BANGALORE: Raymond Group, one of India's largest clothing and apparel conglomerates, said that it has reduced costs by 30 percent and improved operational efficiency by 80 percent with Microsoft messaging and collaboration solution, Exchange Server 2007, states a press release.

The company has migrated to the Microsoft platform, from its earlier Linux based solution. According to the release,  the company is now able to effectively serve remote location needs across 40+ cities and towns in India. Deployed by Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS), Microsoft's services division, the new solution also enables improved IT infrastructure management across its large network. 

"We had recognized that effective communication and collaboration was vital to the organization's continued success," said Mr. Vinay Hinge, GM-IT - Raymond. "As the company grew we found we needed a more advanced, integrated communications which can provide a faster message delivery and roaming user support, which our earlier Linux based system could not deliver. Therefore, we decided to adopt core Microsoft technologies and products for our infrastructure, messaging and collaboration services. The new system is making an immediate impact in improving collaboration and communication across the organization."

In addition to Exchange Messaging, Raymond also implemented Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003 for 800-1000 desktops for inventory management, patch management of Microsoft operating systems and generation of standard reports. Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005 and Office Communication Server (LCS) 2007 were also implemented to ensure collaboration and integration with the Office 2007 suite of products towards productive usage of Microsoft technology.

"The advanced administration features, cost reduction, and messaging data security associated with Exchange Server 2007 increase the competitiveness of our organization. We now have a much more reliable messaging system to support our operations", says Hinge.