The European railway operator was facing stiff competition from low-cost airlines and coach operators. The company realized that its existing service offerings were out-of-touch with the way that its customers wanted to travel. More and more travellers were turning to the web and mobile channels to book tickets, find information and plan journeys. The operator recognized that the key to regaining ground from its rivals lay in offering customers more attractive prices and promotions, as well as an easier way to book and plan journeys. By developing service offerings that truly stand out and giving travelers greater flexibility, the company hoped to boost ticket sales and steal a march on its competitors. The company wanted to better engage with its customers by launching more desirable travel options at attractive prices, and to ensure that its offerings are always up-to-date.

Italian software developer Foedus operates in a highly competitive market where innovation is key to maintaining market share. The company's flagship product, the OCTOBUS ERP solution, needed to be continually improved to keep up with the competition and meet the demands of its customers. In the aftermath of the global economic recession, many Italian software companies had cut back on innovation or outsourced operations. However, the demand for advanced, affordable solutions designed and manufactured within Italy remained high. Foedus saw an opportunity to meet this demand by launching an affordable, advanced, end-to-end enterprise management software offering aimed at small and medium firms.

Fransabank, one of Lebanon's largest banks, was experiencing rapid business growth that was putting a strain on its core systems. The bank was concerned about the performance of critical batch processing tasks at the start and end of each working day, and at the end of each month. These processing tasks, which ensure that all transactions are applied accurately and all accounts reconciled, are effectively a statutory requirement as well as enabling the bank to have an accurate view of its business performance. As the business grew rapidly and continuously, a main pillar of their IT strategy was to implement a robust, scalable and highly performing infrastructure capable of accompanying the business growth by processing a larger volume of data and transactions in less time. This would avoid any potential future service impact and secure the end-of-day processing before the branches opened at 8 am—without any concerns about the significant volume growth.

The IT applications department at this company had an aggressive roadmap for improvement, including plans to reduce manual processes. The organization’s change request process for financial reference data was manual and labor-intensive, requiring staff to update and exchange spreadsheets by email. There was no process for gaining the necessary approvals for requested changes, which sometimes resulted in employees making revisions without key stakeholders’ approval. The company needed a BPM offering to automate this key process.

KPJ Healthcare used cost-intensive server and storage technology to support core applications, including its hospital information system and financial applications. These siloed, geographically dispersed and isolated platforms hindered clinical decision-making and business processes. The organization needed a solution that would consolidate and unify its vast medical records and associated medical information network.

Kingland Systems Corporation, a company specializing in solving customers’ complex compliance and data problems, was facing a challenge in setting up new customer environments. The company relied on the cloud to create copies of customer environments so that it could work on each customer’s data. However, the process was manual and could take up to two weeks. This was affecting the company's responsiveness and ability to quickly onboard new customers. The company was looking for a way to streamline these processes and improve its speed to market.

Oxford Networks, a company that provides telephone and fiber optic network services, decided to extend its focus to providing managed IT services to business customers in Maine and northern New England. The company needed to ensure that its new data center and cloud environment provides its customers 100 percent uptime. The company had to develop an overarching plan for launching its managed service provider (MSP) business, which meant deploying and managing a reliable, scalable, and flexible cloud environment in its data center and integrating it with the rest of its network.

Oxford Networks, a technology solutions provider based in Maine, United States, aimed to grow its new managed services business by giving customers access to the latest cloud solutions. The company needed to keep up with changing customer expectations and keep costs competitive. To keep its service offerings ahead of the game, Oxford Networks continually invests in leading technology solutions. This includes the latest IBM POWER8 servers, which support IBM AIX®, IBM i and Linux operating systems and serve as one of the company’s strategic hardware platforms.

Pearson VUE, the world's largest testing organization, was struggling with time-consuming manual release and deployment processes. The process involved dozens of steps and was causing frustration among the development and operations teams due to their inability to move code to production quickly. When a production issue arose, it was difficult to determine whether the code or the deployment was the problem. Given the nature of Pearson VUE's business, reducing production issues was essential. For instance, any problem in production could affect the speed at which a customer could grant a candidate a license to practice medicine.

Sparda-Datenverarbeitung eG (SDV) is the IT service provider for the Sparda-Bank Group in Germany. The group’s 12 banks employ over 7,300 people and operate more than 400 branches, serving 3.5 million customers and a total of 23 million accounts. Customers expect seamless access to banking accounts, and, particularly as use of mobile apps grows, always-on availability and fast system response become even more important. SDV wanted to boost the performance of systems that rely heavily on information from its core banking solution. Simultaneously, regulatory pressure is increasing. To comply with the new rules, Sparda-Bank Group needs tools to analyze vast amounts of data in large databases, compiling complex reports for internal controlling teams as well as external auditors. To manage these twin challenges, SDV wanted to increase system capacity and performance, yet reduce the total cost of ownership of its mission-critical applications in order to stay fully competitive.

