Sony Electronics provides audio/video electronics and information technology products for the consumer and professional markets. As part of Sony Corporation, Sony Electronics employees collaborate with colleagues in offices around the world. The company sought a more efficient way to organize and search for documents on the corporate intranet, while also making it simpler for employees to connect with each other and share expertise. By deploying Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and becoming an early adopter of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, Sony Electronics has given employees advanced document sharing capabilities and a more effective and easily searchable intranet, saving time and boosting productivity. Ready access to internal experts also saves consulting costs, and development time on key projects has been cut from three to six months to three to six weeks.

1. Customer Solution Case Study
Sony Electronics Improves Collaboration,
Information Access, and Productivity
Overview “Using the people and expertise search capabilities of
Country or Region: United States
Industry: Manufacturing—Electronics SharePoint Server 2010, we can easily find people
internally who have the passion and skills to help with a
Customer Profile
Sony is a global technology and particular project, rather than hiring a consultant.”
entertainment company with more
Jim Whitmoyer, Business Applications Manager, Sony Electronics
than 170,000 employees. The company
had nearly U.S.$80 billion in 2008 sales. Sony Electronics provides audio/video electronics and
Business Situation
information technology products for the consumer and
With employees and information professional markets. As part of Sony Corporation, Sony
spread across many different locations,
Sony was looking for ways to improve
Electronics employees collaborate with colleagues in offices
information access, enhance around the world. The company sought a more efficient way to
collaboration, and make better use of
internal expert resources.
organize and search for documents on the corporate intranet,
while also making it simpler for employees to connect with each
Solution
Building on its implementation of
other and share expertise. By deploying Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server SharePoint Server 2007 and becoming an early adopter of
2007, Sony became an early adopter of
Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010,
Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, Sony Electronics has given
using it to enhance the corporate employees advanced document sharing capabilities and a more
intranet.
effective and easily searchable intranet, saving time and
Benefits boosting productivity. Ready access to internal experts also
 Increased innovation and sense of
community
saves consulting costs, and development time on key projects
 Better access to information and in- has been cut from three to six months to three to six weeks.
house expertise
 Higher productivity, lower costs,
faster development

2. “With wiki functionality Situation boundaries of innovation through
Headquartered in San Diego, California, collaboration.”
in SharePoint Server, Sony Electronics is a leading provider of
popular consumer and professional Without a robust collaboration system in
we’re building what we electronic products. The company’s place, employees were exchanging ideas
call SonyPedia—bringing operations include research and and plans mostly through e-mail, which
development, design, engineering, overloaded inboxes and created
together insights from manufacturing, sales, marketing, document versioning issues. “I was on a
distribution, and customer service. Sony number of distribution lists, and I got up
employees across the Electronics is part of Sony Corporation, to 300 e-mails a day,” says Whitmoyer. “I
enterprise into a single which is ranked as one of the world’s 100 couldn’t just discard them because there
largest companies by Forbes magazine. might be something in them I needed to
body of knowledge, The company’s other divisions include know about. Also, if I sent a document to
Sony Pictures Entertainment, Sony Music 10 people and three of those people
driving us toward a more Entertainment, and Sony Corporation of modified it and sent it back out, we’d
unified company.” America. then have multiple versions but no
version history or tracking.”
Jim Whitmoyer, Business Applications As a company producing cutting-edge
Manager, Sony Electronics technology, Sony Corporation promotes Sony is also constantly seeking to
innovative thinking internally, and the innovate and modernize its information
Sony Electronics division is at the infrastructure to better meet the
forefront of that effort. “Innovation is expectations and working styles of the
important to us,” says Sal Rosales, next generation of employees. Sony is
SharePoint Architect at Sony Electronics. placing a greater emphasis on
“Innovation got us where we are today, telecommuting, and employees want the
and we need to continue innovating to company to adopt the same types of
move forward. We have a lot of social networking technologies that they
competition challenging our traditional use in other areas of daily life. “We have
market areas, so there’s a big push for us a lot of affinity groups at Sony, and one
to improve the ways we generate and of them is targeted at new, young
use information across the enterprise.” employees who are joining the
company,” says Whitmoyer. “Young
With corporate, engineering, research, employees are very excited about social
and manufacturing sites spread across computing because they know they can
the United States and around the globe, use it to easily connect with people, at
Sony Electronics faced challenges in home and at work.”
communication across divisions and
between employees. “Everyone was “We have lots of tech-savvy people,”
operating as an island,” explains Jim adds Rosales. “They’re used to using
Whitmoyer, Business Applications MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and similar
Manager at Sony Electronics. “We’d talk sites. They want to see that same sort of
with colleagues, but there wasn’t a lot of functionality—search and chat, for
communication between our U.S. and example—available from their desktop at
European offices, for example. So, we work, and they want to connect to
looked for ways to take charge and build internal resources from anywhere.”
stronger partnerships between our sister
companies, while expanding the

