R EDMOND , Wash. — Feb . 13 , 2013 — Today the Illinois Department of Corrections (DOC) and Microsoft Corp. announced the successful implementation of the Offender-360 project, a cloud-based criminal justice information system built on Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. The solution directly supports legislation signed by Gov. Pat Quinn that aims to improve Illinois public safety and criminal justice for the future.

“This cutting-edge technology will give Illinois one of the most advanced criminal justice information systems in the country,” Quinn said. “It will save Illinois’ taxpayers millions of dollars while increasing public safety throughout the state.”

In 2010, the state evaluated its technology landscape for managing its 49,000 inmates and 28,000 parolees with the goal of transforming the Illinois DOC by improving efficiency, reducing costs and ensuring unwavering corrections operations. As a result of the evaluation, Illinois charted a course toward replacing a large 1980s mainframe system and 41 disparate offender management applications that had become outdated and costly to use and maintain.

After evaluating 20 possible solutions — including an option that would have cost taxpayers upward of $100 million — Illinois DOC selected Microsoft Dynamics CRM to manage its statewide criminal justice population as a modern case management solution that will transform DOC business and extend the mission of citizen safety. Illinois DOC is undergoing a phased rollout, anticipating 5,500 users of Offender-360 by the summer of 2013. The solution centralizes all information and intelligence on offenders to help staff make more effective and informed decisions regarding placement, rehabilitation and release.

“The open architecture in Microsoft Dynamics lets us create a solution that enables analysis to more effectively serve our offender population,” said Steven Matthews, chief information officer, Illinois DOC. “Because of budget constraints and a shortfall of infrastructure and personnel resources to support this enterprise-level application, we launched the state’s first cloud initiative. This allows us to cut costs while continuing to achieve the mission with a security-enhanced solution.”

With guidance from Tribridge, 2012 Microsoft Dynamics State and Local Government Partner of the Year, the Illinois DOC was able to configure, develop and deploy the robust and flexible architecture of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online through trained and certified union members, significantly reducing the Offender-360 solution cost and deployment timeframe. The use of union workers helped Illinois avoid hiring contractors, gave union employees advancement opportunities and drove revenue back to the state by using an Illinois-based union workforce.

“Illinois is leading the nation in adopting a statewide, cloud-based solution that will effectively manage the offender population and ultimately better protect its citizens,” said Amir Capriles, general manager, U.S. Public Sector Dynamics at Microsoft. “Illinois is a leader among its peers, demonstrating that criminal justice programs across the country can be transformed by modernizing legacy systems with cloud-based solutions while supporting necessary security, business processes and legislation.”

Faced with fiscal challenges and resource constraints, federal agencies, state governments, localities and education institutions throughout the U.S. are looking for alternatives to high-cost legacy systems. The Illinois DOC cited the Microsoft Dynamics CRM offering as an application platform that can support modernization initiatives and still achieve impactful, low-cost results.

Adopting a next-generation enterprise-ready application platform is becoming increasingly common among criminal justice agencies seeking to transform and modernize their operations. The County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania is following the example of Illinois DOC with a similar modernization approach on behalf of that state’s 67 counties, while INTERPOL Washington is more effectively investigating fugitives, financial fraud, drug violations, terrorism and violent crimes.

More information about Illinois DOC can be found at http://www.illinois.gov/idoc. More information on Microsoft corrections solutions is available at: http://microsoft.com/corrections.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/news/contactpr.mspx.

REDMOND, Wash. — Feb. 11, 2013 — More than 75 percent of midsize to large businesses are implementing big data-related solutions within the next 12 months — with customer care, marketing and sales departments increasingly driving demand, according to new Microsoft Corp. research released today.

Big Data Infographic February 10, 2013 The explosion of devices, apps, the cloud and the Internet has ushered in the era of big data. Survey results uncover several key trends as companies grapple with big data and start to use it to gain a competitive advantage.

Downloads: Web | Print

According to Microsoft’s “Global Enterprise Big Data Trends: 2013” study of more than 280 IT decision-makers, the following trends emerged:

• Although the IT department (52 percent) is currently driving most of the demand for big data, customer care (41 percent), sales (26 percent), finance (23 percent) and marketing (23 percent) departments are increasingly driving demand.

• Seventeen percent of customers surveyed are in the early stages of researching big data solutions, whereas 13 percent have fully deployed them; nearly 90 percent of customers surveyed have a dedicated budget for addressing big data.

• Nearly half of customers (49 percent) reported that growth in the volume of data is the greatest challenge driving big data solution adoption, followed by having to integrate disparate business intelligence tools (41 percent) and having tools able to glean the insight (40 percent).

