Rob Wilson, Business Unit Director – Microsoft Applications at Keller Schroeder, was recently selected as a Community Champion by INETA for his contributions to the SharePoint User Group in Evansville and to other communities in our region.  INETA is a non-profit, independent organization, chartered with supporting all user groups interested in the Microsoft .NET platform.  Keller Schroeder has been a long-time supporter of technology user groups – including coordinating, hosting, sponsoring and speaking.

Keller Schroeder, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, is now a certified Microsoft Dynamics CRM partner. For more information about Dynamics CRM and our practice, see our Dynamics CRM page.

Are you using Microsoft Exchange for email and productivity collaboration? If not, you might want to take a look. According to the RadiCati Group [doc], in 2009, there have been 280 billion emails sent every day. Thanks to great SPAM filtering products like Barracuda and IronPort, however, most of those messages don’t reach your inbox. For the messages that do, Microsoft Exchange is a great place to house them for better management, sharing and security. Exchange commands 57% of the corporate messaging software market demonstrating a strong showing in email and productivity collaboration tools.

Microsoft has released numerous versions of Exchange since its inception in 1996. Today, many companies host Exchange 2007 which incorporated significant changes from Exchange 2003 such as a 64 bit architecture for increased RAM utilization, the introduction of multiple roles (allowing an administrator to separate out all functionality of the system into various physical servers or virtual servers for greater load manageability), greatly improved high availability/redundancy features that can withstand an entire server failure with zero impact on the end users, an introduction of Unified Messaging integrating voicemail with your mailbox, and a multitude of other enhancements. It was a complete redesign of Exchange 2003 and, from our experience, a vastly superior product. For more information, you can visit Microsoft’s Exchange Server 2007 Product Overview site.

If you prefer being at the leading edge of technology, Exchange 2010 was just Released to Manufacturing (RTM) by Microsoft on October 8th, which means Microsoft has officially signed off on the new code and it will soon be available to the public for purchase and installation. New features of Exchange 2010 include Role-Based Access Control Permissions providing an administrator more granular control of permissions, new Exchange Management Console features, integration with Active Directory Rights Management Service, new transport and routing functionality along with many enhancements for Outlook Web Access (OWA) resulting in an interface more closely resembling the standard Microsoft Outlook client. For a complete list of the new features and enhancements please visit the Microsoft Exchange 2010 website for more information.

Microsoft has continued to improve each new release of Exchange Server, meeting the challenges of the ever-changing infrastructure and addressing end-user requests and needs. With the many user experience enhancements in addition to Administrator benefits Microsoft has implemented, it is easy to see why Exchange is so prevalent and commands such a strong share of the messaging market.

Contact your Keller Schroeder Senior Account Manager to learn more or discuss the benefits of implementing this Microsoft Exchange 2007 or 2010 within your environment.

Information technology companies can be creative in the use of white papers, webinars, and ad campaigns to tell their success stories.  But, “Nothing speaks more credibly about us than the very words of our clients”, says Keller Schroeder President Larry May.

Those words came through loud and clear from Keller Schroeder clients in this year’s customer satisfaction survey, administered by Microsoft and required of all its leading Partners.  Keller Schroeder received an overall performance rating of 94 percent, compared to the average score for all Microsoft Partners of 65 percent.  Loyalty ratings for Keller Schroeder were 100 percent, compared to 86 percent for all Microsoft Partners.

As part of an ongoing qualification process, Microsoft Gold Certified Partners participate in an annual evaluation which includes a customer satisfaction survey completed anonymously by active clients.  “We are passionate about seeing our clients succeed,” says May, “and it is gratifying when they tell us so resoundingly that we are impacting them in a positive way.”

Since becoming the first Evansville-based Microsoft Gold Certified Partner in 2007, Keller Schroeder has seen its Microsoft business grow faster than any other segment.  While some firms specialize in infrastructure-related Microsoft tools (such as server and data management software), and others specialize in applications-related tools (such as SharePoint and .Net development), Keller Schroeder’s expertise includes the full spectrum of Microsoft solutions for businesses of any size. 

The firm’s reputation for excellence extends well beyond the Microsoft space.  Keller Schroeder received the 2007 Cisco Outstanding Indiana Customer Satisfaction Award, the 2008 Cisco Outstanding Growth Award, the 2008 Spirit of United Way Award, and was named as one of Indiana’s “Best Places to Work” in 2006.

