REDMOND, Wash. — May 15, 2012 — Released today, the Microsoft Industry Reference Architecture for Banking (MIRA-B) is a technology reference architecture based on Microsoft Corp.’s platform and services designed to help financial institutions reduce costs and drive strategic growth.

MIRA-B, a development and delivery framework that helps financial institutions modularize and align business and technology assets, provides clarity on technical capabilities and implementation approaches to support enterprise IT architecture planning. MIRA-B outlines a road map for the future that provides the architectural flexibility to deliver industry solutions on site or in the cloud. As a result, this supports new business models, profit streams and customer experiences that enable financial institutions to leverage technology as a means of being present in the lives of their customers any time, any place, across channels and devices.

“Today’s banks are under pressure to effectively serve customers, meet new regulatory requirements and create innovative new business models and solutions while sustaining profitability,” said Joseph Pagano, managing director, Worldwide Banking and Capital Markets, Microsoft Corp. “We’re providing a reference architecture that can help financial institutions rationalize banking services, which can then be consumed by other areas of the financial institution as needed. Such repeatability and modularity removes redundancy and, as a result, MIRA-B was designed to lower costs, enable faster delivery of products to market, reduce operational risk and improve the ability to listen to customers.”

According to Temenos Group AG, the global banking software provider, IT costs in the banking industry average about 14 percent of total costs* — nearly twice that of other industries — because of redundant, outdated or siloed applications that exist across multiple business units. MIRA-B helps alleviate this issue by helping banks create repeatable architectures and reuse commodity resources, where efficiencies can be gained. This framework enables new levels of data, application and business process transparency while helping banks maintain market differentiation.

“The financial services industry is increasingly moving to a reference architecture (RA), allowing institutions to better understand the complex business and technology demands on their business,” said Rod Nelsestuen, senior research director at CEB TowerGroup. “Companies that provide an RA framework can help financial institutions streamline and accelerate the delivery of solutions to the industry.”

Building a Framework for Success

MIRA-B builds on the semantic business models being defined by the Banking Industry Architecture Network (BIAN), an organization of which Microsoft is a founding member. BIAN is focused on architecture models that reduce integration complexity and align IT with business objectives to create a more agile and efficient banking organization.

MIRA-B has already been endorsed by BIAN, as well as several Microsoft technology partners, including Financial Architects, Fiserv, Misys, SunGard, Temenos and Turaz. Endorsements from each partner are available here.

“Building sustainable banking architectures continues to be a key issue as financial institutions strive to align their business goals and technical capabilities,” said Alberto Alessi, head of Strategy Unit, Strategy Management Department, UniCredit Business Integrated Solutions S.C.p.A. “The success of UniCredit Business Integrated Solutions’ approach suggests that standardized components, architecture design and cloud computing must be emphasized to meet our business imperatives. Given that MIRA-B shares these attributes, we expect it will be a valuable asset in defining future capabilities for banking and other large ecosystems.”

The repeatable standards-based reference architecture provided by MIRA-B can help the banking industry drive sustained innovation and, in turn, long-term strategic growth.

For more information, please visit the MIRA-B website.

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

* Source: Temenos white paper — Tackling the Productivity Paradox

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.

CHICAGO — May 15, 2012 — Feeding America, the nation’s leading domestic hunger-relief charity, left its support of Blackberry devices in favor of Windows Phone. The move strengthens Feeding America’s capabilities as it complements the organization’s use of other Microsoft solutions including Microsoft Office 2010 and Microsoft Lync Server 2010.

In an effort to be fiscally responsible, Feeding America conducted a review of its former Blackberry environment and explored other wireless devices, including Android, iPhone and Windows Phone. By migrating from Blackberry to Windows Phone, the company discovered it could avoid costly annual server maintenance expenses. In addition, the organization’s move has resulted in several benefits, including a 24 percent reduction in cost per device and improved access to the information and IT services that employees rely on to collaborate and be productive.

“Windows Phone provides a level of integration with Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 and Lync Server 2010 that are not available with the iPhone, iPad or Android,” said Kevin Lutz, vice president of Technology at Feeding America.

Feeding America was particularly satisfied with the ease of interoperation between Windows Phone and its existing Microsoft products. It was also impressed with the excellent end-user experience, which was seamless, coherent and familiar across all Microsoft products and services.