3. Additionally, Sony Electronics employees migrating our environment on a site-by-
faced challenges navigating the vast site basis and verifying that the sites still
amounts of information on the corporate work,” says Whitmoyer. “Where they
network and tapping into expert don’t work, we’re making further
resources within the company. “We have customizations. Fortunately, almost
so many different business units and had everything we developed in Office
so much data floating around,” says SharePoint Server 2007 works in
Rosales. “In order to work effectively and SharePoint Server 2010.”
continue to innovate, we need to be able
to search for relevant data and pinpoint To address the company’s search needs,
its owners and authors very quickly.” Sony Electronics also deployed Microsoft
FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint.
Sony Electronics sought a solution that This software complements the search
would support its goals to promote and integration capabilities of SharePoint
innovation through collaboration and Server 2010 by adding a more engaging
efficient access to information and and conversational search experience,
expertise across corporate boundaries. and context to provide specific search
experiences for different needs. It also
offers advanced content processing to
Solution create metadata and add structure to
Given its positive experiences with unstructured content.
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007,
Sony Electronics was excited to With the deployment of SharePoint
accelerate its internal culture of Server 2010 complete, the new
innovation with Microsoft SharePoint collaboration solution is already making
Server 2010. The company wanted to a positive business impact. Whitmoyer
take advantage of new features such as says, “We currently have the entire
an improved user interface, enhanced Enterprise edition of SharePoint Server
wiki functionality, and more robust 2010 installed, and it has been a pretty
search capabilities. painless migration for us. This frees our
team to do more sophisticated
IT staff at Sony had also made a lot of customizations using SharePoint
customizations to its Office SharePoint integration with the Microsoft Visual
Server 2007 environment. These included Studio 2010 development system and
developing forms with the Microsoft Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5.”
InfoPath information-gathering program,
implementing new workflows, branding
the corporate intranet, and creating Benefits
custom ASPX pages. Other By deploying a collaboration solution
customizations included wiki tagging, based on SharePoint Server 2010 and
FAST search refinements, and controls FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint,
built using the Microsoft Silverlight Sony Electronics is promoting innovation
browser plug-in. As a result, one of the and building a stronger sense of
important steps in the deployment of community. Employees have better
SharePoint Server 2010 has been to access to information and in-house
move these customizations into the new expertise, increasing productivity and
version’s test environment. “We’re

