Business Situation
A focus on excellence in operations, financial discipline and outstanding customer relationships are key elements that have made PPL one of the most successful power companies in the United States. To maintain that level of excellence, PPL needed to migrate from an obsolescing legacy information technology (IT) environment to one that would put it on the cutting edge of technology. It also wanted to control its total cost of ownership by reducing the overall support costs required to maintain its IT systems. Both these goals led PPL to choose the Microsoft platform.

Solution
Reliability, supportability and flexible functionality turned out to be the core business drivers for a Microsoft-based infrastructure. PPL had too many disparate, aging systems from an array of vendors that were becoming too expensive and cumbersome to maintain. It was time to streamline the technology infrastructure. "In order to continue to move forward with new business systems, we needed a more manageable and predictable foundation upon which to build," said Rich Cogan, Manager of Workstation & Communication Services at PPL. " The Microsoft enterprise platform offered reliability and manageability, plus a level of agility that we feel will help us maintain our leadership in the market."

Results
PPL had the vision and the platform, but needed partners with world-class standards and deep technical expertise of Microsoft products in several areas, including operating systems, directories, file/print services