“With Office Mobile built into Windows Phone, employees were able to be immediately productive,” said Andy Isztok, director of Service Delivery at Feeding America. “The Office Hub in Windows Phone is great for quickly getting to PowerPoint presentations, Word documents and Excel spreadsheets — regardless of whether they’re stored on your phone or in the cloud on Windows Live SkyDrive. More and more employees are also discovering Microsoft OneNote Mobile; they love how it uses Windows Live to give them access to their OneNote notebooks on their phones, on their PCs and on the Web.”

With its mobile devices budget in better order, Feeding America is able to remain focused on its mission to feed America’s hungry through a nationwide network of more than 200 member food banks, which serve all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Through its member food banks, Feeding America is able to distribute more than 3 billion pounds of food and grocery products each year.

More information on Microsoft’s customer success stories is available at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/presskits/customerspotlight.

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.

The PostgreSQL Global Development Group announces the beta release of PostgreSQL 9.2, which will include major increases in performance and both vertical and horizontal scalability. The PostgreSQL Project asks all users to download and begin testing 9.2 Beta as soon as possible.

Major performance and scalability advances in this version include:

• Index-only scans, allowing users to avoid inefficient scans of base tables
• Enhanced read-only workload scaling to 64 cores and over 300,000 queries per second
• Improvements to data write speeds, including group commit
• Reductions in CPU power consumption
• Cascading replication, supporting geographically distributed standby databases

PostgreSQL 9.2 will also offer many new features for application developers, including:

• JSON data support, enabling hybrid document-relational databases
• Range types, supporting new types of calendar, time-series and analytic applications
• Multiple improvements to ALTER and other statements, easing runtime database updates

For a full listing of the features in version 9.2 Beta, please see the release notes.

We depend on our community to help test the next version in order to guarantee that it is high-performance and bug-free. Please download PostgreSQL 9.2 Beta and try it with your workloads and applications as soon as you can, and give feedback to the PostgreSQL developers. More information on how to test and report issues

Get PostgreSQL 9.2 beta, including binaries and installers for Windows, Linux and Mac from our download page.

Full documentation of the new version is available online, and also installs with PostgreSQL.

REDMOND, Wash. — May 14, 2012 — Microsoft Corp. today announced that Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD) is rolling out Microsoft Live@edu to provide anytime, anywhere* communication services to its students, faculty and alumni. Live@edu will allow LACCD to provide everyone on campus with easy-to-use cloud communication and collaboration tools while saving administrative and IT staff time. After evaluating both Live@edu and Google Apps for Education, LACCD made the decision to adopt Microsoft Live@edu due to preference for the technology’s security features and identity management capabilities, seamless integration with its on premise Exchange solution, and ease of use.

LACCD is the largest community college district in the United States, serving more than 250,000 students annually at nine colleges spread throughout 36 cities in the greater Los Angeles area. Accounts are being created for more than 2.5 million student records.

“Live@edu aligns with LACCD’s strategic vision to modernize and improve our colleges to ensure Los Angeles residents are trained with the skills needed to fill jobs of the 21st century,” said Jorge Mata, chief information officer for LACCD. “We needed a solution that would be easy to administer across all our colleges. One of the reasons we chose Microsoft Live@edu over Google Apps for Education is because it provides us with simple and automated management along with the visibility and control we need to apply our policies across our student information systems.”

To develop a truly customized solution for LACCD, Live@edu teamed up with SADA Systems to deliver a solution that mitigates the need for manual student email registration while reducing time and expense allocated toward the registration process. Once students register, they will automatically receive an email and collaboration account in real time.

“Our unique partnership with Microsoft enables LACCD’s IT personnel to focus on the system’s more mission-critical IT goals,” said Niv Dolgin, director of IT, SADA Systems. “Streamlining the registration process is not only a win for LACCD IT personnel; it is a win for students and LACCD administrative staff.”

Live@edu will allow LACCD to provide students with a single email address even if they are enrolled at multiple colleges. The same goes for faculty who teach at multiple colleges, thereby simplifying communication for both the district and those it serves. Live@edu will also help LACCD eliminate paper processes, such as printing fee receipts that can be emailed instead.

