutions were judged based on Capgeminis view that business productivity is the greatest enabler of value across the enterprise. On the surface, the model may appear to focus on procurement and deployment costs. However, in fact we use the deployment area to assess the broad spectrum of costs, because that is the area where the holistic cost must be considered. For the evaluation, we chose the two largest players in the business productivity market based on their platform approach, namely IBM and Microsoft, as well as the leading vendors invested in their specific categories of business productivity. Because it is rare for a stand-alone selection of pure play solutions to be used across the entire enterprise, we also took a mixture of functionally specific solutions combined with a Microsoft or IBM platform when we scored deployment factors in our assessment. Our approach included the following steps: y y y License procurement. Deployment complexity, by scoring forty-five aspects of a solution. Assessment of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats for each platform and infrastructure mix.

The leader in this analysis is the solution that can handle the majority of scenarios for improving productivity across the enterprise (both IT and business) in a cost-efficient way. Of course, as noted in "The Business Situation" above, every company must make its own decisions based on skill sets, investments, which systems are core and specific to the business, stage in asset life cycle, and depreciation.

Procurement Cost Comparison


Capgemini compared licensing costs for a hypothetical company of 1,000 information users over the course of a year, evaluating eleven categories of a business productivity solution. Costs were factored for a per-user basis to maintain relevancy. Based on this approach, we found that Microsofts per-user licensing cost was considerably lower than other comparable combinations. Although this did not come as a shock to any of our infrastructure experts (all had predicted that Microsoft would have the lowest cost), the magnitude of the difference

was greater than anticipated. When we incorporated Microsofts enterprise pricing approach, Client Access License (CAL), which combines product and business productivity needs, the result was even lower. In fact, at $968 for the CAL suite pricing, Microsoft came in at 3.8 times less than its closest competitor. Using Microsofts lowest pricetheir CAL approachas a baseline, the other solutions had relative pricing as follows4: Microsoft (core CAL + enterprise CAL) Microsoft (individual product pricing) Pure play IBM $X $ 1.7X $ 3.8X $ 5.3X

Implementation Comparison
Capgemini used an in-house tool (Implementation Evaluation Matrix) to score solution implementations based on forty-five criteria. By using historical data and our experts' experience, we ranked Microsoft, IBM, pure players, and common combinations of these three to determine relative costs and complexity for deployment. We further interviewed a dozen senior Capgemini architects to help score and validate the matrix while capturing their insight and comments. Physical hardware and pricing thereof was not included in this comparison, because too many variables would exist to allow a fair comparison. The forty-five deployment criteria are grouped into ten categories: y y y y y y y y y y General: Risk, complexity, depth of customization, compatibility, documentation transparency Strategy: Phased implementation versus big bang probability, elimination of intangible effects Installation: predefined process, availability of modules (deep functionality), automation of deployment, remote installation and administration Architecture: Platform, virtualization, service-oriented architecture (SOA) integration, native rapid application development (RAD), adaptability for new technologies Infrastructure: Hardware reduction, hardware reusability, proprietary support, storage area network (SAN) compatibility Open solution: Predefined operating system, third-party customization needs, dependency on vendor Support: Online upgrade and update, geographical vendor availability, vendor management, remote assistance Time: Planning, installation, configuration, definition and development of maintenance procedures, issue correction, user training, overall implementation Resources: Number of highly skilled people, availability, distributed availability (outsourcing and offshore), training costs, probability of overall knowledge transfer Price: Licensing, integration costs, resources, travel cost (geographical resource availability), maintenance staff and ongoing cost, overall implementation price

Standard pricing obtained from publicly available commercial price lists. Discounts were not included due to varied software negotiation practices.

Pure players used for this evaluation were: Adobe - Acrobat, Avaya - IP Softphone, Autonomy - Autonomy Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL) Server, Business Objects - Crystal Reports, Cisco - Cisco IOS and Cisco Unified MeetingPlace, Cognos - Cognos Business Intelligence, EMC Documentum EBusiness and Documentum eRoom, FAST - FAST Enterprise Search Platform (ESP), Google - Search Appliance, Interwise - Interwise Connect, Jabber - Jabber, Novell - NetMail Advanced and Access Manager, Symantec - Symantec Enterprise Security Manager, Vignette - Vignette Content Management, WebEx - WebEx Meeting Center. IBM and Microsoft capabilities included all products that are comparable to this collection of pure players. Microsoft pricing was based on their CAL suites.

