tCatalog for Retail - Differentiate your company from your competition

Want to see something totally cool for a retail store? tCatalog for Retail from Avanade and Accenture built on Windows 7 touch screen technology.

The uses for this in a retail environment can be pretty amazing, such as:

• Product information
• Product comparisons
• Reviews
• Associated literature

This is also a great way to use a loyalty program to allow someone to go into a store and see what items might be a good recommendation for your clients.

tCatalog can be used in numerous other sales settings such as:

• Insurance
• Investments
• New homes
• Many others

If you would like to see how Avanade can enable tCatalog for your organization, please contact us in the Calgary office at (403) 476-1473 or via email.

Most Companeis are Wasting Up to $500 per Desktop: How to Create a Difinitive Software Library and Drive Cost Savings

Most medium to large companies typically don't have a clue how much software they own or how much it is being used. It would surprise most CIO's and anyone who manages software for companies that companies are overspending by up to $500 per desktop on software that isn't required.

One way to address this issue is to create a Definitive Software Library (DSL) that inventories all the software a company owns, the costs and the utilization rates. The unfortunate part is that most companies don't know how to do software rationalization and usually if they do, they only gather a fraction of the total software that companies use. Avanade offers a service, called ACA Accelerate, to help companies create a Definitive Software Library (DSL) that is extremely accurate.

The premise behind ACA Accelerate is to collect information on the current state, which is done through a proprietary process, and then figure out a future state model for the company. The current state will show the current software inventory (including versions) with associated users. A cost is assigned to each software title and this will help a company create a dollar figure on the current state.

Once the current state is know, then the future state can be modelled by consolidating software titles, versions, functionality and such. When the final model is created, then a definitive software library is created and the total costs can be applied to the list. This is were you will find the savings that be achieved.

Typically Avanade will see up to $500 in hard cost savings through the software audit that can be added straight to the bottom line of a company when a company goes through the ACA Accelerate process.

An example of the cost savings on a single software package would be Adobe Acrobat Professional, which retails for $200/desktop. Avanade worked with a company that included Acrobat Professional as part of the standard Desktop Image. Could you imagine if your company were over 10,000 employees and you were paying $2M per year for a piece of software that 90% to 99% of your organization doesn't require or could be replaced with a free piece of software that accomplishes the same functionality. This would help drive significant savings for a company.

ACA Accelerate is approximately a 6 week process and the cost for the service will easily be covered by the savings. The outcome is that it will drive software compliance and provide a hard cost savings for a company.

A few other major benefits include:

• Report Functionality: the process delivers a great report with graphical representations of key metrics. This is great for telling the savings story to other key individuals in your company.


• ACA Accelerate is also great for a Windows 7 upgrade as it identifies software that should be retired, potentially re-written, virtualized, etc. The savings can be used to pay for most or all of a Windows 7 upgrade.


• ACA Accelerate can do hardware too, which is ideal for any upcoming Windows 7 upgrades to see if there are any peripherals that need to be replaced prior to the upgrade.


• Drives software license compliance.

If you would like to understand how Avanade can help you create a definitive software library and drive hard cost savings up to $500 per desktop, please feel free to contact Chris Hamilton in Calgary at 403-476-1473 or Email Us. Avanade Inc. is a global company with 63 offices Worldwide.

Windows 7 Upgrades Creates Up to 15% Reduction in TCO - Putting Money Back In Your Pockets

If you work for a company contemplating upgrading your desktops from older versions of Windows to Windows 7, there is a way to offset the cost associated with the upgrade and pay for the upgrade out of operational savings. These savings could add up to over $700/year per desktop image.

Avanade Inc. has a method that will assist companies with paying for their Windows 7 deployment through cost savings. The cost savings are derived from creating a Definitive Software Library (DSL) and truing up software licensing.

Avanade Inc.'s process is called ACA Accelerate and it allows organizations to understand what software their company currently owns, how many users and what versions the company is running. This creates a current state software list and Avanade uses this information to model a future state which will typically drive approximately a $400 per desktop in software savings.

A typical desktop environment cost $5000/year to maintain according to Gartner. Software typically costs about 25% or $1,250 of the desktop expenses. Through a rationalization process, a company can usually reduce redundant or unused software between 25% to 33% of the overall software costs, which would produce savings between $312 per desktop and $412 per desktop.

In addition to these savings, Microsoft has come up with a total cost of ownership reduction figure of approximately $155 by using Windows 7. If you were to add Application Virtualization into the equation, then there is approximately another $155 cost savings. By adding these TCO reductions with the savings from using ACA Accelerate to create a Definitive Software Library, this can provide over $700 per desktop in savings. At most, your desktop migration to Windows 7 shouldn't cost more than $350/desktop and that would be at the high end with a lot of hand holding and white gloves involved.

Example of a TCO Reduction For a 5,000 Desktop Company :

As an example, if your company were to have 5000 desktop images, your approximate yearly cost to manage that environment would be $25,000,000 ($5,000 per desktop time 5000 desktops). By utilizing Avanade's ACA Accerate service to derive $400/desktop in savings while creating a Definitive Software Library, your savings would be $2,000,000 in the first year and then adding the savings, $310 per desktop, that can be had by efficiency gains from upgrading to Windows 7, that would add another $1,550,000 in savings yearly savings.

So for this company, if they didn't upgrade to Windows 7 from their current Windows Platform, they would spend $25M/year on their desktop environment. By using ACA Accelerate to rationalize applications and then upgrading to Windows 7, the annual desktop costs would be $23M with savings of $2M and by utilizing Application Virtualization, the total costs of the desktop environment would be $21.45M which would drive savings of $3.55M or over 14%. Over a 5 year period, this would provide over $17M in savings for your organization.

	Cumulative Costs	With Windows 7 Savings and ACA Accelerat Savings	Cumulative Savings	Percent Annual Savings
Year1	$25,000,000	$21,450,000	$3,550,000	14%
Year2	$50,000,000	$42,900,000	$7,100,000	14%
Year3	$75,000,000	$64,350,000	$10,650,000	14%
Year4	$100,000,000	$85,800,000	$14,200,000	14%
Year5	$125,000,000	$107,250,000	$17,750,000	14%
Total Savings:		$17,750,000

This chart shows the cumulative costs associated with not going to Windows 7 in Blue.

The Red in the chart show the cumulative effects of using savings from ACA Accelerate and the potential savings from Windows 7.

If you are contemplating a Windows 7 Upgrade, you owe it to your company to contact Avanade to see how you can reduce your overall cost and either pay for all or a large portion of you upgrade. Avanade Inc. will provide and initial assessment free of charge for Calgary based businesses if you contact us at 403-476-1473.

If you would like to understand how ACA Accelerate can help you can reduce your Windows 7 implementation in Western Canada or for that matter, anywhere in the world, please contact Chris Hamilton at Avanade in Calgary at 403-476-1473 or via email at chris.hamilton@avanade.com.