Declan Rudden, Distribution Director of the Irish Music Rights Organisation, discusses the business impact of implementing an Azure based online service for members. Click Here for Video

Dublin, Ireland, 1st February 2010, Spanish Point application goes into live use on the Azure platform.

Microsoft officially turned on its cloud computer service for live usage at midnight on the 31st January and a Spanish Point designed and developed application was one of the very first to enter into live usage.

Working with its customer, IMRO (Irish Music Rights Organisation), Spanish Point has developed an application to better serve IMRO members using the Windows Azure platform. Built and delivered to IMRO using the Azure Windows platform technical preview it has now transitioned to the live environment.

Dublin, Ireland, 14th December 2009, Spanish Point provides design and build services to AIBifs to assist in the completion of their resilient BizTalk environment.

AIB International Financial Services Limited (AIBIFS) is a leading provider of sophisticated, outsourced services and creative financial engineering solutions for financial institutions and corporations' middle and back-office. They support financial institutions' middle and back offices, corporate treasury, special purpose vehicles and international financing entities.

As part of their on-going investment in a sophisticated back-office environment to support the provision of outsourced financial services AIBifs decided to implement the Microsoft BizTalk technology for message integration services. Using BizTalk AIBifs are better able to provide automated integrated services between their back-office systems and their customer’s front desks.

To ensure that this environment provides the level of resilience that its customers expect AIBifs turned to Spanish Point to provide the architectural design and build services. Spanish Point designed and implemented a resilient clustered BizTalk environment that provides the availability and reliability required to meet the rigorous standards expected.

SAMS is built on Microsoft SharePoint which provides a dedicated platform for achieving and managing Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance. It empowers organizations to achieve PCI compliance on their own, thus reducing the need for external consultants.

"The delivery of SAMS represents an important milestone for Spanish Point. The successful go-live of this major software application cements Spanish Point’s position as a leading provider in the Microsoft space of system design and software development services to the European technology industry." Says Dr. Paul Clinch Chairman of Spanish Point.

"SAMS is an excellent example of the benefits of the Spanish Point architectural approach to software design. By understanding the business needs of VigiTrust and examining the functional workloads expected of the solution we were able to design an architecture which leveraged the advantages of the Microsoft SharePoint technologies, reducing risk and costs and radically improving time to market for VigiTrust." said Donal Cullen CEO of Spanish Point.

The Rehab Group is an independent, not-for-profit organisation which provides training, employment, health and social care and commercial services for some 56,000 people each year in Ireland, the UK, the Netherlands and Poland. With over 3,000 end users the IT systems in Rehab must support a wide range of business applications and users.

After a competitive tender process focused around policy and document management the Rehab Group has selected Spanish Point as its SharePoint services partner. "We commenced this process with a detailed request for tenders paper which outlined our requirements in the areas of document and policy management. It soon became clear that SharePoint would provide an effective platform to support not only our stated requiremenst but would also open up new opportunities in the areas of collaboration and process automation. Spanish Point demonstrated an understanding of our needs and an excellence in SharePoint and my team and I look forward to working with them on the roll-out of SharePoint." said Gary Merrigan CITO of The Rehab Group.

"Not-for-profit organisations such as the Rehab Group are required to support a wide variety of business processes which are often not available in out-of-the-box software solutions or as modules in standard ERP systems. However these organisations are faced with the same challenges to drive down costs, improve efficiencies and ensure compliance that commercial companies face. SharePoint and specifically Microsoft Office SharePoint Sever 2007 is an ideal platform on which to build out collaboration and workflow based solutions to tackle these challenges. Using SharePoint Business Data Catalogue, Forms Server, Workflow and Excel Server we have a platform on which Rehab can standardise its business solutions, ensure compliance, drive down costs and ultimately improve the services to its many clients. It is a real honour to have the opportunity to work with Rehab in helping them achieve these goals." say Donal Cullen, CEO of Spanish Point.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is an integrated suite of server capabilities that can help improve organisational effectiveness by providing comprehensive content management and enterprise search, accelerating shared business processes, and facilitating information-sharing across boundaries for better business insight. Additionally, this collaboration and content management server provides a platform for the development of sophisticated and feature rich enterprise business applications.

With an advanced review of Microsoft Office 2010, Spanish Point will gain early knowledge of the new features in SharePoint 2010 and be in a better position to help its customers begin preparing for this business application. The company, a Gold Certified Microsoft SharePoint Implementation Partner, is one of the select users invited to join the Tech Preview program. Microsoft Office 2010 will be available in the first half of next year.

"We have a large number of customers using MOSS 2007 and it is important for us to understand the new features in MOSS 2010 and Office 2010 so that we can advise on upgrade plans." said John Corley, CTO of Spanish Point.

"Effective communication with our stakeholder community is an important task for Pobal. We administer multiple Funding Programmes on behalf of various government departments and agencies. These have a wide variety of recipients with many different information needs. With SharePoint we can provide a more effective website by streamlining the content publication process. SharePoint enables IT to get out of the way and allow the business owners get on with it." said Liam Butler CIO of Pobal.

"Pobal’s use of SharePoint for enterprise content management and its public facing website is a great vindication of the SharePoint technology. An increasing number of organisations are turning to SharePoint for their external facing website as they come to realise the great designs it supports and the ease of content publication. We were delighted to work on this high profile project with Pobal." said John Corley, CTO of Spanish Point.

The International Association of Microsoft Certified Partners (IAMCP) represents Microsoft´s best of breed partners from around the globe. The organisation was formed in 1994 and provides Microsoft Partners a voice into Microsoft programs, to the IT community at large, as well as a vehicle to facilitate mutual growth and business development among partners. The non-profit organization is operated by an annually elected board of directors, and is funded through membership fees and sponsor grants.

"The IAMCP EMEA Board is an important body in the global running of the IAMCP and I look forward to working with my new fellow board members on the many issues that Microsoft Partners face throughout the EMEA region as we all tackle the challenges caused by the global economic reset. Technology and technology service providers will play an important role in helping European industry refocuses on cost reduction and competitiveness and pull economics across Europe out of the current economic recession. The EMEA Board will continue the good work of our successors in driving the conversation with EU policy makers to ensure that Microsoft technologies are available to play their full role in this." says Donal Cullen, CEO of Spanish Point.

The International Association of Microsoft Certified Partners (IAMCP) represents Microsoft´s best of breed partners from around the globe. The organization was formed in 1994 and provides Microsoft Partners a voice into Microsoft programs, to the IT community at large, as well as a vehicle to facilitate mutual growth and business development among partners. The non-profit organization is operated by an annually elected board of directors, and is funded through membership fees and sponsor grants.

"There are over 150 Certified and Gold Certified Microsoft Partners in Ireland. They employ a significant proportion of the Irish IT community and are important providers of IT services and solutions to Irish and multinational organisations. These services are vital to ensuring Ireland’s competiveness and maintaining employment in the Irish economy. We have established the Irish Chapter of the IAMCP to act as a forum where partners can share ideas and build partner to partner relationships to better serve their customers and to act as a conduit for communication with Microsoft. All partners who wish to become members are required to sign up to and agree to abide by our code of conduct. It is an honour to be elected as the first President of the Irish Chapter of the IAMCP and I look forward to working with the other partners and Microsoft Ireland." says Donal Cullen CEO of Spanish Point.