We aggregated the criterion into the above categories, scoring each criterion on a 1-5 basis. A low score indicates that the vendor has a baseline ability to fulfill a given category with higher scores for increasing ability to fulfill these categories. Obtaining the best possible score indicates that the vendor is the best of breed. Our best possible score at the category level was based on the number of criterion per category. Figure 5 shows the results.

Figure 5. Implementation Evaluation Matrix score of various solution implementations.

Microsoft had the highest overall score. In some categories, Microsoft was separated by a small but not insignificant margin from IBM. By examining each category, a number of observations can be made. Microsoft was a clear winner in price, but had only a slight edge in some of the other categories it led. IBM had the lead in architecture, which is in line with our experts' comments. Our experts felt that Microsoft and IBM have comparable results in most technical categories, most notably scalability, stability, security, and manageability. Interestingly, expert input is that the pure players are not as refined as IBM and Microsoft in these regards. Another area of interest is in the perception of architects as to maturity and enterprise readiness of the various products. The Microsoft solutions have long been applicable to the small- and mediumsized business markets; however not until recently (the past few years) have they been viewed as ready at the enterprise level compared to others. The introduction of the Microsoft Office 2003 release was the inaugural event in this transition, showcased by Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003. The view on enterprise readiness is changing; we heard this even from our own architects, whose input covered the spectrum. Three different comments show the range in perception within the infrastructure market arena. y Microsoft business productivity solutions play well in the small to middle business market, but only recently are competitive for large enterprises when compared to IBM because it previously lacked the depth of functionality that IBM was perceived to have. Microsoft and IBM are offering automatic online updates and upgrades for the majority of their products. They have the advantage of building on top of their own platform. For pure players, the situation is slightly different. Microsoft receives high marks in the areas of search, collaboration, and general foresight, when compared to IBM and pure players. Their new offerings are making Microsoft a strong competitive player.

Interestingly, although the pure players have industry-leading depth, they did not score very well in the deployment comparison on a stand-alone basis. This was due in large part to the complex and highly specific requirements applied to one-off implementations. The pure players may have the depth for these products, but they have narrow breadth. Because our matrix was built for broad functionality, a conglomeration of pure players, or even a mixture of pure players and large vendors, would not score well. Pure player solutions are better purposed for niche requirements not addressed by IBM or Microsoft, and must be clearly evaluated by companies for their stand-alone merits to address specific, deep business needs. In short, the platform players cover the majority of the user populations needs, but will often fall short in specific areas of unique requirements for truly deep capability requirements.

The next task in evaluating potential platforms was to take an analytical look at the data and our experts experiences. We began by matching the various aspects of a business productivity solution to real-world scenarios, based on products that address these aspects. We compared a homogeneous Microsoft platform, a platform based on pure players products, and a common scenario wherein we see an integrated mixture of a Microsoft platform with pure player products as supplements. This scenario is increasingly commonplace, due to the overwhelming dominance of Microsoft products on user desktop computers, and the ease of integration with other Microsoft products delivered through Microsoft infrastructure offerings. We looked at the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of each potential platform to see how they would help the CIO provide value to the enterprise. Microsoft only platform: A homogeneous Microsoft platform has a number of strengths and opportunities that are primarily related to price and integration. Integration among Microsoft products typically requires no work, but at most requires minor custom development using tools made to work with Microsoft products. The installation process for a homogenous platform is vastly simplified, as are the management tools that are incorporated with the solution. The need to negotiate additional licenses and incur additive cost over time is reduced because the solution can be procured as a packaged suite, including business and core infrastructure functionality. These capabilities are included in the enterprise package, allowing the customer firm to turn on functionality and introduce the new capabilities based on its needs and readiness to deploy. On the down side, the biggest concern is that a solution based solely on one vendor means that a company has placed all its bets on a single technology and risks vendor lock-in. Although the number of companies making this decision is increasing, it remains an item of concern to many IT professionals. Pure-play only platform: On the opposite end of the spectrum, a platform composed entirely of separate pure play vendors has the strength of having an open architecture that offers deep functionality and can likely run on multiple operating systems. Unfortunately, the negatives for this scenario are many. Integration of multiple systems requires the IT department to have many distinct specialists who can develop functionality against a diverse set of application programming interfaces (APIs), for which "While technology prowess and depth is the costs are considerable. The licensing model is critical for their organizations, CIOs must help the business units of their enterprise complicated, and license negotiations are timeachieve still-elusive efficiencies from consuming. Coverage of all the support requirements technology." and offerings becomes quite diverse. Custom tools and "IT Execs Boost Focus on Business in 2007," Laurie processes must be created for everything from backup M. Orlov, Forrester, October 25, 2006 and restores to workflow processesnot a simple undertaking. There are also significant risks of compatibility and long-term support when dealing with multiple vendors; vendor stability becomes a real issue to assess. The roadmap that crosses multiple vendors is very challenging to fully identify and coordinate, and swapping or replacing vendor software will always require customization. Mix of Microsoft and Pure Play platform: In the middle of these two scenarios is a unified platform that integrates with a handful of pure play companies that are needed to provide unique and supplemental functionality. We believe this combination of a broad-based platform along with limited use of pure players is often the best choice for companies that must closely manage compliance requirements, while at the same time satisfying the narrow yet deep requirements of a core set of superusers or a discipline specialty. This combination usually results in lower license costs than building on multiple pure plays. Other benefits are moderate ease of systems management; relatively simple installation, integration, and upgrade needs due to a limited solution set; and a deep functionality for specific capabilities when required. Of course there will be weaknesses in this hybrid approach, due to increased complexity and the need for more specialists to run the operations. Overall, the need for supplemental vendors must be weighed carefully against the increased costs and risks, to reach the most acceptable business solution.

