Microsoft Server Product PortfolioCustomer Solution Case Study

First Data Migrates Tools and Processes to Microsoft, with Significant Financial Savings

OverviewCountry or Region: United StatesIndustry: Financial services

Customer ProfileBased in Atlanta, Georgia, First Data processes over 56 billion financial transactions for financial institutions and merchants each year involving credit and debit cards, checks, and ATMs. In 2011, the Fortune 250 firm generated U.S.$10.7 billion in revenue.

Business SituationThe company needed to boost efficiency and agility by simplifying collaboration, internal business intelligence (BI), workflow automation, and IT maintenance. First Data also wanted to increase insight and innovation.

SolutionFirst Data migrated more than 3,000 Lotus Notes applications and hundreds of additional programs to a new solution based on the Microsoft platform.

Benefits Speeds IT staff efficiency by 45 percent Meets requirements for high security

and delivers 99.5 percent availability Increases agility and innovation

“By extending the capabilities of SharePoint 2010 …. First Data has realized a significant financial savings and improved employee productivity by 45 percent.”

Nancy Blankenship, Vice President IT, First Data

Global electronic commerce and payment processor First Data Corporation wanted to increase efficiency, boost corporate agility, and reduce costs. To achieve these goals, the company decided to replace its disparate collaboration, internal business intelligence (BI), and process-automation technologies with one solution. After evaluating options, First Data architected and implemented an enterprise solution based on the Microsoft platform including Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. Between 2009 and 2011, the team migrated more than 3,000 Lotus Notes applications, hundreds of additional programs, and about 4 terabytes of data to the platform. The team also implemented new capabilities such as self-service BI. As a result, First Data realizes significant annual financial savings, boosts staff productivity by up to 45 percent, provides a certified development platform that meets security requirements, and facilitates innovation and agility.

SituationFirst Data is one of the world’s largest payment processors and the top-ranking financial services technology provider according to Forbes magazine. It processes monetary transactions for more than 4,000 financial institutions and 6.2 million merchant locations worldwide. Customers, partners, and employees in 34 countries depend on First Data to facilitate fast, secure, and robust transaction processing that also complies with global security and privacy regulations.

As a leading global payment provider, First Data has undergone rapid growth. To help facilitate this expansion, the company adopted software from different vendors. By 2007, acquisitions and evolving IT strategies had resulted in a disparate infrastructure with technologies from many companies, including IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft. As a result, global employees struggled to share information and react promptly to industry and customer needs. For example, employees relied on more than 350 Lotus Notes databases to process work orders that registered customers, managed accounts, and modified services. In addition, to collaborate internally, employees used 3,200 incongruent applications, including custom software, Redwood Report2Web, EMC Documentum, eRoom, and BroadVision Collaboration Software.

Employees also had to manually create business intelligence (BI) by extracting pertinent information from static reports collected from different systems. Insight was further restricted because only IT personnel could change templates, reports, and user permissions—and these processes

could take days or weeks. To obtain a custom application that delivered new BI, employees spent weeks or months documenting requirements and waited almost as long for implementation because IT personnel could not keep up with new development requests.

First Data realized that it had to modify its internal IT infrastructure to boost efficiency and agility. The senior leadership team identified three key areas for the IT department to analyze and update: business process automation, collaboration tools, and internal BI reporting. “We wanted one work-force platform to pull our global company closer together, enable complex collaboration, automate business processes, provide BI, and facilitate innovation,” says Nancy Blankenship, Vice President of IT at First Data.

SolutionIT personnel from First Data carefully evaluated numerous technologies as potential alternatives to the merchant work order intake process and eventually chose an internally developed solution based on Microsoft SharePoint Server and the Microsoft .NET Framework 4. Commenting on the other solutions the company evaluated, Blankenship says, “In one instance, the competing solution would require significant effort and initially cost millions of dollars. In contrast, the custom Microsoft solution initially cost $200,000, only took about three months to build, and provided at least 80 percent more capabilities than we had with our previous 350 Lotus Notes applications.”

To help complete the development of the solution, First Data engaged Microsoft

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“At First Data, we have taken SharePoint 2010 to new heights to automate our business processes, consolidate internal business intelligence reporting, facilitate complex collaboration, and enable a shared-services application-development platform.”

Nancy Blankenship, Vice President IT, First Data

partner Cognizant. First Data chose to work with Cognizant because of its Microsoft expertise and because its consultants adhere to the same development fundamentals in practice at First Data. These fundamentals include taking advantage of reusable software components and business-process-automation workflows, and using best practices established through collective experience.

Between 2009 and 2011, First Data migrated more than 3,000 Lotus Notes applications and hundreds of additional programs to the new standard work-force environment, known as Platform 360. Initially deployed on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, today Platform 360 runs on Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. To accelerate the migration of the Lotus Notes applications to SharePoint 2010, the team used the Cognizant Lotus Notes Analyzer Tool, which is part of the Cognizant SharePoint Migration Suite.

The solution’s server farm includes physical and virtual servers that run the Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise operating system. Virtual servers support the web-based interface and the application servers. Physical servers support databases that run Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise software and the enterprise search tool, Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint.

Since the project began, First Data and Cognizant engineers migrated about 4 terabytes of data to Platform 360. For example, the team has provisioned more than 18,000 sites (grouped in 120 site

collections) and created hundreds of workflows across all business units.