The University Medical Center (UMC) Freiburg, one of the largest hospitals in Europe, relies on an IT environment consisting of more than 80 clinical, operational, and patient care applications. This application environment demands constant change, with ongoing application modifications and deployments. The integration architecture team at UMC Freiburg needed to connect the hospital’s business and patient care applications with its clinical and patient data storage systems to provide a full view of patient care in one location, resulting in better overall care. The team had to ensure that all new and modified applications interface effectively with the medical center’s two backbone systems, one for patient data storage and the other for clinical report archiving while maintaining consistent service for users. These systems must also comply with Health Level Seven International (HL7), which provides messaging standards for exchanging patient care and clinical information in electronic health records (EHRs).

Varian Medical Systems, a world leader in medical devices and software for treating cancer with radiation oncology, wanted to change the way it managed compensation to motivate sellers to achieve even higher levels of performance. The company's sales cycles can be long and complex due to the tailored nature of their advanced cancer treatment solutions. This made it difficult to assess the relative contributions of the many employees involved in each deal, and to compensate them fairly.

Verisure, a leading provider of security solutions, was facing challenges in fostering collaboration among its marketing, sales, and product development teams across different geographies. The company was relying on email for collaboration, which was proving to be inefficient. With the number of employees and business partners increasing, Verisure realized that email alone would not be sufficient to ensure smooth operations. The company's product and service offerings were tightly integrated, leading to an extensive partnership network of vendors and manufacturers worldwide. This made the need for an effective collaboration platform even more critical.

WD-40 Company, a global marketing organization, faced a significant challenge in analyzing its profit and loss (P&L) due to data being held in different systems. This lack of a clear view of P&L by customer, region, or stock-keeping unit (SKU) was hindering decision-making. The complexity of the company's internal financial landscape, with multiple international subsidiaries, and customer and SKU data stored at different levels of granularity, made it extremely challenging to analyze P&L in different parts of the business. Gaining an overview of the profitability of a particular customer, region, or SKU was a laborious, manual process – and in most cases, it was simply too time-consuming to perform this kind of analysis on a regular basis.

Transporting valuable cargos around the globe is a complex business: it can take weeks and cost millions of dollars to move a vessel across the world, so it is critical to ensure that available shipping capacity is utilised efficiently. To support effective operational planning, WWL needed an accurate long-term forecasting solution. The company has 3,500 employees and a fleet of more than 60 vessels that serve 18 different trade routes on a fixed schedule. It also operates 11 terminals, 50 processing centres, and an inland transportation network that helps to transport more than three million vehicles per year from factories to point of sale. The company needed to plan its routes meticulously to ensure that it was getting the best possible utilization out of its vessels and maintaining profitability on each voyage.

The Championships, Wimbledon is the longest-established of the four Grand Slam tennis tournaments, and arguably the most prestigious. Its organisers, the All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC), recognise that the best way to celebrate and preserve the tournament’s rich heritage is to ensure that it continues to make history, each and every year. In 2014, The Championships took place at the same time as another of the world’s largest sporting events, the FIFA World Cup. With much of the global sports media saturated with soccer coverage, the AELTC appreciated the challenge of winning and retaining fans’ attention. Mick Desmond, Commercial Director at the AELTC, comments: “The key is to engage the fans by giving them unparalleled access to the tournament, wherever and whenever they want to experience it. We not only want to offer the best possible experience for those who are lucky enough to spend a day at Wimbledon – we want to replicate that unforgettable atmosphere for the millions who are watching on TV or following a match online.

Publishers face a tough challenge. If they print more copies of a book than people buy, they waste money and are left with excess inventory. But if they print too few copies, they miss out on revenue. To avoid ending up with too many or too few books, media control has developed a state-of-the-art social media listening tool that helps publishers accurately predict demand for each title.

Financial Insurance Management Corp. (FIMC) wanted to deliver increased value to members by offering an enhanced, high-quality mobile experience. The company hoped that by providing mobile services, it would simplify the renewal process for members. In the past, members might not realize that their roadside assistance or discount services had expired until they tried to use them. At that point, they would have to use traditional means, such as email or a phone call, to contact FIMC to renew their service. FIMC wanted to streamline this process so that members could easily renew from any location, ensuring more continuous service. Additionally, FIMC wanted to deliver faster access to its benefits and promotions, helping members gain more value from their memberships and thereby increasing the likelihood that they would want to renew.