Conclusion
Todays IT departments create, maintain, and extend complex systems and processes. They are challenged to support the business as it is today and simultaneously build for the business of tomorrow. There are no simple resolutions to the dilemma. Capgeminis view is that IT survival demands that the CIO position IT to become more agile, reduce costs, and align with the business by building on the pillars discussed in this paper: y y y y Reduce the cost of procurement and deployment. Improve security and management. Extend legacy assets to the enterprise. Reposition IT resources for strategic business initiatives.

These pillars focus on objective, achievable actions for creating a platform that enables companies to quickly access and analyze needed information, satisfy compliance and legal requirements, and enhance the alignment between IT operations and business expectations for supporting competitive and sales growth initiatives, all with minimal impact on IT resources and costs. Creating a business productivity infrastructure with many capabilities (collaborative workspaces, search, BI, communications, e-mail, content management, identity management, workflow management, portals, integration, and information creation) will affect a large user base and put more power into the hands of the information worker. A unified infrastructure delivers exactly that: a broad set of capabilities that allows the business to have a greater stake in managing its performance while freeing up IT resources to focus on new, value-generating activities. Todays business complexities present challenges that need to be addressed in several dimensions. There are core operational IT requirements that must be satisfied, such as security, management, and governance, and then there are unique usage requirements that each company needs and expects, to help it be more competitive. Businesses are segmenting what is important to them at a more functional level, such as research or legal audits. At the same time, they expect IT to more effectively manage operations and systems security, while concurrently expending more effort on new business capability. The solution that best addresses all of these dimensions will be the more optimal, and the vendor that provides that solution will become the winner. The winning solution will be one that addresses the core requirements while providing the greatest support of the information worker. We concur with analysts like Forresters Erica Driver, who focuses many comments on the importance of the information worker. We believe that the performance of the information worker will be a competitive factor in determining the winners of tomorrow. Although it is difficult to measure, Driver maintains that many business people intuitively recognize that a solid set of integrated collaboration tools, in combination with a collaborative culture and adequate training, result in increased information worker productivity. IT cost savings are achievable, according to this Forrester analyst, by eliminating point collaboration products and implementing an enterprise collaboration platform.5 Based on the cost of procurement and deployment, functional depth and breadth, expert opinions, and real-world cases, we believe that Microsoft is a serious competitor in the business productivity category. In fact, Capgemini feels that Microsoft has recently stepped up to a leadership position in this market with its infrastructure offering made up of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Microsoft SQL Server 2005, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, Microsoft Office Communicator 2007, Microsoft Forefront and Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007. Microsoft is clearly offering the advantage of an end-to-end solution for both IT and the business user, by delivering software that extends from core through business productivity infrastructure, all the way to the end-user desktop computer. And to answer the critics on the question of enterprise readiness, in reviewing the early success of the 2007 Microsoft Office system, we can only conclude that it demonstrates the market shift toward enterprise acceptance. The integrated infrastructure offering is in deployment at a number of major companies; the number of seats being deployed for Office SharePoint Server 2007 is in the tens of thousands.
5

"How to Create a Knockout Collaboration Strategy Document," Erica Driver, Forrester, April 12, 2007.