The company published its findings to the Microsoft News Center this morning, kicking off a week of announcements focused on the company’s big-data customers, products and future investments.

Microsoft “Big Data Week”

“Big data can be large tables of structured data, huge files of complex unstructured data, or small amounts of machine-generated data that pile up faster than you can make sense of it,” said Eron Kelly, general manager of SQL Server at Microsoft. “Microsoft’s goal is to help everyone make better, faster decisions by providing tools that make it easy to find insights in big data, small data … any data.”

Big data is changing the way organizations and people do business, discover insights and interact with one another. This week Microsoft will embark on a week of digital storytelling that showcases what customers, partners, the industry and Microsoft are doing to bring this vision to life:

• Today: “Global Enterprise Big Data Trends: 2013” and insight from big data executives and analysts

• Tuesday, Feb. 12: Spotlight on big data early adopters, including a Q&A with The Weather Channel Chief Information Officer Bryson Koehler on how big data is transforming his company

• Wednesday, Feb. 13: Microsoft’s big data approach, investments and products

• Thursday, Feb. 14: Silicon Valley big data event highlights

• Friday, Feb. 15: The future of big data and machine learning within Microsoft Research, including a Q&A with MSR Researcher Eric Horvitz

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/news/contactpr.mspx.

REDMOND, Wash. — Feb. 11, 2013 — For the millions of Americans waiting in anticipation for the president’s State of the Union address on Feb. 12 at 9 p.m. EST, Bing and FOX News Channel have partnered to launch the first-of-its-kind Bing Pulse online voting tool, which enables Americans to track and share opinions in real time during the president’s State of the Union speech. The Bing Pulse is part of a comprehensive State of the Union experience at Bing.com/Politics. The site provides a single destination for up-to-the-minute political news, expert information, real-time conversations and social sentiment on major policy issues.

The number of Americans who crave a more interactive political experience is growing, according to a recent Bing survey showing that nearly 75 percent of people identified themselves as active participants or observers in online political discussions.* Powered by Bing search technology and its unique social search experience, Bing’s State of the Union site is a nonpartisan online destination that was launched to meet this growing need for up-to-the-minute political information and second-screen experiences that are a great companion to political broadcasts.

Bing.com/Politics will keep people in the know from a vast number of news sources and social feeds, including a live stream of the State of the Union address, expert commentary, real-time social media sentiment tracking and more, such as the following:

• A live feed of President Obama’s State of the Union address at Bing.com/politics, including commentary from FOX News Channel political experts. FoxNews.com will also feature additional analysis and commentary including multiple live video streams along with photo galleries from the event. Viewers can log on at http://www.foxnews.com/sotu.

• The Bing Pulse online poll, which will feature updated results every few seconds throughout the speech. Unlike typical polls, Bing Pulse will allow people to self-identify as male or female, register their party affiliation, and join the conversation. It will feature a live count of the number of “pulses,” or votes, along with a line graph of how users react to language and issues throughout the speech. Data will be split by gender and political affiliation.

• Real-time news results using the Bing news selector that helps people navigate the news by filtering coverage from left-leaning and right-leaning sources.

• Live sentiment analysis via Bing Beat, which will focus on real-time social sentiment across major issues, such as immigration, gun control and the fiscal cliff.

• Original videos of former President Jimmy Carter and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich offering commentary on the State of the Union address.

• A live feed of social conversations on Twitter so people can stay informed on what leading political pundits are saying about the speech.

“Bing.com/Politics is the best second-screen viewing companion for the State of the Union address,” said Mark Penn, corporate vice president, Microsoft. “Bing uniquely offers a holistic view of information, reaction and even sentiment during this key political moment in America. Our strategic partnership with FOX News Channel allows us to provide the data Americans want to see most, and Bing Pulse will set the bar for live polls of the modern age.”

Bing.com/Politics is the place to join the conversation and see another reason for people to choose Bing over Google.

About Bing

Bing is the search engine from Microsoft. It was introduced in 2009 with a mission to empower people with knowledge — to answer any question and provide useful tools to help you best accomplish your goals, from the everyday to the extraordinary.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

* The Bing research was based on a survey by Impulse Research Corp., an independent research company based in Los Angeles, Calif. The survey was conducted online in October 2012 with a random sample of 1,005 men and women, ages 18 to 34, who use the Internet for information on a regular basis — all members of the Impulse Research proprietary online panel. The Impulse Research proprietary online panel has been carefully selected to closely match U.S. population demographics, and the respondents are representative of American men and women, ages 18 to 34.

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/news/contactpr.mspx.