For many years, companies have struggled to find a data collection technique that crosses platforms, facilitates data analysis, handles both structured and unstructured data, and enables business processes. In contrast to many IT challenges where there are an abundance of tools but no clear approach, in this case the tools were just not up to par. Sure you could create forms using Word and/or Adobe PDF’s – you could even allow users to fill in the blanks online and print or email the form – but actually validating that data, extracting the data out of the form for analysis or launching workflows has proved to be both cumbersome and expensive. As a result, custom web pages have often been used to facilitate simple data collection – requiring specialized programming skills and valuable IT resources for what seemed to be rudimentary requests.

Enter Microsoft Office InfoPath – Microsoft’s answer to data collection challenges. InfoPath is a power user/novice developer tool that enables forms development based on an open XML format. The benefits of InfoPath are numerous:

By integrating with SharePoint, InfoPath offers an enterprise-level forms solution complete with business process automation and legacy software integration. Additionally, you are able to build your project teams with professionals of varying skills and levels of experience.

The InfoPath client (designer and viewer) is available as a stand-alone product or is part of the Microsoft Office Professional Plus, Enterprise and Ultimate suites. The client version integrates with Windows SharePoint Services which is included free with the Windows Server operating system. InfoPath Form Services is part of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server Enterprise Edition.

Contact your Keller Schroeder Senior Account Manager to learn more or discuss the benefits of implementing this technology within your environment.

SilverLight Has No Place in Business…or Does it?

You’ve heard of Microsoft SilverLight.

It’s that cool technology used by NBC to show videos of the Olympics and by CBS to stream all the action of the Final Four this year. So, what’s that got to do with running your business? Well, maybe more than you think.

Internet usage has risen sharply since 2000. This means that more and more of your customers, business partners, and employees are using the internet every day, and interacting with sites that provide not only high definition media, but empower the user through rich interactive applications (also known as RIA’s), such as easy drag and drop interfaces, real-time feedback with no reloading or jerking in the page, and personalization capabilities. (See Hardrock.com for some examples of RIA’s in action.) It’s all about user experience. Using the same techniques within your business gives your customers, partners, and employees familiar tools that not only provide a great user experience, but a more productive interface. That means efficiency and time savings, which lead to cost savings for your business.

SilverLight is being used every day in businesses just like yours to:

Microsoft defines today’s SilverLight as “a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web and for mobile devices.” The next generation of SilverLight (out in beta now and due out for production later this year) will include support for browser-less web applications, meaning your applications can live anywhere and you may not need to be online all the time to use them. The ability to create a genuinely seamless workflow for your in-house and mobile workforce is within sight!

Keller Schroeder can help you discover ways to unlock the power of SilverLight in your business too. Contact Jill Epperson or Rob Wilson at (812) 474-6825 to get started today.

Employee ownership makes a difference! Keller Schroeder celebrated five years as an employee-owned enterprise in March. Since becoming majority-owned by an ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan) in 2004, the firm’s positive momentum has accelerated:

• Named as one of Indiana’s “Best Places to Work” in 2006
• 2007 Cisco Outstanding Indiana Customer Satisfaction Award
• Became the first Evansville-based Microsoft Gold Certified Partner in 2007
• 2008 Cisco Outstanding Growth Award
• Celebrated 30-year anniversary in 2008 (founded in 1978)

Are you faced with the challenges associated with propagating information to your remote workers or business partners? Does your organization struggle with organizing or finding valuable information? Are you tired of dealing with multiple versions of a document floating around in your organization? Are you in need of a corporate knowledge sharing and collaboration strategy? Maybe you should consider SharePoint, the most widely adopted portal and collaboration product on the market today.

Keller Schroeder is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner with competencies in Advanced Infrastructure Solutions, Data Management Solutions, Custom Development Solutions and Information Worker Solutions. In addition to our years of experience with .NET, Office development and SQL Server, we are also your local SharePoint expert – having staff who have specialized in SharePoint since late 2005. Our SharePoint experts have recently created a blog to share some of our SharePoint insights. On our blog you will find information suited for SharePoint developers, administrators, power users and information workers. Our SharePoint blog is a great way to stay in touch with things we have recently done with SharePoint and to find information that is useful to your organization.

Please visit our SharePoint blog at the following URL: sharepointblog.kellerschroeder.com

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