Although the Microsoft business productivity solutions clearly demonstrate value, the cost to transition away from another solution may not always be the most practical. For example, enterprises with a significant investment in IBM, pure play vendors, or a combination may struggle to get the most out of a green-field Microsoft approach. It is highly unlikely that a wholesale shift in technologies will provide the financial benefits a company requires to satisfy its cost-of-ownership objectives. IBM also has an impressive suite of products, and pure play vendors own the market for highly complex, highly specific systems. IBM, like Microsoft, continues to expand in the scope of its offerings through acquisition and development, and IBM is headed on the same path that Microsoft has already chosen. Regardless of vendor, a strategy of utilizing a general business productivity infrastructure, supplemented with pure players for very specific and rich business needs, is often the best choice for IT departments in supporting the business requirements. Every organization needs to have a clearly articulated IT transformation roadmap. Every CIO and IT executive must evaluate its company's current asset landscape, balance that with the business desireboth current and future realistic requirementsand build an individual IT operations transformation roadmap. Although a single vendor solution can be seen as the lowest-cost alternative, it is not always achievable in practice. We view a Microsoft-based solution as a sound choice as the foundation of a business productivity infrastructure and it will very likely make the life of the CIO simpler. The integration of a broad-based set of capabilities, readily maintainable and expandable for future requirements, along with the fit into the existing world of the desktop computer user, makes it an obvious candidate for adoption. Microsoft has demonstrated an ease of integration to back-end systems, such as SAP, as well as with many of the pure play or legacy solutions that companies have needed to maintain or extend. With this breadth of functionality, coupled with attractive procurement costs and life-cycle TCO benefits, CIOs should consider this direction as part of their IT transformation. We feel that Microsoft can deliver a platform that provides the foundation for reducing cost in a secure and managed infrastructure while supporting the business. The business can thus develop and use solutions that take advantage of or are interoperable with other applicationsapplications that are highly complex or necessary to their specific requirements. As soon as there is an understanding of where the business is and where it strives to be, a plan for how to get there is necessary. Companies like Microsoft and Forrester have built model frameworks that help customers evaluate their infrastructure state against their future vision and needs. We encourage you to take advantage of these free models like Microsofts infrastructure optimization online assessments to begin your companys transformation process. Then, based on the data, begin to envision where you can save costs and align IT with the business. Although a company can elect to do this on its own, it is often better to engage the vendor or a third-party professional services organization in determining the solution. We highly recommend engaging a Microsoft Certified Partner in this process. These partners have practical experience in deploying solutions, and understand both the most expedient way to implement systems as well as the areas of risk and change management that need to be addressed. They typically have their own rigorous implementation methodology, based on their own client implementation experiences, which incorporate leading practices and optimize the value from the investment. Therefore, talk to your local Microsoft representative or Microsoft Certified Partner to learn more about the role that technology and addressing your organizations infrastructure maturity needs can play in improving your IT operations while delivering enriched capabilities to your business users.

About Capgemini and the Collaborative Business Experience Capgemini, one of the world's foremost providers of Consulting, Technology and Outsourcing services, has a unique way of working with its clients, called the Collaborative Business Experience. Backed by over three decades of industry and service experience, the Collaborative Business Experience is designed to help our clients achieve better, faster, more sustainable results through seamless access to our network of world-leading technology partners and collaboration-focused methods and tools. Through commitment to mutual success and the achievement of tangible value, we help businesses implement growth strategies, leverage technology, and thrive through the power of collaboration. Capgemini employs approximately 75,000 people worldwide and reported 2006 global revenues of 7.7 billion euros. More information about our services, offices and research is available www.capgemini.com.

The information contained in this document represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation and is subject to change at any time without notice to you. This document and its contents are provided AS IS without warranty of any kind, and should not be interpreted as an offer or commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information presented. This deliverable is provided AS IS without warranty of any kind and MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, OR OTHERWISE. The descriptions of other companies products in this document, if any, are provided only as a convenience to you. Any such references should not be considered an endorsement or support by Microsoft. Microsoft cannot guarantee their accuracy and the products may change over time. In addition, the descriptions are intended as brief highlights to aid understanding, rather than as thorough coverage. For authoritative descriptions of these products, please consult the respective manufacturers. All trademarks are the property of their respective companies. 2007 Portions Microsoft Corporation and portions Capgemini U.S. LLC. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Excel, ForeFront, Outlook, SharePoint, and SQL Server are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

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