ICL takes Microsoft .NET to the enterprise

ICL, the e-Business services company, today announced its strategy for supporting Microsoft's platform for the Internet, .NET, and the launch date for its mobile Exchange 2000 solution. As one of Microsoft's largest enterprise partners in Europe, ICL is drawing on its experience of designing, building and operating over 700 e-Business projects across Europe to develop mobile and mission critical implementations of the .NET platform. These will be completed for large and medium enterprises in the retail, financial services, government, telecoms, travel and utilities sectors. As part of this strategy ICL is delivering the enterprise IT infrastructure using the .NET framework for the States of Jersey government.

ICL is developing workflow, collaborative-working and web interface applications to run on the platform. The first project, to be launched in October, will be a mobile Exchange 2000 solution that features a voice portal allowing control of Outlook via phone, as well as collaborative applications including instant messaging and video conferencing. ICL has already ported its existing applications such as Lifestyle Banking and Internet Shopping solutions to the .NET architecture.

The implementation of the .NET platform at States of Jersey is part of a project to establish Jersey as an offshore e-Business centre. ICL has designed and is implementing a collaborative infrastructure based on .NET for 3,000 staff that includes Windows 2000, Office 2000 and Exchange 2000. The new infrastructure will enable the States of Jersey government to provide a better service to its 85,000 citizens by providing staff with faster access to more detailed and accurate information. Also, it will reduce significantly the cost of managing the IT system through consolidation of the number of servers.

Paul Lynch, director of partnerships and alliances at ICL commented: ".NET will play a critical role in organisations' Internet operations over the next two years. ICL will use its 30 plus years experience in designing and managing enterprise class systems to help companies use .NET to improve their business performance."

Peter Griffiths from the States of Jersey and John Davies, business manager for Exchange Solutions at ICL will be presenting together details of the Microsoft Exchange 2000 implementation and the business benefits this will deliver at Microsoft's Enterprise 2000 launch at Olympia, London on 28th September 2000. ICL also has a stand at the launch in the mobility area.