Microsoft Kicks off Project Conference 2012!

Special message from Project & Visio Director Chris Crane This morning, Kirk Koenigsbauer – Corporate Vice President of the Office Division Product Management Group – kicked off the Microsoft Project Conference 2012 in sunny Phoenix, Arizona with an opening keynote address.  This year’s event celebrates the success of Project 2010 and showcases how it continues to evolve in order to meet the changing collaboration and project management needs within organizations of all sizes.  At the heart of that evolution is Microsoft’s focus on an integrated platform wherein customers are better able to respond to industry trends (i.e. devices and the cloud) and have an opportunity to realize the benefits of Project Portfolio Management (PPM) beyond IT and into all areas of a business including Marketing, Finance and Resource & Development (as seen in Revlon’s example below). Since its launch in May of 2010, Microsoft Project has quietly climbed to the top of the Project Portfolio Management market with over 20 million users of the Microsoft Project desktop to date. That’s one license sold every 20 seconds!  And, analysts agree with Gartner giving its highest rating to Microsoft in the latest Marketscope for Project and Portfolio Management . But, you don’t have to take our word for it! Eighty-two of the Fortune 100 are Microsoft Project customers and Revlon – a global cosmetics company headquartered in New York City – is one such company.  With an excess of daily meetings, the company found that the productivity of its employees plummeted and, with 1.3 billion dollars’ worth of sales in 2010 alone, it stood to lose a lot due to inefficiencies.  The Revlon IT department was looking for a way to optimize its project planning, reduce the number of meetings and bridge the gap between developers and project managers by improving the transparency of project data.  Enter Microsoft Project Server 2010.  Revlon implemented the technology in addition to the Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 and Project Server Integration Feature Pack .  Bringing both into the organization produced a wealth of improved efficiencies including up to 30% less time in meetings, productivity gains of 2-5% and improved risk management through better data.  Perhaps Jacqueline Shannon – senior planner in program management for Revlon – said it best, “I think Microsoft Project Server 2010 is an incredible tool because it promotes accountability, timeliness and structure allowing us to focus more on our deliverables rather than reporting on our deliverables.”   For more information regarding Revlon’s use of Project 2010 check out this video: https://aka.ms/zdniuj ! Another reason customers, like Revlon, value Project 2010 is for its improved integration and continuous innovation with Microsoft technologies like Exchange and SharePoint providing people with a familiar user interface and connected platform that they can use to manage all their work from the simplest to the most complex projects. Experienced and/or accidental Project managers can plan and collaborate with teams to share schedule details quickly with Project Professional 2010 and SharePoint Online (Office 365) task list synchronization. Individuals throughout the organization can view the task list and quickly see task status and update progress in SharePoint Online—from virtually anywhere! Please refer to this Project blog post for additional information. SharePoint integration allows professional Project Managers to collaborate with a wider group of colleagues, important participants and “accidental project managers”, who track their tasks and progress through SharePoint. SharePoint 2010 integration brings powerful Business Intelligence capabilities via Excel Services , PerformancePoint Services and SQL Reporting Services , so all Project 2010 users can create enhanced dashboards that give you greater transparency across your many portfolios within the organization. Please refer to this website for additional information. Improved integrations with other proven Microsoft technologies such as Microsoft Exchange means that users can manage and respond to project tasks effectively through Outlook —on their PC, over the mobile phone, or using Outlook Web Access . With the release of the Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 and Project Server Integration Feature Pack , project managers and software development teams can use the tools that they prefer, work at the level of precision that supports their needs, share information transparently, and each use the methodology they prefer (agile or formal). Please check out the Microsoft Project 2010 Customer Success page for more case studies. For more information about the Project Conference and a transcript of today’s keynote, please visit the Project Conference virtual press room . Enjoy the conference! Sincerely, Chris Crane Director, Project and Visio Product Marketing at Microsoft Corp.

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Microsoft Kicks off Project Conference 2012!


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