“We are excited to see the largest community college district in the U.S. deploy Live@edu to not only experience the benefits of a cloud-based collaboration service, but to also roll out a technology that will develop its students’ skills,” said Sig Behrens, general manager of U.S. Education for Microsoft. “LACCD is committed to student employability and recognizes the value to its students of skills gained by using Microsoft technology and that the knowledge will serve them well as they prepare to enter the workforce.”

About Microsoft Live@edu

Live@edu is a no-cost hosted platform for student communication and collaboration, providing industry-leading services to the global education market. Email and calendars with a 10GB inbox, 25GB of additional file storage, document sharing, instant messaging, video chat and mobile e-mail are just part of the feature set. Live@edu provides students with the professional tools to prepare them for college or work from day one. Live@edu is accessible through popular Web browsers for Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems — and easy to set up, administer and manage. More than 10,000 schools in more than 130 countries have enrolled in Live@edu, serving 22 million people worldwide. More information is available at http://www.microsoft.com/liveatedu.

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.

*An appropriate device, Internet access and supported browser and/or phone carrier connectivity required.

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. — May 14, 2012 — Research released today by Microsoft Corp. shows that small and midsize businesses (SMBs) are gaining significant IT security benefits from using the cloud, according to a new Microsoft study in five geographies.

Cloud Security Benefits for SMBs (U.S.) May 13, 2012 Cloud security is a key topic of discussion for many considering the cloud. Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing group conducted research in the small and midsize businesses (SMB) sector in the U.S.

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The study shows that 35 percent of U.S. companies surveyed have experienced noticeably higher levels of security since moving to the cloud.1 In addition, 32 percent say they spend less time worrying about the threat of cyberattacks. U.S. SMBs using the cloud also spend 32 percent less time each week managing security than companies not using the cloud. They are also five times more likely to have reduced what they spend on managing security as a percentage of overall IT budget.

“There’s a perception that security is a barrier to cloud adoption,” said Adrienne Hall, general manager, Microsoft Trustworthy Computing. “Yet when companies embrace and invest in cloud services, they find the benefits far outweigh previous concerns.” Time and money spent managing security prior to using cloud services is being reinvested by SMBs to grow their businesses and be more competitive. The survey shows the following in the U.S.:

• Of SMBs that use the cloud, 41 percent said they were able to employ more staff in roles that directly benefit sales or business growth, 39 percent invest in more product development or innovation, and 37 percent experienced improved agility and competitiveness. • More than half of those surveyed (52 percent) said using the cloud enabled them to add new products and services that benefit their business more quickly and securely. • Of those surveyed, 42 percent said the cloud made it easier for them to scale their business to explore new markets.

“Any solution that helps SMBs’ bottom line has to be good for them and the economy,” said Ryan Brock, vice president of Worldwide SMB Cloud & Channels at Access Markets International Partners. “When it comes to security, the cloud offers SMBs a level of expertise, specialist resources and investment that they cannot hope to match. This translates into cost and time savings and better protection against cyberthreats, which gives them the freedom to innovate and grow their business.”

An example of a company that has realized the security benefits of the cloud is SkyWire Media Inc., a small business in Nevada that helps other businesses personalize and distribute rich content to mobile devices. As a small business, it was a challenge for SkyWire to keep up to date with security management. After transitioning to Windows Intune, a cloud-based management and security solution, the company no longer faces the same problem.

By simplifying software distribution and streamlining the security upgrade process, Windows Intune helped SkyWire save $90,000 (U.S.) in IT costs over a span of six months, a savings of $15,000 (U.S.) per month. By retiring third-party antivirus and antimalware tools, the company was able to redeploy the cost of overseeing these processes.

“Since we started using Windows Intune, support calls are down by 70 percent,” said Thomas Castleberry, chief operating officer, SkyWire. “We can now prevent malware before it interferes with the productivity of our salespeople — and this means they can go out and win new business.” The study, commissioned by Microsoft and conducted by research company comScore Inc., polled companies with between 100 and 250 PCs in the U.S., Singapore, Malaysia, India and Hong Kong.

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 For the purpose of this research, cloud users were defined as companies that used a cloud service via a subscription model. 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.