REDMOND, Wash. — June 3, 2014 — Houston Independent School District (HISD), the largest school district in Texas — seventh largest in the U.S. — has purchased Microsoft solutions to help prepare students for the digital world. With a large majority of students from low-income families, HISD is making strides in improving the broader community by transforming each student’s learning experience and providing technology to students who otherwise couldn’t afford it. Microsoft technology helps HISD improve student outcomes, solve privacy concerns and amend manageability worries that plague many other education technology implementations. Microsoft Office 365 and HP Elitebook Folio 9470m Ultrabooks running Windows are helping to support HISD’s more than 14,000 students and 1,200 teachers in the first phase of its PowerUp initiative to transform how teachers teach and how students learn.

“Educating our kids is important, but having our parents and community understand digital awareness is imperative to their success,” said Lenny Schad, chief information technology officer at Houston Independent School District. “The entire community is behind our PowerUp initiative; we’re partnering with restaurants, churches, YMCAs and apartment complexes to install wireless infrastructures so students can access the network from anywhere, since we know many of our students do not have Internet access at home. Meeting our goal is all about community participation.”

HISD is providing Office 365 to faculty and staff, and planning to roll it out to students at no additional cost using the Student Advantage benefit. This will help to improve communication and collaboration across the district. In addition to the Office productivity suite, as part of the PowerUp initiative, 65,000 high school students will receive HP laptops running Windows once the devices have been fully implemented over the next three years to further enhance personalized learning for students. Microsoft’s commitment to student data privacy and belief that student data should not be mined by second parties for ads helped HISD meet federal and state requirements, and feel confident the technology they are providing students uses sophisticated safety and security technologies and is easy to use virtually anywhere, anytime.

HISD has taken a unique and deliberate approach to its deployment. In the adoption year, the curriculum leads, campus leadership and professional development teams were first to receive the devices so they could implement technology strategies for the upcoming year. Three months later, all teachers received their devices and became familiar with them for a full semester before the district provided devices to all students. After the holiday break, the digital environment and culture had taken shape, and students at 11 high schools in the district were given the laptops, allowing them to engage in a more meaningful and 21st-century way for everyday learning.

“This deployment process was unique because teachers were given the opportunity to teach their students with just pen and paper during the first semester, and then see them the second half of the year on a digital platform,” Schad said. “Teachers tell us that students are blowing them away; artistic, writing and other skills come out of the woodwork when you allow students their own path to learning.”

After just one year of transformation, the district is optimistic about the future and is confident students are gaining new skills and experiencing new opportunities that will help them excel in their path from graduation into college or career.

“You can’t help but feel good when you see students’ faces as they open their laptops, or when you hear from parents and grandparents how grateful they are that this technology — something they’d never be able to afford on their own — has been provided, because it’s so important to their students’ futures and education,” Schad said.

Other districts in the Houston area using Microsoft solutions to improve student outcomes include Clear Creek Independent School District, Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District, and Klein Independent School District.

More information about how organizations are turning to Microsoft technology is available on the Microsoft Customer Spotlight newsroom.

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. — June 2 , 2014 — Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq “MSFT”) on Monday announced that significant new capabilities in marketing, customer care and social listening are now globally available as part of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM spring wave of updates in 54 markets and 42 languages. This new release delivers a comprehensive solution that provides businesses with marketing, sales and customer care capabilities that are seamlessly integrated with leading productivity applications, such as Microsoft Office 365, Yammer, Lync, Skype, SharePoint and Power BI for Office 365. These available capabilities help businesses meet the needs of their customers today.

In addition to the availability of Microsoft Dynamics Marketing and Microsoft Social Listening, Microsoft also released updates to Microsoft Dynamics CRM that include a new Unified Service Desk. For on-premises customers, the company delivered these new capabilities as part of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Service Pack 1. Microsoft further announced it plans to expand the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online service to additional markets in Europe, Asia Pacific and South America in the third quarter of calendar year 2014.[1]

“Microsoft Dynamics CRM has made unbelievable progress over the last few years, and the amazing capabilities in this release deliver significant value to our customers as an important component of the Microsoft Cloud for business,” said Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft Corp. “Through innovative business applications in the cloud, businesses can better meet their customers’ needs and thrive in a changing world.”

