Client case studies
Microsoft – mobile computing
How Xpertise developed and delivered a bespoke seminar for Microsoft and its partners on Microsoft’s mobile technologies.
Founded in 1975, Microsoft is the world’s most successful and best known software company. The company’s Windows operating system is used on the majority of the world’s servers, networks and desktop PCs. Microsoft employs over 56,000 people worldwide and has annual revenues in excess of $32billion USD.
The Challenge
More and more organisations are becoming interested in the potential of mobile computing – especially running line-of-business applications via handheld computers, PDAs and smartphones. Microsoft is at the forefront of this revolution, with embedded versions of its Windows operating system.
Wanting to promote the potential of this technology to its own employees and partners, Microsoft approached Xpertise to create a special ‘mobile computing’ seminar. Microsoft was keen to promote the idea that mobile computing could encompass more than e-mailing and calendaring – and could also encompass many business systems and line-of-business applications.
The Solution
Xpertise developed the seminar, working closely with Microsoft. It was felt that the seminar should ‘practice what it preached’ – so the seminar would be delivered from a wireless, hand-held Pocket PC, and include live examples of line-of-business applications, not just static slides.
The seminar was delivered to Microsoft’s own sales teams, and the sales and marketing teams from leading systems integrators. It was so successful that Microsoft requested that it be delivered at a large international conference in Sweden – to Microsoft’s partners, systems integrators and solution providers from all over Europe.
The live demonstrations included accessing business-critical enterprise systems, such as SAP (using MySAP, a mobile version of SAP/R3) applications, to run a sales force automation application. To do this, Xpertise used a laptop, configured with Windows Server, Exchange Server and Microsoft Mobile Information Server – which was accessed by a Wi-Fi-enabled HP iPAQ Pocket PC. The Pocket PC screen was projected onto a 15-foot screen, demonstrating the live, wireless access to an HTML representation of MySAP.
The seminar was a real-life demonstration of a new, powerful set of mobile technologies – the decision to use the technology itself, rather than the usual laptop and PowerPoint combination proved to be a powerful one. At each event, audiences were not only impressed by the potential of mobile computing, but also by the demonstration itself, running live applications from a tiny held-held PC.