4. “Collaborating through lowering costs, and the company speeds Rosales adds, “My Sites give us a deeper
through application development. understanding of our employees’ work
SharePoint Server, I’m skills and interests, and provide a much
Increased Innovation and Sense of richer organizational view that helps
connected all the time. Community Sony better leverage the potential of its
It’s really like people are At Sony Electronics, innovation thrives on human resources for better innovation.”
employees interacting and exchanging
in the next cubicle, ideas. To promote this interaction, the As another example, the implementation
company is taking advantage of of a central repository for sharing files
whether they’re 1 mile SharePoint features that foster a greater has made it easier for employees to
away or 100 miles away.” sense of community in the virtual collaboratively write, edit, and exchange
environment. documents. This eliminates the need to
Jim Whitmoyer, Business Applications e-mail the documents back and forth
Manager, Sony Electronics For example, Sony Electronics is using and resolves versioning issues. “We’ve
enhanced wiki capabilities to capture been able to cut down on the
employees’ insights and comments, roundabout communication that was
employ corporate governance to going on before,” says Whitmoyer. “We
manage this content, and efficiently can share documents through a library or
search through the content and apply it desktop sharing, which makes it simple
where it is needed. Whitmoyer says, to manage everyone’s revisions. We
“With wiki functionality in SharePoint republish documents and use RSS feeds
Server, we’re building what we call to get updates, so there’s no need to use
SonyPedia—bringing together insights e-mail—we have a single source of
from employees across the enterprise truth.”
into a single body of knowledge, driving
us toward a more unified company.” Finally, tighter integration between
SharePoint Server 2010 and Microsoft
Similarly, Sony Electronics recognizes Office Communications Server 2007 has
that it can be difficult for new employees made it simpler for colleagues to
at such a large organization to locate communicate who are telecommuting or
necessary resources and connect with located in other offices. This includes the
peers. To address this issue, the company ability to immediately call one another
is using the solution’s robust My Site directly on the computer. Rosales says,
pages and people search feature to “Connecting people via the integration
identify people who have similar with Microsoft Office Communicator and
innovation interests or who work on the Microsoft Office suites helps drive
similar projects. “With SharePoint Server, innovation instantly—anytime,
we expect that as new employees come anywhere.”
in they will connect quickly with co-
workers,” says Whitmoyer. “And as we go Whitmoyer adds, “Collaborating through
through organizational changes, we also SharePoint Server, I’m connected all the
expect that existing employees will time. It’s really like people are in the next
integrate quickly with a new team. It’s a cubicle, whether they’re 1 mile away or
great tool for people to get connected 100 miles away.”
with other people.”

5. “With SharePoint Server, Better Access to Information and In- they find the documents they need much
House Expertise quicker than before. Plus, project
we can reduce our IT There is a vast amount of information on managers can use people search to
the Sony Electronics intranet, and in the proactively look across the company and
costs and achieve a past, it was difficult to narrow down find an expert for a project in its earliest
quicker time-to-market. search results to find a particular stages.”
document. Now, IT staff has indexed
… Where development internal documents with FAST Search For the solution in general, Whitmoyer
Server 2010 for SharePoint, and this has adds, “Difficult tasks like precisely finding
might have taken three made it significantly easier to track down relevant documents or specialized
to six months before, desired files. Whitmoyer says, “By expertise across a large corporation can
indexing our entire SharePoint be cut from weeks to minutes using
now we can complete it environment with FAST search SharePoint Server.”
technologies and its ability to navigate
in three to six weeks.” through the search results, a user can Another way that the solution saves time
Jim Whitmoyer, Business Applications immediately narrow an ambiguous is by streamlining the application
Manager, Sony Electronics search request to a very focused set of development processes. “With
relevant results.” SharePoint Server, we can reduce our IT
costs and achieve a quicker time-to-
The new solution also helps to find market on new projects within the
relevant people, not just information, company,” says Whitmoyer. “Where
which has traditionally been difficult. “We development might have taken three to
have a lot of knowledge in-house at six months before, now we can complete
Sony Electronics, and there are lots of it in three to six weeks.”
workers with specialized expertise,” adds
Whitmoyer. “Using the people and On the solution as a whole, he concludes,
expertise search capabilities of “Microsoft really got it right with
SharePoint Server 2010, we can easily SharePoint Server 2010.”
find people internally who have the
passion and skills to help with a
particular project, rather than hiring a
consultant. And because employees are
able to advertise their expertise online,
they may find new job opportunities
within the company.”
Higher Productivity, Lower Costs,
Faster Development
The improved access to stored
information and internal experts
translates directly into cost savings—by
avoiding hiring outside consultants—and
into time savings and higher
productivity. Whitmoyer observes,
“Employees are more productive using
FAST search technologies, with greater
control over how they search. As a result,

6. For More Information Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010
For more information about Microsoft Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 is the
products and services, call the business collaboration platform for the
Microsoft Sales Information Center at Enterprise and the Internet.
(800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the
Microsoft Canada Information Centre For more information about Microsoft
at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the SharePoint Server 2010, go to:
United States and Canada who are www.microsoft.com/sharepoint
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 Sony
Electronics products and services, visit
the Web site at:
news.sel.sony.com
Software and Services − Microsoft Office Communicator
 Microsoft Server Product Portfolio 2007
− Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010  Microsoft Visual Studio
 Microsoft Office − Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
− Microsoft Office SharePoint Server  Technologies
2007 − Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5
− Microsoft Office Communications
Server 2007
This case study is for informational purposes only.
MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published May 2010