Microsoft on Monday reinforced that its contractual commitments for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online meet the requirements of the European Union’s “model clauses” and the high standards of European Union (EU) privacy law as acknowledged by the “Article 29 Working Party,” making Microsoft the first — and so far the only — company to receive this recognition.

“In addition to enjoying the benefits of these new capabilities across marketing, sales and service, customers can be comfortable doing business with Microsoft when it comes to their data,” said Bob Stutz, corporate vice president, Microsoft Dynamics CRM. “We focused our development efforts on understanding what our customers need to deliver amazing customer experiences. We redesigned our user interface, implemented a six-month rapid release cycle, made three acquisitions and built many new features — all culminating in the wave of releases we are bringing to market today.”

Global e xpansion

The expanded availability of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online to markets in Europe, Asia Pacific and South America begins this month with the availability of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online in Turkey. This global expansion gives customers a new and comprehensive online CRM solution in their market.

Market smarter, sell effectively and provide care everywhere

Early Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 customers are already benefiting from the new capabilities that enabled them to sell more effectively than before to meet the challenges of a mobile and social world, become smarter marketers, and provide world-class care to their customers.

With Microsoft Social Listening, sales, marketing and service professionals tap into social conversations to get real-time feedback on their brand, products, competitors, campaigns and issues that might be relevant to their business. For instance, Sealord, a global sustainable fishing enterprise, uses Microsoft Social Listening to better understand its stakeholders — from their beliefs about key industry and sustainability issues to the global network of organizations and individuals influencing opinions in this area. When the topic of shark-finning sparked social media outrage, Sealord took the opportunity to make its stance known, resulting in global acknowledgement and a reach that could be easily measured, understood and communicated internally with Microsoft Social Listening.

“Without Microsoft Social Listening, we would not have had the opportunity to hear what was top-of-mind for our stakeholders and the community we serve, and ensure Sealord’s work to be sustainable in these areas was understood,” said Alison Sykora, public affairs and communications manager, Sealord.

Microsoft Dynamics Marketing gives marketers one solution that allows them to carefully plan their campaigns, deliver qualified leads to their sales teams and subsequently measure the return on their marketing investment.

Microsoft Dynamics Marketing customer the PGA TOUR uses the new marketing automation solution to better organize its creative, media and trafficking activities and to provide improved reporting information to its sponsors. A video of how the PGA TOUR uses Microsoft Dynamics Marketing to run marketing promotions across a wide array of media types year-round can be seen at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics/customer-success-stories-detail.aspx?casestudyid=710000003750.

Microsoft is also enabling a complete range of functionality for customer service professionals. This includes the powerful self-service capabilities in the recently acquired Microsoft Parature offering to the multichannel capabilities coming in the new Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online update and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Service Pack 1 for on-premises customers, including the Unified Service Desk. Microsoft Dynamics CRM enables companies to provide relevant, responsive and personalized customer service.

New research from Gartner Research also positions Microsoft in the Leaders Quadrant of Gartner’s April 24, 2014 Magic Quadrant for the CRM Customer Engagement Center,[2] based on the product’s completeness of vision and ability to execute.

More capabilities and features of the new Microsoft Dynamics CRM spring wave of updates, including Microsoft Social Listening and Microsoft Dynamics Marketing, are detailed in the Release Preview Guide. A blog post series by Bob Stutz is available on CRM Connection. In addition, all can follow and engage with the Microsoft Dynamics CRM community @MSDynamicsCRM at http://www.twitter.com/msdynamicscrm, #MSDYNCRM.

About Microsoft Dynamics

At the heart of every successful business are the people who make things happen. Microsoft Dynamics designs modern business solutions that empower individuals with intuitive tools that allow them to do their best work. Our proactive, easy-to-use business applications adapt to the way people and systems work, enabling businesses to rapidly deploy and be forward-looking in an ever-changing world.

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.

[1] Microsoft will disclose the specific market availability at a later date, to be determined.

[2] Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

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.