FindBrok, a company aiming to launch an international social and business network for finance and insurance professionals, needed a powerful development platform and a secure, reliable cloud-based hosting environment. The company was seeking support for its strategic approach and long-term business growth. It evaluated cloud hosting solutions, including Amazon and Google platforms, but determined that only the SoftLayer cloud offering met its requirements.

ING Bank Śląski, part of the ING Group, needed a more responsive, multichannel loan-application system to retain its competitive position as a modern credit bank. The bank was also concerned about the time to market for new products and promotions and the time to cash for approved loans. The bank wanted a system that could not only approve or deny credit in near-real time but also analyze a customer’s profile so that the bank could customize the final loan. The solution also needed to allow the bank to simulate and create the optimal requirements for new loan products before launch, speeding time to market and helping maximize revenue for the bank.

The KLM Open, one of the oldest golf tournaments in the European Tour, was facing a challenge as large-screen, high-definition television was driving an increasing number of fans to watch sports at home rather than in person. To counter this trend and enhance the live experience for fans, the KLM Open wanted to provide a new and more interactive mobile application. However, they lacked the infrastructure and expertise needed to develop and deploy such a solution. The goal was to provide fans attending the tournament with real-time access to leaderboards, players’ locations and maps that show the user’s current location and how to get to various points of interest.

MediaWen International, a B2B and SaaS provider, wanted to launch online linguistic solutions for customers worldwide. The company needed to partner with a global provider that could offer high-performance cloud infrastructure and cognitive computing technologies. The solutions were aimed at providing cognitive subtitling, translation, and dubbing functionality for customers in various sectors including media and entertainment, e-learning, finance, government, and healthcare.

Refresco Gerber, a leading European bottler of soft drinks and juices, was facing a challenge in controlling the access, usage, and security of corporate data as the company expanded across Europe. The company's rapid growth and acquisition of smaller operations and rival distributors brought along a diversity of systems and practices. As teams used their personal mobile devices to access information on the move, ensuring the protection of precious corporate data became increasingly difficult.

Saint-Gobain CPS, a global provider of advanced materials for various industries, was facing a challenge in providing accurate and timely information about delivery schedules and status to its clients. The company had little visibility of the status of goods once they were loaded onto trucks at the factory and until they were delivered to client sites. This lack of transparency led to problems such as delayed deliveries, damaged goods in transit, and inefficiencies in the delivery chain. The company's clients, who were looking to reduce costs by holding less stock in their warehouses, needed better information on the timing of deliveries to avoid out-of-stock situations and unnecessary waiting times for deliveries.

In 2011, the government of China mandated that all trucks be connected to the TransWiseway Internet of Vehicles (IoV) platform. As a result, Beijing-based TransWiseway Information Technology Co. Ltd. needed to grow its platform to support and serve 10 million simultaneously connected vehicles while managing the massive amounts of data generated by the solution. The company was faced with the challenge of expanding its platform to accommodate the growing number of connected vehicles and the data they generate. This required a robust and scalable solution that could handle the influx of data and provide real-time analysis for improved safety and decision making.

Uvionics Tech, a startup company, was in need of a high-performance cloud development solution to launch its product portfolio. The company initially attempted to combine Amazon Web Services capabilities with third-party open source software. However, integration issues between the two platforms hindered its development efforts. The company was in search of a flexible, integrated development platform with powerful graphics processing unit (GPU) capabilities that could easily scale as demands change.

With an increasing number of financial service providers entering the market, Western Union needed to improve its digital user experience. The company sought to understand why customers sometimes abandoned the website before completing transactions and how to streamline the online experience to deliver better service.

Westpac New Zealand Ltd. wanted to offer its mobile banking customers unprecedented account access and functionality. Customers wanted a consistent banking experience regardless of how they accessed their accounts, but most mobile banking apps offered limited features and required multiple logins to access different accounts. The bank wanted to overcome these hurdles and provide a seamless and comprehensive mobile banking experience.

Autodesk, a global leader in 3D computer-aided design, engineering, and entertainment software, was transitioning to a subscription business model which required real-time customer service and support. The company was dealing with a high volume of customer inquiries, half of which pertained to activation code requests, changes of address, contract problems, and technical issues. The resolution time for inquiries could be 1.5 days or more. With the move to subscription underway, Autodesk needed to respond more quickly to customer inquiries and scale for future volume.

Harrow Council in northwest London, serving around 250,000 people, was tasked with reducing its social services budget by millions of pounds over four years. The council had already developed a reputation for innovation with its groundbreaking My Community ePurse (MCeP) solution, which empowers service users by offering them control and choice over how they spend their social care personal budgets. However, the council wanted to expand this solution and make it available to a larger audience by adding a healthcare component. The council believed that this expansion could result in further savings and provide eligible citizens with the ability to manage and control their own health and care budgets, choosing care services that would better match their needs.