REDMOND, Wash., April 3, 2000 — Microsoft Corp. today announced that Dorsey & Whitney LLP, an international law firm, has chosen Microsoft® Windows Media TM technologies running on the Windows® 2000 Professional operating system for its innovative intranet broadcasting system designed to deliver in-house training and real-time meetings to its employees all around the world. Using Windows Media, Dorsey & Whitney has created a unique weekly broadcasting service called Dorsey TV, which is tightly integrated with its Outlook® messaging and collaboration client- and Exchange-based e-mail system. By implementing this new Windows Media-based solution, Dorsey & Whitney has created a comprehensive real-time communications system, speeding information globally throughout the organization and helping to increase billing revenue while saving on travel and registration expenses for outside seminars and conferences.
“Because the Windows Media Player is a feature of Windows 2000, we were able to upgrade every desktop PC without interrupting employee access to critical information streamed on the Dorsey TV training channel,”
said William Schiefelbein, CIO of Dorsey & Whitney.
“We did consider the RealNetworks Player, but we chose the Microsoft solution because of its superior performance, features, value and compatibility with our Microsoft Office and BackOffice® environment.”
Dorsey & Whitney ( http://www.dorseylaw.com/ ) is a leading global law firm with more than 625 lawyers in 19 offices throughout the United States, and in the United Kingdom, Belgium, Canada, Hong Kong and Japan. Known nationally for its expertise in mergers and acquisitions, it was critical for the global firm to create and foster virtual teams across geographies. Windows Media played a critical role in improving internal communications and information-sharing among these virtual teams by providing the digital media infrastructure with a custom solution: Dorsey TV.
Since the implementation of Dorsey TV, Dorsey & Whitney has seen its streaming investment pay significant dividends in several key ways:
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Attorneys can now get better in-house training right at their desktops, saving on travel and registration expenses for outside seminars and conferences while increasing the up-time for attorneys in the office vs. being on the road for training.
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Dorsey TV helps attorneys forge stronger face-to-face relationships with attorneys in other offices, increasing cross-office referrals for new client work and billing revenue.
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The stronger relationships created by streaming media communications encourage attorneys to tap the resources of fellow lawyers and other offices, a concept they call
“work transfer.”
The higher Dorsey’s work transfer, the higher its revenue. Through the use of Dorsey TV, work transfer has been increasing exponentially.
“On average, we broadcast a Dorsey TV event to the firm three to four times a week,”
Schiefelbein said.
“Users who run an event and want to broadcast it simply check the box on our Conference Room Resources e-mail form in Outlook, and we show up and broadcast it. We also set up a special e-mail account so viewers can interact with the presenter at any time just by sending an e-mail, similar to an interactive talk show.”
The company also uses Windows Media for broadcasting professional development sessions for lawyers. Training sessions are archived for on-demand access, giving attorneys access to training at times convenient for them. Other types of broad corporate communications are also improving at the firm with Windows Media. Before Windows Media, members of the human resources department sent memos about changes in the 401(k) plan; now they broadcast live question-and-answer sessions in Windows Media led by benefits or investment advisors. Dataconferencing and application-sharing, multicast audio and video streaming, instant messaging, and enhanced chat services provide new ways for virtual teams to meet and work on documents across geographic boundaries.
Schiefelbein said Microsoft’s digital media solution is far more cost-effective than videoconferencing and provides a more personal and feature-rich communication system than teleconferencing.
“There is nothing like streaming media for broadcasting firm events – not just training, but also department meetings, human-resources presentations and so on – right to the desktop,”
Schiefelbein said.
“Unlike videoconferencing, streaming media allows you to reach large numbers of viewers, and users are more likely to tune in broadcasts because of the easy desktop convenience.”
Specific information about the firm’s implementation plan can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/profiles
/dorseywhitney/default.asp . Dorsey & Whitney joins a growing list of major companies that depend on Windows Media as their enterprise digital media solution. That list includes Aetna Inc., Creative Artists Agency, Charles Schwab & Company Inc., Dow Chemical Co., Hewlett-Packard Co., J.D. Edwards & Co., Partners HealthCare Systems Inc., SAS Institute Inc., Deere & Co., Northrop Grumman, Eastman Chemical Co., 3Com Corp. and Fujitsu PC Co.
About Windows Media
Windows Media is the leading digital media platform, providing consumers, content providers, solution providers, software developers and corporations with unmatched audio and video quality. Windows Media Technologies, which includes Windows Media Player, Windows Media Services, Windows Media Tools and the Windows Media SDK, is available for free* download at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/ . The Windows Media Player is the fastest-growing digital media player and is available in 24 languages. To date, there are over 100 million licensed copies of the Windows Media Player, growing by more than one every second.
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software — any time, any place and on any device.
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