Guest blogging today is Dave Lassiter.  Dave is our Solutions Director for Manufacturing & Resources and is responsible for solutions that we take to multiple vertical markets inside of the Manufacturing & Resources sector.  One of those solutions is Supply Chain Visibility & Collaboration...

That’s what I told a group of tourists at the top of Lombard Street in San Francisco last week after making the hike from my hotel across both Nob Hill and Russian Hill - with my laptop bag strapped across my shoulder no less.  My legs were a bit shaky and I debated whether to head down to Aquatic...

Yesterday, Accelrys , a provider of scientific business intelligence software and services, put out a press release on their support for Office SharePoint Server 2007 in their Pipeline Pilot Enterprise Server offering. We’ve started introducing this combination to chemical companies looking to increase...

Happy Friday.  The customer presentations from the Global Energy Forum are now posted.  Check them out . -Brian

What a great day at the Global Energy Forum last week, and what a fantastic turnout.  I was down there in support of my customer Nalco, and their talk on using software to improve customer operations ( press release here ). It’s always good to see what other verticals are doing, and there is a lot...

I’ll be in Houston this week for the Global Energy Forum .  Nalco Company is speaking with OSIsoft about a solution they are building in their Energy Services division to help refiners better optimize water treatment.  They are using a software plus services approach using OSIsoft and Microsoft...

As promised, I am following up with more information about OSIsoft ’s Dynamic Office Business Application (DOBA) Accelerators offered on OSIsoft’s vCampus site.  I traded emails with David Doll, from OSIsoft, to share his answers directly on the blog. Thanks, David, for answering these questions...

A popular topic during my customer visits is about improving manufacturing operations.  Many of you in the chemical industry have investments in both Microsoft and OSIsoft .  The conversation immediately goes to how we are working together to help customers make game changing improvements. ...

In a previous post , I referenced a new case study highlighting Eastman Chemical’s use of SharePoint to engineer “thousands of process improvements” across the business. We just posted a set of videos and profiles related to this case study on our People-Ready website .  There are 3 videos in all...

People drive the most important business outcomes, and software is one of the best investments you can make to enable your people to drive better outcomes.  Eastman Chemical embodies this philosophy in its information technology strategy and the approach is paying dividends. Last month, we released...

Last Monday, I attended the 11th Annual ChemWeek IT Forum in King of Prussia, PA.  Unfortunately, the attendance was light for the conference, but the presenters all hung in there and delivered quality content.  The presentations are posted here for your review.  Reading the slide decks...

On October 8th and 9th in Atlanta, Georgia, Microsoft is sponsoring the Strategic Marketing and eMarketing in the Chemical Industry conference put on by Jacob Fleming. I will be speaking on the eMarketing platform and what chemical companies can do today to take their eMarketing investments to the next...

This may be an obscure post to some of you, but for those of you working on Innovation Management solutions for Microsoft, you will be happy to hear that we released the Solution Connector for Microsoft Office Project Portfolio Server 2007 . This will allow you, among other things, to automate the promotion...

We published another case study on Monsanto's collaboration environment while I was away from the office. Monsanto has previously published a case study and video on its use of enterprise search using SharePoint and Unified Communications . The newest case study is a fairly technical look at how Monsanto...

A couple weeks ago, we released a case study with Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC), and their deployment of Office 2007 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to their 18,000 employees. What is interesting to me about this case study is the implied de-coupling of Vista and Office 2007...

This past week, we released Windows Vista adoption case studies for Eastman Chemical and PPG . The Eastman story focuses on the timing of their refresh cycle and their evaluation of whether to stay on Windows XP or move to Vista. The Vista decision came from a number of factors, not the least of which...

We released the Podcasting Kit for SharePoint to our CodePlex site this week. I've seen a growing interest in implementing social media scenarios internally for chemical companies to encourage peer-sharing of best practices. This project was born out of an internal intiative around the same concept ...

I was reading a colleague's blog the other day who was excited to be home after a bunch of travel so that he could get back to blogging. I find it the opposite - I tend to blog more when I travel than I do when I am home. As you can tell, I have been home over the last week or so. Anyway, for those...

We just released a case study with OSISoft highlighting the growing trend of usage for OSISoft's PI system and corresponding real-time performance management infrastructure for environmental improvements including energy and emissions. Most of us know them for their market presence in helping process...

I just returned today from a week-long vacation. We released a new case study from PolyOne while I was away. This case study is about PolyOne overhauling their customer-facing B2B website, and using Microsoft products and technologies to do it. Their business challenges were around three main areas...

I sat in on Ben Vollmer's session today at Convergence today. The topic was focused on how to integrate Dynamics CRM into Microsoft Office SharePoint Server . He started the session asking how many folks in the room (probably about 200-300 people) had deployed Dynamics CRM...about 80% of the hands went...

Tony Grzesik and I hosted a webcast focused on driving innovation in the chemical industry, and focused in particular on what Microsoft brings to the table to help our chemical and agriculture customers get better results from their innovation process. If you want to check it out, click here . ...

Just before the holidays, we released a case study on Monsanto's use of Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 to provide a more flexible work environment for its employees. They were evaluating how unified communications could allow them to improve their business processes and cut costs, but they...

On February 28, 2008, I am hosting a webcast on how Microsoft is helping chemical companies deliver on innovation. We will talk about a range of topics with a couple of customer stories, but if you are involved in R&D on the IT or the business side, come check it out. You can register by clicking...

While sitting around watching a lot of college football this weekend, I started to do some searching to see if I could find blogs, wikis, and other evidence of web 2.0 approaches to building community in the chemical industry. One of the first results I uncovered was some work being done on ChemSpider...