First Data has also trained enterprise employees to use out-of-the-box and self-service capabilities for BI. Additionally, First Data has customized Platform 360 so that it supports a new employee intranet, a partner extranet, an enterprise content management system, a knowledge management system, a contract management system, and human resources self-service processes. It also supports manager resource review, product explorer, and opportunity management and product development processes. In addition, the solution delivers an IT command center, innovation-management tools, a global-learning university, and many other business applications.

In 2011, First Data identified Platform 360 as one of the company’s top mission-critical applications. As a result, the service-level agreement for Platform 360 stipulates 99.5 percent availability, including tier-one high availability and disaster recovery. Platform 360 must also comply with the company’s highest security levels for data and processes.

To meet these requirements, engineers enabled encryption of data-in-transit via Secure Socket Layer communications protocol and encryption of data-at-rest via SQL Server 2008 R2. Engineers also implemented Microsoft Forefront Unified Access Gateway 2010 and Active Directory service to facilitate identity and access management, as well as a solution for data-leakage protection. Using software from the third-party company Envision, the team also implemented forensically auditable

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data-access and data-logging capabilities. For load balancing, First Data uses third-party Juniper software. And for disaster recovery, the company relies on Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2010.

After completing a strategic assessment of internal BI objectives, IT personnel from First Data created a consolidated BI portal for employees that will replace many existing reporting solutions. This new portal helps business employees make more informed and more efficient decisions. The solution also helps them to exploit the potential of Microsoft BI more fully and securely and in closer collaboration with partners and vendors.For example, the BI portal provides business units with self-service reporting tools such as Microsoft Excel 2010 spreadsheet software, SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel, and SQL Server PowerPivot for SharePoint. The solution also gives access to advanced tools such as Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 business intelligence software and SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services.

Today, Platform 360 is an enterprise work-force solution that is available to all employees globally, with 22,000 consistent users, 4 million documents, and hundreds of applications that support more than 7 million hits a month.

BenefitsWith its new work-force platform, First Data, accelerates IT staff efficiency by 45 percent, meets security requirements, and increases agility and innovation.

Realizes Significant Annual Financial SavingsBy taking advantage of the Microsoft platform, First Data has been able to quickly automate business processes, consolidate internal BI reporting, facilitate complex collaboration, and expedite the implementation of a shared-services, application-development platform. Blankenship , explains, “Platform 360 provides centralized access to business-critical information and reduces the number of business intelligence silos. The solution also reduces development, maintenance, and support costs—and streamlines business processes. And above all, the solution makes it possible for us to provide the right people with access to the right information.”

Commenting on the effect of Platform 360, Blankenship says, “The return on investment of our Microsoft solution is immense. At First Data, we have taken SharePoint 2010 to new heights to automate our business processes, consolidate internal business intelligence reporting, facilitate complex collaboration, and enable a shared-services application- development platform. By extending the capabilities of SharePoint 2010 with our strategy and governance, we have decommissioned hundreds of legacy applications, consolidated web-based business applications, and reused technology. As a result, First Data has realized a $2 million annual savings and improved employee productivity by 45 percent.”

Speeds IT Staff Efficiency by 45 Percent within a Certified-Secure Environment

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First Data has also increased the productivity of IT personnel. Blankenship says, “Our BI solution eases IT management while providing critical business insight and reporting capabilities throughout the enterprise.”

Blankenship adds, “With our centralized shared-services platform on SharePoint Server 2010, we have increased the efficiency of our information workers by at least 45 percent. For example, we previously administered about 1,600 work orders each week using complex manual processes. With SharePoint 2010, we now process close to 2,000 merchant work orders each day.”

First Data has also successfully deployed an environment that is highly secure and compliant with all applicable industry security processes. At the same time, the company has increased control over business-critical systems and data. “Providing one globally accessible solution on the Microsoft platform to securely collaborate and automate processes is one of the most important benefits we realize with our solution,” says Blankenship.

Increases Agility and InnovationToday, employees can tailor BI to answer questions, build and customize sites for collaboration, and create processes and applications faster. “Employees can rapidly implement ideas using out-of-the-box capabilities with SharePoint 2010,” Blankenship says. “And they can work with IT personnel to develop a tool in just days or weeks based only on an idea—rather than spending months simply establishing requirements. This level of innovation was just not possible before.”Microsoft Server Product PortfolioFor more information about the Microsoft server product portfolio, go to:www.microsoft.com/servers

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For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:www.microsoft.com

For more information about Cognizant products and services, call (888) 937-3277 or visit the website at: www.cognizant.com

For more information about First Data products and services visit www.firstdata.com

“Providing one globally accessible solution on the Microsoft platform to securely collaborate and automate processes is perhaps one of the most important benefits we realize with our solution.”

Nancy Blankenship, VP IT, First Data

Software and Services Microsoft Server Product Portfolio− Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise− Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010

for SharePoint− Microsoft Forefront Unified Access

Gateway 2010− Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010

Enterprise− Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2

Enterprise− Microsoft System Center Data

Protection Manager 2010 Microsoft Office− Microsoft Excel 2010

− Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007

Technologies− Active Directory− Microsoft .NET Framework 4− Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2

Reporting Services− Microsoft SQL Server PowerPivot for

Excel− Microsoft SQL Server PowerPivot for

SharePoint

Partners Cognizant

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published September 2012